Former Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Americans value their children less than other developed nations, offering his remarks during a Monday interview with C-SPAN’s Pedro Echevarria.

Partial transcript below.

Let me just give you a couple of lies that really, unfortunately hurt kids and are detrimental to our country. First, we say we all care about education. We all say that, but I would ask the question, “How many of us as voters — Republican, Democrat, I could care less — go into voting booths and vote for a mayor, a governor, a congressman, a senator, or a president based upon their ability to improve educational outcomes?” We don’t do it. We don’t vote on education. I think that’s a real problem.

Secondly, we say we value teachers, but we don’t pay teacher what they’re worth. We don’t train them as true professionals. We don’t have meaningful career ladders. Great teachers change kids’ lives. They transform opportunities. We have to value teachers on an entirely different level.

And probably the toughest lie that is a hard one to talk about is, we all say we value children, but we allow a level of gun violence in this nation. We’ve allowed a generation of kids to grow up with mass shootings. We don’t invest in pre-k like other nations do and our babies off to a good start. I honestly believe — and again, this is a very tough thing to say — that other nations value their children more than we do. Here in the United States, I believe we value our guns more than we do our kids.