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Klein listened to a student's presentation on Theodore Roosevelt yesterday.

Yesterday in an eighth-grade social studies class, Chancellor Joel Klein pulled out his wallet and gave students a window into his philosophy of leadership.

Prompted by a student’s summer project on Theodore Roosevelt, the chancellor stood and removed a slip of paper from his wallet. He explained that he carries around a quotation from a speech Roosevelt gave at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910.

Here’s the full text of what Klein read the students:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man or woman who points out how the strong man or woman stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself or herself in a worthy cause.

The quotation sheds light on the worldview of a chancellor whose boasts about narrowing the achievement gap have recently been challenged and who is sometimes accused of steamrolling over public dissent. (more…)