“Why did math matter so much? Some reasons were practical: More and more jobs required familiarity with probability, statistics, and geometry. The other reason was that math was not just math. Math is a language of logic. It is a… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share Image
“In Korea, math moved fluidly. When the teacher asked questions, the kids answered as if math were a language that they knew by heart. As in Tom’s class in Poland, calculators weren’t allowed, so kids had learned mental tricks to… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share Image
Well, there isn't any one profile of a survivor, but there are profiles. Depending on the disaster you have certain advantages and disadvantages just… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
Resilience is a precious skill. People who have it tend to also have three underlying advantages: a believe that they can influence life events;… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
By sort of combining the research of a lot of smart people, I came up with an equation for dread [dread=uncontrollability+unfamiliarity+imaginability+suffering+scale of destruction+unfairness]. The… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
The one thread that was most surprising and most consistent was the lack of fear that people felt at the worst moment. They felt… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“Since 9/11, the U.S. government has sent over $23 billion to states and cities in the name of homeland security. Almost none of that… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“One thing was clear: To give our kids the kind of education they deserved, we had to first agree that rigor mattered most of… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“Everywhere I went, in every country, people complained about their education system. It was a universal truth and a strangely reassuring one. No one… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
My anxiety about disasters is lower. The more you know, the less scary any of this stuff is. And that's my hope for the… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“In almost every other developed country, the schools with the poorest students had more teachers per student; the opposite was true in only four… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“These days, we tend to think of disasters as acts of God and government. Regular people only feature into the equation as victims, which… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“Statistically speaking, tracking tended to diminish learning and boost inequality wherever it was tried. In general, the younger tracking happened, the worse the entire… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“Economists had found an almost one-to-one match between PISA scores and a nation's long term economic growth. Many other things influenced economic growth, of… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
“The Iron Child culture was contagious; it was hard for kids and parents to resist the pressure to study more and more. But all… — Amanda Ripley Copy Share
