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Because kids are physically smaller, there's an assumption by people who haven't read a kids' book for a long time that their ideas and themes and problems and ambitions must be commensurately smaller and less important. I would venture that sometimes the opposite is true.

I think children have talent and insight, but it gets beaten out of them.

There's only so much academic disruption that a young child can deal with before he just can't catch up.

Children, I always think, are just putting on a performance of being naive and not understanding anything. I have worked with children in films, and they're treated as adults and they just drop the pretense of being children.

If there's one thing that 'No Child Left Behind' has proven, it's that more academics don't make for smarter children - or even higher test scores. And yet we somehow refuse to accept this reality.

Kids are different from adults. They are not as developed as far as brain science, controlling impulses, and maturity, and fall prey to all kinds of pressures.

Especially girls, but any kids exposed to music programs and arts programs do much better on their tests. They have a better chance of going to college. They can focus better. You know, we're not just automatons learning how to work machines and do engineering and math and science. All of that's great, but you've got to build a whole person.

Any teacher in the arts and sciences has to maintain a sense of childlikeness to be truly inventive.

If the education and studies of children were suited to their inclinations and capacities, many would be made useful members of society that otherwise would make no figure in it.

Teachers shape so much of what a kid's upbringing can be.