Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.

It is the responsibility of every adult... to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them and that they are not alone.

Teach them the quiet words of kindness, to live beyond themselves. Urge them toward excellence, drive them toward gentleness, pull them deep into yourself, pull them upward toward manhood, but softly like an angel arranging clouds. Let your spirit move through them softly.

So much crap passes as information that not only does the audience sometimes miss the distinction between news and crap, the editors sometimes miss the distinction.

The best way to get students involved in science and want to follow either science careers or incorporate it in their lives or to achieve science literacy is to expose them to the various jobs in STEM. It's broad from biologists to electricians to nanotechnologists to building fusion engines. It's a wide range of things.

I believe that if we want our children to understand the world beyond their classroom, we must bring the world into their classroom.