Helen Wise

Helen Dickerson Wise (born September 11, 1928) is a retired American politician and public education official. A former member of the board of trustees of Pennsylvania State University and past president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association and the National Education Association, she was also a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.

A staunch advocate for America's public education system and political activist who played a key role in improving the collective bargaining rights, pay and working conditions for educators across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the United States, she was also a prominent advocate for children, advising parents that:

"The most important thing is that parents are supportive of children in school. That means, it seems to me, listening to their concerns.... We have gone through the school of thought that the teacher is always right. That isn't necessarily so. That doesn't mean that we assume that the child is always right. But I think we learn to support youngsters by listening to them and if there are problems of getting to the teachers (teachers sometimes have as many as 150 or 200 children they teach in a day) it is up to the parents to communicate with the children and with the teacher so that they can help."

She was also a lifelong learning advocate, observing that "considering the great body of knowledge we have now, children don't go to school just to get those facts and that body of knowledge ... they are going to school so that they can learn how to keep on learning." Provided by Wikipedia