James Heckman
James Heckman
James Joseph Heckmanis an American economist and Nobel laureate. He is the Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, Professor of Law at the Law School, and director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago, a senior research fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth19 April 1944
CountryUnited States of America
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It is imperative to change the way we look at education. We should invest in the foundation of school readiness from birth to age 5.
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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?'
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Schools should look behind classroom doors and determine the factors that contribute to the kinds of interactions between teachers and students that promote student achievement.
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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.
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The cognitive skills prized by the American educational establishment and measured by achievement tests are only part of what is required for success in life. Character skills are equally important determinants of wages, education, health and many other significant aspects of flourishing lives.
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You have kids growing up in some of the worst circumstances financially, living in some of the worst ghettos, and they succeed. They succeed because an adult figure, typically a mother, maybe a grandmother, nourishes the kid, supports the kid, protects the kid, encourages the kid to succeed. It's as if the environment never happened.
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There is a responsibility that goes with winning the Nobel Prize, and the responsibility is that if you have a forum, you should use it wisely.
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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.
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I went to a liberal arts college, and as part of my background, I was majoring in mathematics and physics.
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Some kids win the lottery at birth; far too many don't - and most people have a hard time catching up over the rest of their lives. Children raised in disadvantaged environments are not only much less likely to succeed in school or in society, but they are also much less likely to be healthy adults.
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Chicago is an exciting place which renews itself. The workshop system encourages close reading and frank discussions of papers and ideas.
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I had always had a deep interest in social science, history. So even when I was in high school, I was debating, and in college debating, and interested in contemporary events.
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The separate water foundations, park benches, bathrooms and restaurants of the Jim Crow South startled me. These experiences motivated my lifelong study of the status of African Americans and the sources of improvement in that status.
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I remember that, one day, I was visiting one training center in the 1990s that was teaching people how to fix Volkswagen engines from the 1960s, which were no longer sold. So you were training people on a skill that had zero value. The reason is that they hadn't received any new equipment in 20 years.