It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.
Thanks partly to the kind of poets that we now have and partly to funding, there's been a gigantic shift in the way poetry is perceived... Poems on the Underground, poets in schools, football clubs, zoos.
I was kind of an outcast in school 'cause I always kept to myself and was writing poetry and then going on tour with my brother band all the time, so kids didn't know what to make of me.
I was little there were times I wanted my parents to be normal. I wanted them to have a religion. I wanted them to have a job, like the parents of every other kid I went to school with.
And I think that we in America need to understand that many schools need improvement, and particularly with respect to how they're serving minority children.
All children of cosmonauts went to one school. We all lived in the same neighborhood, Star City, and all of us, children of cosmonauts, were in the center of attention from the teachers and general inhabitants of the Star City, and so it was difficul...
American high school students trail teenagers from 14 European and Asian countries in reading, math and science. We're even trailing France.
When I was in graduate school in consumer science and math, all of the big companies had labs, all doing blue sky research.
Before I left for Germany, I had gotten accepted to the performing arts high school in New York, which was a big dream of mine. And having to leave that was very sad for me.
I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect. Between homework and sports and drama and being social, I slept about four hours a night through high school and college.
My parents couldn't handle my energy so they enrolled me in every sport the school was offering. I didn't resent it because I loved sports and picked them up easily.
I started playing baseball and soccer. Those were my sports on the streets and in school when I was growing up. I didn't even start playing basketball until I was 14.
The public schools I attended were dominated by athletics and rarely inspiring intellectually, but I enjoyed a small circle of interesting friends despite my ineptitude at team sports and my preference for reading.
Playing athletics, playing a lot of different sports, going to drama school... I was one of those kids who wanted to do everything, so I ended up being pretty average at everything.
I was a pretty normal high school kid. I just loved to play sports and had opportunities, and the Lord blessed me with talent, and I just tried to take advantage of it.
I played a lot of other sports at school and just one day the golf bug bit me and I started playing serious golf from when I was ten years old.
I was sporty in high school. I played tennis and hockey, and was basketball captain. Then I went to university and stopped doing sport and started eating ice cream.
I also developed an interest in sports, and played in informal games at a nearby school yard where the neighborhood children met to play touch football, baseball, basketball and occasionally, ice hockey.
I played football. I wrestled. Those were team sports and I played for the school. When I was younger, I played kick the can and stuff like that. I loved that.
I'm a kid who grew up in an all African-American neighborhood and got into schools and aspired to just be me, and didn't worry about labels or anything. Just wanted to be a success at what I did.
After I won the Oscar, my salary doubled, my friends tripled, my children became more popular at school, my butcher made a pass at me, and my maid hit me up for a raise.
