Historian, professor, and thinker Diane Ravitch was awarded the Kenneth J. Bialkin/Citigroup Public Service Award on Tuesday evening. The award, given to a person or organization whose influential work reflects an area of concern shared by Mr. Bialkin (who is also an investor in The New York Sun), was presented at the American Jewish Historical Society.

Upon receiving the award, Ms. Ravitch, who in addition to her status as a research professor at New York University is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Brookings Institution, thanked her high school English teacher, Ruby Ratliff. From that teacher, Ms. Ravitch was given two lines of poetry upon graduation. One was the last line of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”: “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” The other was from Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage”:

I stood
Among them, but not of them – in a shroud
Of thoughts, which were not their thoughts.

Ms. Ravitch said education “lifts us out of the confines that we were born into and introduces us to a wider world opening new possibilities.” She offered the audience some simple truths: “A successful public education system is essential to the health of our democracy,yet having a successful private education sector is essential to the pluralistic heritage of our democracy.”

She argued that there is no inherent conflict between private and public education. “A person can be equally devoted to the well-being of NYU and CUNY or to Yale and SUNY, and equally devoted to the well-being of public schools and religious schools. The more educational opportunities that our society supplies to its citizens, the better it will be for all of us.”

Citigroup vice chairman Lewis Kaden was on hand to celebrate the award.American Jewish Historical Society executive director David Solomon welcomed the crowd, saying the event was timed to occur after Purim ended at sunset so that “none of the speakers would feel obliged to have come in costume.”

United Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten spoke at the ceremony. She pointed out that Ms. Ravitch’s views could create a more robust dialogue than there presently is in New York.”People understand at some gut level that if we are to succeed as a country, then we have to have an education system that creates opportunity not for some kids but all kids,” Ms. Weingarten said.

She later said that it takes really good people to teach children, a really wise leader in a school, and it is helpful to have parental involvement and engagement. But she added: “Our obligation is to help kids even if we don’t have parental involvement or engagement.”

She also raised the issue of funding for pre-kindergarten education for all children, so that they come to school prepared – and so the teachers and principals can help them reach the high standards expected of them.

Executive vice president and general counsel of Kaplan, Incorporated, Harold Levy,aformer New York City schools chancellor, discussed the differences in funding and technological among Oxford colleges, the Irish educational system, and Chinese system. He said Ireland’s improvement shows that “It’s doable, and we can do it at the K-12 level.”

Mr. Levy also praised Ms. Ravitch for her articulate views on the issue of character. He quoted her, saying: “The schools must reassert the primary responsibility for the development of young people’s intelligence and character. Schools must do far more than teach children how to learn and how to look things up: They must teach them what knowledge has most value, how to use that knowledge, how to organize what they know, how to understand the relationship between past and present, how to tell the difference between accurate information and propaganda, and how to turn information into understanding.”

Last year’s award was given posthumously to Eric Breindel, who was a senior vice president at News Corporation and had been editorial page editor of the New York Post. Ms. Ravitch said she was honored to have followed in the footsteps of Breindel. She also thanked several professors, including Lawrence Cremin at Columbia University.

In her speech, she turned to what she called a simple truth: “Good schools and school systems have a full and rich curriculum that always includes history, literature, science, mathematics, art, music, and foreign language.”

She said such good programs have a plan and a sequence that knowledge builds on knowledge from kindergarten through 12th grade. For example, she said, the fourth-grade teachers know what the third-graders learned.

“I share John Dewey’s vision that what the best and wisest parents want for their children is what we should want for all the children of the community.

“Where the discussion begins is ‘Who is that best and wisest parent?'”

gshapiro@nysun.com