Jerome Kagan Quotes

• Genes and family may determine the foundation of the house, but time and place determine its form.

  Jerome Kagan

  Family, House, Foundation

  19 Copy quote

• Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent, they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture - especially toward those in need. This inbuilt ethical sense is a biological feature of our species.

  Jerome Kagan

  Kindness, Compassion, Envy

  29 Copy quote

• After hunger, a human's most important need is to know what is virtuous.

  Jerome Kagan

  Adversity, Humility, Important

  9 Copy quote

• Genes do make a contribution to the IQ score - but a flower needs soil. The environment for poor people is so overwhelmingly powerful, it washes out the genetic effect. There is a genetic contribution to IQ, but you can't detect it when you're living in a deprived environment.

  Jerome Kagan

  Powerful, Flower, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

  12 Copy quote

• During the latency years, American children need experiences that promote academic talents, a sense of responsibility, and most important, a belief that they can attain the goals valued by self and community. They need reassurance that these goals are attainable.

  Jerome Kagan

  Children, Responsibility, Self

  11 Copy quote

• At each stage of development the child needs different resources from the family. During the first year, a variety of experience and the availability of the parents for attachment are primary. During the second and third years, stimulation of language development is critical. During the years prior to school entrance, information that persuades children they are loved becomes critical, and during the school years it is important for children to believe that they can succeed at the tasks they want to master.

  Jerome Kagan

  Children, Believe, School

  11 Copy quote

• No one has found a gene for IQ. "Heritability" means that identicial twins are more similar than fraternal twins, right? Fraternal twins more similar than non-siblings. The heritability is 50 percent if your parents went to college. But if your parents never graduated high school the heritability is zero. Zero.

  Jerome Kagan

  School, Mean, College

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• The fundamental problem is that the gap in educational achievement, which is a key in our technological economy, is due in my opinion - and the opinion of many, including Arne Duncan, our secretary of education - to the fact that the families of the poor who are not very educated are not talking to their children, interacting with their children, insisting they do their homework and so on.

  Jerome Kagan

  Children, Educational, Achievement

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• Well, if you can't then write in the press or put on television the importance of parents changing what they're doing, then the safe way out is to say, "Look, learning disabilities is probably genes. ADHD, probably genes." And that is the political alternative to not blaming the victim.

  Jerome Kagan

  Writing, Parent, Political

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• We don't want to blame the victim. The civil rights movement had a profound effect on the United States and on the American mind, maybe unique in the world. Once we realized how victimized people of color had been, an honest empathy went out and that's how we got civil rights legislation.

  Jerome Kagan

  Unique, People, Profound

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

• All the work on heritability was never based on looking at genes; it was based on the similarity between identical twins or between parents and children. Now that geneticists can look at genes, they can't find genes that account for more than 10 percent of the variation in any human trait.

  Jerome Kagan

  Children, Parent, Twins

  Source: www.pbs.org

  4 Copy quote

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