I enrolled at a local college, but this time paid attention to myself - took only courses that really interested me, even if they weren't in sequence; kept out of classes with people I knew from high school, because I tended to act like the class clown around them; selected teachers by their teaching style - until I could build up my study habits. I ended up graduating with a 3.97 GPA and got into Harvard for my doctorate.

It's fine to pretend that people are one-dimensional, like in body size; the problem comes when you forget that you are just pretending.

I care deeply about opportunity and fairness, because I grew up really poor.

We need to develop people rather than process them.

Right now, for instance, we resist giving people extra time on exams or for assignments, as though it's unfair to the faster students.

We use the Air Force analogy: there were expensive things they had to do to get a cockpit suitable for a lot of pilots, like wraparound windshields, but their initial solutions, when they realized average didn't work, were adjustable seats. How in the world did they not already have adjustable seats in their planes? We're looking for adjustable seats for education, for basic things that we can do.

The whole idea of timing tests is a century old, from a scientist who thought speed and ability were tightly correlated, which they are not.