Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don’t always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.

Kennedy is emphasizing that her childhood in the Kennedy household was shaped less by glamour or politics than by an everyday culture of learning. By stressing “intellectual curiosity” and a “love of reading and of history,” she frames her parents’ influence as formative habits—valuing books, ideas, and historical awareness—rather than mere academic achievement. The remark also gently corrects public assumptions about her family, suggesting that outsiders may overlook the private, intellectual life that coexisted with their public prominence. In a broader sense, the quote presents education as a family value transmitted through example: curiosity modeled by parents becomes a durable inheritance for children.