Abdoulaye Wade Quotes

Rich, smart parents tend to have rich, smart kids - not because it's genetic but because they can create a home environment and sensory stimulation that lower-income kids often don't get.

This may sound strange, but at a very early age, at around 3, I was aware that I was smarter than the other kids.

One of society's thorniest problems is that children from poor families start school lagging badly behind their more affluent classmates in readiness.

Head Start is designed to ensure that all children - regardless of their family's income, race, or ethnic background - are able to enter kindergarten ready to learn.

Every child should be given a strong start to their education.

If you are born into poverty, the chances are good that your children will be born into poverty. Find a way to give poor kids the same cognitive stimulus that rich kids receive, and they should end up with the same tools for success.

I don't think I have ever done anything for this age of children before, a pre-school audience. Generally speaking, we don't have vivid memories of that age and what influenced us, yet clearly they are hugely formative years and it's really important that we can create television of a high quality for that audience.

There is a certain age at which a child looks at you in all earnestness and delivers a long, pleased speech in all the true inflections of spoken English, but with not one recognizable syllable.

I honestly think that kids should not exercise: they should keep fit through play. The most important age is zero to seven, both for the kid and the parent - for parents, because this is the time when your kid learns how to walk, talk and other behaviour.

Obviously, our children, who have been playing with their computers since the age of five or six, don't have quite the same brain as those who were brought up on wooden or metal toys, whose brains are certainly atrophied by comparison.

It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

By four years of age, the average child in a family receiving public assistance has heard about 13 million words, compared to 45 million for a child from a wealthier family. The disadvantages developed during their first four years are usually still present in high school.

There's no reason why children in inner cities or rural areas do not receive the same quality education or opportunities as those in suburbs or wealthy neighborhoods. If we truly believe in giving all citizens a chance to pursue happiness and pursue their goals, then we cannot continue to marginalize entire groups of people.

Our children are our greatest resource and Head Start grants help them reach their full potential.

Experts tell us that 90% of all brain development occurs by the age of five. If we don't begin thinking about education in the early years, our children are at risk of falling behind by the time they start Kindergarten.

The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.

We don't have the money in America to keep paying for the education of everybody else's children from around the world. We simply don't have the financial resources to do that.

The illustrations in picture books are the first paintings most children see, and because of that, they are incredibly important. What we see and share at that age stays with us for life.

If you have a kid who goes to kindergarten and doesn't know what a circle is, doesn't know what red and green are, and doesn't know what right and left are, by the time he learns those things, the rest of the class is far ahead of him.

Ours is an age of pedagogy. Anxious parents instruct their children more and more, at younger and younger ages, until they're reading books to babies in the womb.

I believe that investing in our children's development from the earliest age is the single most important contribution we can make to the health and wellbeing of our citizens, their capacity and the future prosperity of our state.

Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.

Kids are generally rotten until the age of about six, when they become people.

Free education for all - whilst it is a desirable notion, in South Africa it will simply not be affordable.

I saw first-hand that all schools are not created equal, and the students shouldn't have to go without all of the materials that they need for a great education.