Ayelet Waldman Quotes

We put so much pressure on kids to excel in school at such a young age.

I have never gotten a B in my life. I would honestly be mortified if I got a B. I'm so academically driven.

I think there should be a good balance between being a good student and being able to enjoy your high school life.

Schools should be places of learning and joy, not testing and agita.

When I was in first grade, some psychologist told my mom if I didn't go to graduate school, she basically failed as a parent, because I had the aptitude to do it. Which is so dumb. Huge pressure!

The pressure on kids is high to get good grades. In my time, no one cared about it. My father looked at them but he didn't really make much fuss about them.

Your grades are not your destiny: they're just letters and numbers which rate how well you performed in one artificial arena, once.

You want to know what I make? I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could. I can make a C+ feel like a Congressional Medal of Honor, and I can make a...

I didn't want to be in a situation where I was broader than the boys, which I was, in the academic world.

People don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better.

I wanted to get everything right. I was super nerdy and academic. I got so much satisfaction out of getting good grades.

If there's a negative interaction between my child and another child, what I want to know is, how was it handled, what lessons came out of it and of course, is my child okay?

I was valedictorian. Did I enjoy going to school? I hated it. It wasn't a choice on my part, it was expected.

Alas, if our children lose the crown of life, it will be but a small consolation that they have won the laurels of literature or art.

I'm much more of a kid now than I was when I was a kid. I was the kind of kid who was valedictorian, a straight-A student. My mom used to say, "Please stop studying and get outside."

I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanized or de-humanized.

Now I feel as if I should succeed in doing something in mathematics, although I cannot see why it is so very important. . . The knowledge doesn't make life any sweeter or happier, does it?

Reducing children to a test score is the worst form of identity theft we could commit in schools.

Four times, under our educational rules, the human pack is shuffled and cut - at eleven-plus, sixteen-plus, eighteen-plus and twenty-plus - and happy is he who comes top of the deck on each occasion, but especially the last. This is called Finals, the very name of which implies that nothing of importance can happen after it.

I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.

Being the first person to go to college that really related to me from the movie [The Butler] because being black and going to college everyone puts so much hope into you.

School typically doesn't prepare young people for real life - unless their lives are spent following instructions and pleasing others. In my opinion, that's why so many students who succeed in school fail in life.

When we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.

I have a 20-year-old son, I have a 12-year-old son and I'm so afraid for them.

One night my son was downstairs studying, and he had been up so late all that week, and my husband said, "I feel so sorry for him." I said, "Look, if he's going to become a surgeon" - he is studying to be a doctor - "he's going to have his hard times. I feel sorry for him too, but if he lives in this world he's going to have more hard times. He's going to stay up some more nights." I think we can't shield them from the hard times, even though we'd like to. I say to the children that I teach and to my own - I can't test the ground for you and tell you that's a safe step there.