Top 26 Quotes by James Heckman

The goal, I think, of American education, for decades, and across many, many scholars, was basically to teach people broad lessons in how to live life, how to engage life, how to essentially be effective citizens and effective people.

There's no question that we have great value on the sanctity of the family, and there are a lot of competing visions about exactly how we teach a set of values and we teach skills to our children, especially in the early years when they're really forming their personalities, their personas, really.

Early intervention programs enrich adverse family environments. The largest effects of the early intervention programs are on noncognitive traits. Now, what do I mean by that? I mean perseverance, motivation, self-esteem, and hard work.

I think race is very important. I think generally speaking, we've to face the general problem, which is that we are seeing more children coming out of families which simply don't give them adequate resources for their development.

The traditional story of economists has been to say education explains what the returns are to school. I say, 'Okay, that's fine, but what explains the education? How much is just a matter of my giving you a poor kid versus a rich kid?'

I remember sitting there on my father's couch or my mother's couch, listening to this lecture about how there were two groups and we had to be separated. We've come a long way from this kind of open racism. And I think it's wonderful.