My first attempt at a kiss was in fifth grade but it didn't go so well. Later I used Boyz II Men and Jodeci songs to come on to girls. I had more success.

America's downgrade may serve as a wakeup call for its policymakers. It is an unambiguous and loud signal of the country's eroding economic strength and global standing. It renders urgent the need to regain the initiative through better economic policymaking and more coherent governance.

I lived in a town of 400 until I was like nine or ten. My dad coached all the sports - he was a gym teacher and health teacher for grades K-12.

Of course in our grade school in those days there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess.

Where justice is denied where poverty is enforced where ignorance prevails and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress rob and degrade them neither persons nor property will be safe.

I suggest that the introductory courses in science at all levels from grade school through college be radically revised. Leave the fundamentals the so-called basics aside for a while and concentrate the attention of all students on the things that are not known.

What I'd really like to write is a romantic comedy. This is my favorite kind of movie. I feel almost embarrassed revealing this because the genre has been so degraded in the past twenty years that saying you like romantic comedies is essentially an admission of mild stupidity.

If I can give you one strong piece of advice when you go away for that romantic weekend whatever you do do not accept or take the upgrade to the honeymoon suite.

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled - all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you - stature the respect of colleagues maybe even a kind of low-grade fame.

I've written poetry since I was in the first grade and it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I realized poetry could be put to music and become a song.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

When resources are degraded we start competing for them whether it is at the local level in Kenya where we had tribal clashes over land and water or at the global level where we are fighting over water oil and minerals. So one way to promote peace is to promote sustainable management and equitable distribution of resources.

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read I refused to do so.

Music is part of us and either ennobles or degrades our behavior.

Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money and in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.

In third grade I was taking tap-dance lessons and about six weeks before the recital I wanted to quit. My mom said 'No you're going to stay with it.' Well I did it and I was bad too! But my parents never let their kids walk away from something because it was too hard.

Grades were important in our house. I was reading by two. My mom would sit there and read with me read with me read with me. It was wonderful.

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex when in fact men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

It is my sincere hope that hospitals across Indiana and America continue to strive for excellence when it comes to providing medical care. This proposed rule will be harmful to communities who wish to upgrade their medical facilities.

Marriage is a very sacred institution and should not be degraded by allowing every other type of relationship to be made equivalent to it.

I come from Montana and in eastern Montana we have a lot of dirt between light bulbs. It is expensive trying to bring the new technologies to smaller schools to upgrade their technologies to take advantage of distance learning.

No Child Left Behind's fourth-grade gains aren't learning gains they're testing gains. That's why they don't last. The law is a distraction from things that really count.

I was not good in school. I could never read very fast or very well. I got tested for learning disabilities for dyslexia. Then I got put on Ritalin and Dexedrine. I took those starting in the eighth grade. As soon as they pumped that drug into me it would focus me right in.

What makes a child gifted and talented may not always be good grades in school but a different way of looking at the world and learning.