When I first entered the school, I was all set to tie my hair in a ponytail, get a fake tan, and write my homework in pink gel ink. I was prepared to hear girls bragging nonchalantly about the BMWs and diamond earrings they recieved for their birthda...
Can Flo come? She has so many clothes I really want her to get rid of.' I laugh. Flo's clothes are so funny. She buys one top and wears it every time we go out for six months, then buys another one and does the same. And the kinds of things she buys ...
What did she do that made her happy? The question implied action, a conscious purpose. She did many things in a day, and many things made her happy, but that, Claire could tell, wasn’t the issue. Nor the only one, Claire realized. Because in order ...
In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest is going to get them excited? People enjoy fantasy, and that is just what mathematics can provide --...
The thing I want you especially to understand is this feeling of divine revelation. I feel that this structure was "out there" all along I just couldn't see it. And now I can! This is really what keeps me in the math game-- the chance that I might gl...
Be honest: did you actually read [the above geometric proof]? Of course not. Who would want to? The effect of such a production being made over something so simple is to make people doubt their own intuition. Calling into question the obvious by insi...
Mathematics is . To do mathematics is to engage in an act of discovery and conjecture, intuition and inspiration; to be in a state of confusion—not because it makes no sense to you, but because you it sense and you still don't understand what your ...
And I'll go even further and say that mathematics, this art of abstract pattern-making — even more than storytelling, painting, or music - is our most quintessentially human art form. This is what our brains do, whether we like it or not. We are bi...
So what were your favorite subjects in school?" "School?" He leaned back in his chair as though he needed the extra space to think about it. "Probably math. It always made sense. Unlike English, economics, and girls." "And exactly how do you plan on ...
Kids didn't have huge backpacks when I was their age. We didn't have backpacks at all. Now it seemed all the kids had them. You saw little second-graders bent over like sherpas, dragging themselves through the school doors under the weight of their p...
correlation between the growing lack of respect for ideas and the imagination and the increasing gap between rich and poor in America, reflected not just in the gulf between the salaries of CEOs and their employees but also in the high cost of educat...
I had thrived in Miss Popham’s class because she was in charge of her own curriculum. She had a wonderful idea and freedom to teach as she wished. I still think hers is the best way to organize a literature class in high school if the goal is to en...
Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in the cities, but the girls stay home, become leaders in the community, and pass on what they’ve learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, i...
On a certain level, homeschooling is all about socialization. Whatever the teaching methods used in school or homeschool, it is ultimately the social environment itself that distinguishes homeschooling from conventional school. This social environmen...
When I was in high school I asked myself at one point: "Why do I care if my high school's team wins the football game? I don't know anybody on the team, they have nothing to do with me... why am I here and applaud? It does not make any sense." But th...
Dr. King Schultz: How long have you been associated with Mr. Candie? Leonide Moguy: Oh, Calvin's father and I were about eleven when we went to boarding school together. Calvin's father's father put me through law school. One could almost say I was r...
Ferris: The key to faking out the parents is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom; I'm a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you that a good phony fever is a dead lock, but, uh... you get a nervous mother, you could wind up in...
[talking about Capt. Miller] Corporal Upham: Reiben, so you even know where he went to school? Private Reiben: Cap'n didn't go to school, they assembled him at OSC outta spare body parts of dead GIs. Private Caparzo: You gotta pay attention to detail...
I’m completely library educated. I’ve never been to college. I went down to the library when I was in grade school in Waukegan, and in high school in Los Angeles, and spent long days every summer in the library. I used to steal magazines from a s...
Frank Costello: You know, if your father were alive, and saw you here sitting with me, let's say he would have a word with me about this. In fact, he'd kill seven guys just to cut my throat, and he could do it. That's maybe something you don't know a...
Dwayne: I wish I could just sleep until I was eighteen and skip all this crap-high school and everything-just skip it. Frank: Do you know who Marcel Proust is? Dwayne: He's the guy you teach. Frank: Yeah. French writer. Total loser. Never had a real ...
