TEENAGE girls are hard to impress. Unless you are Michelle Obama, that is. In 2009, on her first foreign trip as First Lady, Mrs Obama visited Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, a London state (or public) school for girls, about three-quarters of whom are eligible for free school meals. She told a star-struck assembly that she also came from humble origins, explaining how she worked her way from a poor part of Chicago to the Ivy League, a top law firm and (with help from Barack) the White House. “I’m standing here?because of education,” Mrs Obama said. “I thought being smart was cooler than anything in the world.” And unlike many luminaries asked to rouse pupils, the First Lady kept in touch. Mrs Obama invited the girls to see her again in 2011 when she visited Oxford University. There, she told pupils: “All of us believe that you belong here.” One year later a dozen pupils flew over to the White House.
Her message seems to have worked. In a paper published on July 1st, Simon Burgess, an economist at the University of Bristol, analysed the school’s exam results in the years after Mrs Obama’s visits. The 15- or 16-year-olds sitting...Continue reading
Source: United States http://ift.tt/29naohg
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