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Quote by John Medina

“Americans have been good at improvising for a long time, but in the last few decades, we have gotten very sloppy about the rote memorization of facts. That's a discipline issue. You need the rote skill in order to have something to improvise off of, otherwise you are simply playing air guitar.”

Quote by John Medina

Author

John Medina is a renowned molecular biologist born in 1956. He has made significant contributions to the field of molecular biology, particularly in the areas of gene expression and cellular signaling. Professor Medina's research has had a profound impact on biotechnology and the medical field. more

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“If you are curious, you won't be satisfied with the "tyranny of custom." People stuck in that rut might say "why?" and the first thing an exploratory person would say is "why not?"”

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“Years of research show us that the less control a person feels over an aversive stimuli coming at them, the more likely they are to disengage. Complete loss of control over a sustained period of time can actually lead to depression. It then follows that giving the person a level of control over the situation reduce the stress - and perhaps restore the disengagement.”

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“A factory worker at an assembly line, who can learn their job in 5 minutes, can get bored fairly easily, and disengage completely.”

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“Brain scientists and education scientists don't get together very often, and we end up living in our own little silos.”

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“Most brain scientists have not taught 4th grade, and don't know very much about the classroom, even though they might study learning in some detail. Most education professionals, who often know a tremendous amount about the classroom, don't know much about the brain. That is one of the reasons why I am so skeptical about applying brain findings to the classroom.”

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“One of the greatest predictors of academic success that exist is the emotional stability of the home. So if parents are interested in education reform, they should also be interested in how they conduct themselves in front of their children. If they are homeschooling their kids, they are even more exposed, so the idea is even more important.”

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“The primary source of waste in government is that legislators are often under heavy pressure to vote for projects that will benefit their campaign contributors, even when those projects fail a simple cost-benefit test. But with the Supreme Court showing little interest in permitting tighter rules on campaign contributions in recent years, there is little reason to be optimistic that we'll start curbing this kind of waste any time soon.”

“For the three decades after WWII, incomes grew at about 3 percent a year for people up and down the income ladder, but since then most income growth has occurred among the top quintile. And among that group, most of the income growth has occurred among the top 5 percent. The pattern repeats itself all the way up. Most of the growth among the top 5 percent has been among the top 1 percent, and most of the growth among that group has been among the top one-tenth of one percent.”

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