Liz

“Why were American kids consistently underestimated in math? In middle school, Kim and Tom had both decided that math was something you were either good at, or you weren’t, and they weren’t. Interestingly, that was not the kind of thing that most Americans said about reading. If you weren’t good at reading, you could, most people assumed, get better through hard work and good teaching. But in the United States, math was, for some reason, considered more of an innate ability, like being double-jointed.”
― Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“Without data, you are just another person with an opinion . . . Without data, you are just another person with an opinion . . .”
― Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“In most countries, attending some kind of early childhood program (i.e., preschool or prekindergarten) led to real and lasting benefits. On average, kids who did so for more than a year scored much higher in math by age fifteen (more than a year ahead of other students).”
― Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way

“whenever people ask me what I’d most like to change about the white working class, I say, “The feeling that our choices don’t matter.”
― J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis