I hated school right away. Religion had a lot to do with it because I felt like everybody was always lying to me.
I went to business school but left after four months because I just didn't want to be a puppet of society, stuck in an office, craving some sunlight.
In schools where parent involvement is greater, you do have higher achievement levels and better functioning, better performing schools.
The notion about education has changed and that now it’s sort of much more aligned with, “Well, schools can’t combat poverty. We can’t possibly expect schools to do the work to overcome poverty.” I think that notion which has changed over the last few decades is part, not all, but part of what is maybe leading to people feeling less of a sense of possibility.
There’s a belief now that the problem with our schools is parents, that if we just had better parents we would have better performing kids and, therefore, we wouldn’t have a problem at all. But what’s missing in that equation is that you do have a lot of parents in this country who are very involved in their children’s education and who do want something better. They want to see better for their kids. They know that they’re in schools that aren’t performing particularly well and if you look at how we treat those parents, it is quite poorly.
I worked so hard for so long - I did a lot of movies. I also worked a lot when my kids were smaller, before they were in school.
I used to do drugs in high school. I've been living in L.A. for almost 10 years, and shortly after I arrived I cleaned up pretty much. Stuff goes on on the set, stuff goes on at parties.
I went to court-reporting school to study stenotyping. After awhile, whenever anybody spoke, in my mind my fingers would be punching it out. Even two years after I quit, my mind still did that.
Let Girls Learn issue has always been personal for me. I grew up in a working-class neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago where most folks, including my parents, didn't have college degrees. But with a lot of hard work - and a lot of financial aid - I had the chance to attend Princeton and Harvard Law School, and that gave me the confidence to pursue my ambitions.
We've gotten commitments from medical schools, from nursing schools, to step up and increase that pool of knowledgeable individuals.
After I got out of law school and worked in a big law firm, I thought, there are so many kids like me, in my neighborhood, that could be here if they had more support from their families, better financial aid. But the gap is so wide once you miss that opportunity. So I was always interested in figuring out, How do you bridge that? I felt, as a lawyer, when I was mentoring and working with kids, that I gained a level of groundedness that I just couldn't get sitting on the forty-seventh floor of a fancy firm.
The biggest obstacle facing girls is education, education, education. There are too many kids who think high school is a pit stop to fame and fortune. I want girls in this country to think education is the coolest, most important thing they could ever do in their lives.
Our kids didn't do this to themselves. They don't decide the sugar content in soda or the advertising content of a television show. Kids don't choose what's served to them for lunch at school, and shouldn't be deciding what's served to them for dinner at home. And they don't decide whether there's time in the day or room in the budget to learn about healthy eating or to spend time playing outside.
When I was a child, I went to stage school three times a week in the evenings - singing, ballet, tap, modern and acting, and I loved it.
Othello' was my first Shakespearean discovery. I was obsessed with drama at school, and I studied the play for my English GCSE. Desdemona is the part that everyone wants, but Iago's wife Emilia is the one I've always been drawn to.
Of course, no one should be trapped in bad schools or bad neighborhoods. No one. But I think we need to be asking a larger question: How do we change the norm, the larger context that people seem to accept as a given? Are we so thoroughly resigned to what "is" that we cannot even begin a serious conversation about how to create what ought to be?
Kids are growing up in communities in which they see their loved ones cycling in and out of prison and in which they are sent the message in countless ways that they, too, are going to prison one way or another. We cannot build healthy, functioning schools within a context where there is no funding available because it's going to building prisons and police forces.
I come from a modest background. I put myself through college and law school and a postdoctorate program in tax law.
A particular type of film emerged from World War Two, with the Italian neorealist school. It was perfectly right for its time, which was as exceptional as the reality around us. Our major interest focused on that and on how we could relate to it. Later, when the situation normalized and post-war life returned to what it had been in peacetime, it became important to see the intimate, interior consequences of all that had happened.
When you put more than a million kids in school, you take a plane today and go to Haiti, you cannot see the results. You will see the results in 30 years when you see a different type of Haitian.
At school I was very shy. I wasn't funny really.
I was sort of lazy at school, but I realize I still have something to bring to the subject which is comforting. I feel I am not as stupid as I thought I was.
Necessity is a violent school-mistress.
The world is but a school of inquisition; it is not who shall enter the ring, but who shall run the best courses.
Custom is a violent and treacherous school mistress. She, by little and lithe, slyly and unperceived, slips in the foot of her authority; but having by this gentle and humble beginning, with the benefit of time, fixed and established it, she then unmasks a furious and tyrannic countenance, against which we have no more the courage or the power so much as to lift up our eyes.