See It And Cheer November 30, 2015November 29, 2015 Recovered from the tryptophan? Five things for you today, the first two courtesy of the estimable Less Antman: 1. A way to refinance student loans cheap if your credit is good or prospects bright (know any recent MBA’s, MD’s, or JD’s?): sofi.com. 2. A way to find the credit card deal that best suits you: milecards.com. 3. A complete — free — suite of personal finance calculators: dinkytown.net. 4. My review of Allegiance, on Broadway: A moving, funny, important show. We really did this to 120,000 Japanese Americans, each of whom, upon release, got reparations of $25 and a bus ticket. Star Trek’s George Takei — who was five when his family was forced to live in horse stables while awaiting relocation from Los Angeles to Arkansas or Wyoming — does a lovely job anchoring the production. [This] rousing new musical has an original book, original score, and fresh, original ideas—qualities so unusual in a market overcrowded with stale revivals that attention must be paid. See it and cheer. — New York Observer. 5. My review of King Charles III on Broadway: Fascinating and terrific. (“Flat-out brilliant,” echoes the New York Times.*) With just 73 performances left in its limited run, they should film it for PBS and also, somehow, Hellen Mirrin’s now-closed The Audience. Then air them back to back, first hers and then his. Queen Elizabeth during her long and glorious reign shown in her weekly audience with the prime minister — there have been so many! — and then King Charles III (aka Prince Charles, widower to Lady Diana, dad to William and Harry) in his first audience as his mother has, in the playwright’s conception, finally left the stage and . . . well, try to see it. Shakespeare himself might have thought it not half bad. *They saw it first but I still think they’re echoing me.
What A Species We Are November 27, 2015November 26, 2015 If we can do this — look at all the things that had to go right! (thanks, Mel) — shouldn’t we be able to solve less technically complex problems, like educating our kids and depolarizing our politics?
Purpose Is Imperative November 25, 2015November 25, 2015 I’ll never forget Tek Lin, our eighth grade English teacher, asking — we were twelve — what our raison d’etre was. Good heavens. Was that in the textbook someplace? Had I missed it? What, pray tell, was a raison d’etre? “Reason for being,” he explained, leaving us no less clueless. (An outstanding answer, I would come to discover decades later, has a name: tikkun olam. Though just where we’re supposed to find purpose after we’ve healed the world is a more challenging, if less urgent, question. Jazzercise?) All this came to mind (I am easily distracted) when I saw the latest from Imperative, a young company premised on the notion that most people have jobs; some have careers; but the most fortunate — even if they are street sweepers — have callings.* If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.” — Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s the goal of Imperative to help employers instill their employees with purpose, thereby improving their performance, the corporate culture, cohesion, and employee retention. Imperative was just featured in Fast Company (“The Purpose-Driven Work Force Is 42 Million Strong“). Their work with Linked In is featured here. Take the assessment? (It’s free.) Forward it to a listless twenty-something in your life? Or — if you own or help run a company with 250 or more employees — shoot its chief cheerleader this link? (Full disclosure: I an a small shareholder in Imperative.) Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We have hot water! As much as we want!! Any time we want it!!! What a time to be alive. Gratefully . . .
Timber November 24, 2015December 29, 2016 I’ve been writing about timber for some years — e.g., here (for your serious consideration) and here (for your amusement) — and suggesting a timber stock with the symbol PCL. Well guess what? After decades of decent pay-outs – and after “trading around $35” for quite a while, as noted in the 2010 edition of my book – Weyerhaeuser (WY) is acquiring it for about $50 a share in WY stock. Nice. So now what? If you’re in it for the long haul, just hang on. If you’re new to this concept, consider buying WY, most recently at around $32 a share. It yields nearly 4% and over time, the dividend, and with it the stock price, could rise to match, or even outpace, inflation. Two similar stocks to consider: Potlatch (PCH) and Rayonier (RYN). You could also buy either of two Exchange Traded Funds, with the clever symbols CUT and WOOD, giving you broad diversification. But you pay an annual management fee. Perhaps check to see which stocks they own, and each year diversify – over different timber stocks but also over time, by not investing all at once – directly buying shares in a new stock each year. You’re 24 and have $3,800 to invest? Forget timber—you’ll die of boredom. But if you’re 50 and have accumulated $700,000 to help hold you from age 70 through 98, gradually accumulating a timber portfolio this way with 5% or 10% of your assets could make sense. Sorry about the Viagra spam that appeared sporadically in the last two posts . . . and may be appearing now as you read this despite our attempts at repair. If the ads should persist for more than four hours . . .
Surprisingly Thoughtful Bathroom Humor November 20, 2015November 21, 2015 If you have two minutes and thirty-five seconds, this clip from “Saturday Night Live” will, I think, crystallize your thinking about the whole “transgender bathroom” issue some seem obsessed with. Watch. People just need to relax a little. (On an only vaguely related note, I had the opportunity to speak at a NYU Law School symposium on LGBTQIA equality last week — I had assumed the Q was “questioning” but it is apparently “queer” and I was a little embarrassed not to know what I and A were (intersex! asexual!*) — so I decided to make it LGBTQQIAJ. And after using that term a couple of times to perplexed looks — now who was embarrassed? — I explained that the second Q was to reinstate questioning and that I’d added the J as a point of personal privilege. “Just not all that good at it.”) Have a great weekend. *Really? You still haven’t seen Seth’s show? (“Sikes may well be one of the saviors of the Great American Songbook as we continue into the 21st century.” –NY Arts Review) If you’re in New York this Tuesday, join us — I got you a 50% discount off the cover charge (use code SSJUDY50 at checkout). The food and drink are good, too.
The Most Important Thing You Will Read About Paris November 19, 2015November 18, 2015 Paul Krugman’s column is so level-headed, you could balance an egg on it. Read it — and if you agree, share it on Facebook, as I have? (Where would we be without the New York Times? Yours for 99 cents the first month.) FEARING FEAR ITSELF By Paul Krugman November 16, 2015 Like millions of people, I’ve been obsessively following the news from Paris, putting aside other things to focus on the horror. It’s the natural human reaction. But let’s be clear: it’s also the reaction the terrorists want. And that’s something not everyone seems to understand. Take, for example, Jeb Bush’s declaration that “this is an organized attempt to destroy Western civilization.” No, it isn’t. It’s an organized attempt to sow panic, which isn’t at all the same thing. And remarks like that, which blur that distinction and make terrorists seem more powerful than they are, just help the jihadists’ cause. Think, for a moment, about what France is and what it represents. It has its problems — what nation doesn’t? — but it’s a robust democracy with a deep well of popular legitimacy. Its defense budget is small compared with ours, but it nonetheless retains a powerful military, and has the resources to make that military much stronger if it chooses. (France’s economy is around 20 times the size of Syria’s.) France is not going to be conquered by ISIS, now or ever. Destroy Western civilization? Not a chance. So what was Friday’s attack about? Killing random people in restaurants and at concerts is a strategy that reflects its perpetrators’ fundamental weakness. It isn’t going to establish a caliphate in Paris. What it can do, however, is inspire fear — which is why we call it terrorism, and shouldn’t dignify it with the name of war. The point is not to minimize the horror. It is, instead, to emphasize that the biggest danger terrorism poses to our society comes not from the direct harm inflicted, but from the wrong-headed responses it can inspire. And it’s crucial to realize that there are multiple ways the response can go wrong. It would certainly be a very bad thing if France or other democracies responded to terrorism with appeasement — if, for example, the French were to withdraw from the international effort against ISIS in the vain hope that jihadists would leave them alone. And I won’t say that there are no would-be appeasers out there; there are indeed some people determined to believe that Western imperialism is the root of all evil, and all would be well if we stopped meddling. But real-world examples of mainstream politicians, let alone governments, knuckling under to terrorist demands are hard to find. Most accusations of appeasement in America seem to be aimed at liberals who don’t use what conservatives consider tough enough language. A much bigger risk, in practice, is that the targets of terrorism will try to achieve perfect security by eliminating every conceivable threat — a response that inevitably makes things worse, because it’s a big, complicated world, and even superpowers can’t set everything right. On 9/11 Donald Rumsfeld told his aides: “Sweep it up. Related and not,” and immediately suggested using the attack as an excuse to invade Iraq. The result was a disastrous war that actually empowered terrorists, and set the stage for the rise of ISIS. And let’s be clear: this wasn’t just a matter of bad judgment. Yes, Virginia, people can and do exploit terrorism for political gain, including using it to justify what they imagine will be a splendid, politically beneficial little war. Oh, and whatever people like Ted Cruz may imagine, ending our reluctance to kill innocent civilians wouldn’t remove the limits to American power. It would, however, do wonders for terrorist recruitment. [Down dramatically as noted here Tuesday.] Finally, terrorism is just one of many dangers in the world, and shouldn’t be allowed to divert our attention from other issues. Sorry, conservatives: when President Obama describes climate change as the greatest threat we face, he’s exactly right. Terrorism can’t and won’t destroy our civilization, but global warming could and might. So what can we say about how to respond to terrorism? Before the atrocities in Paris, the West’s general response involved a mix of policing, precaution, and military action. All involved difficult trade-offs: surveillance versus privacy, protection versus freedom of movement, denying terrorists safe havens versus the costs and dangers of waging war abroad. And it was always obvious that sometimes a terrorist attack would slip through. Paris may have changed that calculus a bit, especially when it comes to Europe’s handling of refugees, an agonizing issue that has now gotten even more fraught. And there will have to be a post-mortem on why such an elaborate plot wasn’t spotted. But do you remember all the pronouncements that 9/11 would change everything? Well, it didn’t — and neither will this atrocity. Again, the goal of terrorists is to inspire terror, because that’s all they’re capable of. And the most important thing our societies can do in response is to refuse to give in to fear. And perhaps even refuse to give in to hate. Have you seen this post from a Parisian, journalist Antoine Leiris, who lost his wife in the massacre? YOU WILL NOT HAVE MY HATRED: Friday night, you took an exceptional life — the love of my life, the mother of my son — but you will not have my hatred. I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know, you are dead souls. If this God, for whom you kill blindly, made us in his image, every bullet in the body of my wife would have been one more wound in his heart. So, no, I will not grant you the gift of my hatred. You’re asking for it, but responding to hatred with anger is falling victim to the same ignorance that has made you what you are. You want me to be scared, to view my countrymen with mistrust, to sacrifice my liberty for my security. You lost. I saw her this morning. Finally, after nights and days of waiting. She was just as beautiful as when she left on Friday night, just as beautiful as when I fell hopelessly in love over 12 years ago. Of course I am devastated by this pain, I give you this little victory, but the pain will be short-lived. I know that she will be with us every day and that we will find ourselves again in this paradise of free love to which you have no access. We are just two, my son and me, but we are stronger than all the armies in the world. I don’t have any more time to devote to you, I have to join Melvil who is waking up from his nap. He is barely 17-months-old. He will eat his meals as usual, and then we are going to play as usual, and for his whole life this little boy will threaten you by being happy and free. Because no, you will not have his hatred either. I think it’s probably fine to hate mass-murderers. Still, this beautiful note makes me think twice.
Hamilton — Genius November 18, 2015November 18, 2015 Genius.com is “the world’s biggest collection of song lyrics and crowd-sourced musical knowledge.” You’ll almost surely want to bookmark it. Hamilton is the spectacular musical that has just released a new set of tickets for . . . next fall. It’s that sold out. And it grows on you. The first time I saw it, even though I had read the Ron Chernow biography, I missed a lot of the lyrics. As I did the second time. So here’s my suggestion: Whether or not you see the show any time soon, listen to the original cast recording (free with some of the music services you may subscribe to, or here on NPR). And read the lyrics! (And click on the highlighted genius-member annotations!) Because even if you never see the show, you will see it very pleasurably in your mind’s eye. And if you do get to see it, you will enjoy it even more. Hamilton was a genius of a man; Hamilton is a genius of a show; America, for all her flaws and missteps, is a genius of a country. Enjoy! Did you find time to watch Secretary Kerry’s speech? Delivered the day before the Paris attacks? About Syria and Daesh? As suggested yesterday? At least one of you did — proving yet again that I may sometimes “know what I’m talking about,” but many of you know more. John Carroll: “There was a particularly sad observation in Kerry’s speech concerning an archaeologist on I met on a little tour of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan I took in 2000. When we were in Palmyra, we sought out a truly knowledgeable guide. The hotel contacted Khaled al-Assad and he brought us around to all the excavations, towers, and went through the museum with us. I just barely pieced together some Greek that I realized referred to the Nicene Creed so I got some points with him. Also there was a mural I remember quite clearly with an onager depicted which reminded me of Balzac’s novel The Shagreen Skin. Khaled al-Assad is the person to whom Kerry was referring. I have read that his head was left in a public space with his glasses still on. Khaled’s glasses were particularly a part of his appearance. Apart from the fact that he was a very engaging person, and made a very thorough tour of Palmyra a joy, he had a profound knowledge of a place with many resonances. There are some stele in the Met, right next to the entrance of the Islamic collection, which resemble those of Palmyra. . . . Another aspect of Palmyra is the Fakhr-al-Din al-Ma’ani Castle which dominates the site. Fakhr-al-Din was a 16th century Druze emir and the flow and ebb of his power illustrates how the Pax Ottomana functioned. There was a certain continuity for four hundred years from 1516 till WWI in the region, specifically the Syrian vilayet and the Jeruselem sanjak. It was against this continuous Ottoman/Turkish rule which Hussein, and the Arabs, were encouraged to revolt in the MacMahon-Hussein Correspondence. “Also, something Kerry probably did not want to say publicly (and for which he did not have the time): Often people compare the Alawites to Mormons when trying to explain the Alawite relation to both Shia and Sunni Islam. In general the Alawites occupied a tenuous, low position in Syria. When Syria was allotted to the French in Sèvres in 1920, France sought to develop the Alawites as they had the Maronites in Lebanon, and in general regarded their colonial effort as a ‘civilizing mission.’ As a result Alawites were admitted to the military, eventually this important advancement led to Hafez al-Assad presiding over an entrenched Alawite faction in the military and government. . . . In 1982 Hafez al-Assad wiped out the Muslim Brotherhood and 10 to 20 thousand people in Hamas. His tactic for dealing with foreign governments in this matter was to capitalize on the fear of the Muslim Brotherhood. . . . I was puzzled that a London-trained ophthalmologist would devolve into such a murderous figure. It became apparent that the precariousness of the Alawites is the organizing factor. He is locked in an existential fight as a tribal leader as opposed to a national leader. . . . Bashar al-Assad has nowhere to go except Moscow now. He would be arrested anywhere else. This is why he is replaying the Hamas tactic of his father. ISIS/Daesh saved Assad for the moment. Assad is trying to cling to power by playing a role as the alternative to Daesh. . . . The general effect of this is that even though Kerry outlined a reasonable way forward, the dynamic of relations amongst various factions in Syria has evolved away from reasonable.” And did you see The Donald’s ridiculous tweet saying Syrian refugees were “pouring in” and wondering if the president was “insane”? Writes Parvez Sharma: “This is a circus. FYI the US only let in 36 Syrian refugees in the past year.” So far, at least, it’s like the Ebola hysteria — and the Administration’s alleged terrible mishandling thereof — that dominated the news for weeks before the 2014 midterms, when it would have been more helpful to focus on the policy differences between Democrats and Republicans on issues like the minimum wage (we want to raise it), infrastructure (we want to revitalize it), universal background checks (we and 94% of Americans want to impose them), ENDA (we want to pass it), comprehensive immigration reform (likewise), and climate change (we and the scientific community believe it is real and needs urgently to be addressed). To date the cumulative death toll from Ebola contracted in America sits at . . . zero. Yet Donald Trump at the time was tweeting that American doctors who’d become infected helping should not be readmitted to the U.S. for treatment. He criticized the “stupid politicians” who let them come home.
Daesh November 17, 2015November 16, 2015 Have you seen this speech, delivered by John Kerry the day before Paris? It just builds and builds and suggests, to me, at least, that the Obama Administration has long been fully engaged with respect to Syria and ISIS, and acting as many of us would want it to. It’s hard for me not to contrast his analysis with that of, say, Donald Trump, or most of the others on yesterday’s Morning Joe. One of you who has seen it, Paul Abrams, writes: “Extraordinary speech and details. Shows a prudent, coordinated strategy that is shrinking the land ISIS holds.” Find 40 minutes, somehow, to watch. It is enlightening. Even — at least in the context of what a nightmare this all is — a little encouraging. And then there’s this long piece, “Confessions of an ISIS Spy,” the money quote from which, for our purposes today is: . . . In September of last year, at the apogee of ISIS’s foreign recruitment surge, he says the influx of foreigners amazed even those welcoming them in. “We had like 3,000 foreign fighters who arrived every day to join ISIS. I mean, every day. And now we don’t have even like 50 or 60.” . . . A great deal still to be concerned about. (And “not even 50 a day” is still way more than zero.) But down from 3,000? It’s a data point I had not known, and, again, perhaps a little encouraging. Parvez Sharma (A Sinner in Mecca): “You quote Quartz.com: ‘The Saudi foreign ministry called for global cooperation to “root out this dangerous and destructive plague.”’ But Saudi Arabia’s lip service for ‘global cooperation’ to root out this ‘plague’ only furthers the hypocrisy of the house of al-Saud. The plague really is Wahabi and Salafi Islam — and the Saudis are the ones that export it around the world and teach it to their children. The biggest threat to Islam in my opinion is Saudi Arabia’s religious pact with the Wahabis. The monarchy stays in power only if it allows the Wahabis to dictate the Sharia law of the land. And for the Wahabis, early indoctrination into their destructive ideology is key. The ideology of ISIS comes directly from them. The idea of an expansionist Islam won through carnage is a Saudi Wahabi idea. King Salman wants to present a more progressive face of the monarchy; but as far as Saudi national behavior and morality enforcement are concerned, there is nothing progressive. Let’s not forget that this is a regime that condones beheadings in public on a regular basis. Why does it do that? Because the Wahabi — al-Saud pact still stands.” Chris Brown: “I believe strongly that the discussion of the problem of the terrorist death cult which you refer to as ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham) should not involve the confusing red herring of the ‘literal’ interpretation of Islam [that you reference]. The literal interpretation of nearly any religious text can be used and almost certainly has been used as a pretext for violence. . . . I have known many Muslims in my 39 years, but I have only met one who did not respect the lives of non-Muslims. He was a young male doctor, originally from Jordan. We had a strikingly unpleasant conversation one day in which he told another doctor, a Hindu woman, ‘Your people worship rocks, so they deserve to die.’ (Fortunately he ran into some visa problems and was deported. Good job, American government!) . . . But I am not scared that my Muslim friends want to kill my wife (also Hindu, at least in theory) any more than I am concerned that Andrew Tobias or his more observant Jewish friends might wish to kill my wife. Judaism also contains commandments to exterminate idol worship. . . . Nearly any religion can and has been used as a pretext for killing. Catholics, protestants, Muslims, Hindus (who recently lynched a Muslim man for eating beef), Sikhs, Jains, and Buddhists have all killed in the name of religious violence. . . . We are not in a fight against the world’s 1.6 billion Muslim people. If we were, we’d all be personally ducking bullets and shooting at other people daily instead of going to work. We are fighting against a small, fascist, ultra-orthodox death cult that has embraced a literal and militaristic version of Islam which is far to the right of the caliphates of a thousand years ago (in which science, the economy, and culture flourished, by the way). These people who are decapitating and randomly shooting and killing/raping girls who go to school and blowing up great cultural and artistic sites, have nothing to do with mainstream Islam . . . There were Muslims killed in Paris and Muslims killed in Beiruit by the death cult. Adel Termos, the hero who saved dozens of lives when he tackled a suicide bomber last week, was a Muslim. . . . The Muslims who have suffered from this repugnant death cult have given them an appropriate name, Daesh, which is an acronym loosely constructed from the Arabic for ‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’ (al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham). It is fitting because it sounds somewhat like ‘daes’ which means ‘one who crushes something underfoot’ and also ‘dahes or ‘one who sows discord.’ The terrorists do not like to be called Daesh. For a while, perhaps the U.S. government was not inclined to use the term, because the Bashar al-Assad regime was using it. But the French have been using it consistently since late 2014, and it is the best descriptor we have for this evil. Let us support humanity by reminding ourselves and the world each time we speak of this evil that we are speaking of a death cult, not the second-most common religion on earth.” ☞ Daesh is, in fact, the term Secretary Kerry uses throughout his speech, to which I commend you again.
Marchons . . . November 15, 2015November 15, 2015 Start with this — Mireille Mathieu — and if, like me, you don’t speak French, perhaps the translation. And then, of course, Casablanca. It’s not the gruesome number of people who were killed — 129 and bound to rise. (As one of the Democratic candidates noted during Saturday night’s debate after the topic shifted, “Since we last debated [less than a month ago] nearly 3,000 people have been killed by guns, 21 mass shootings . . . 200 children.”) Rather, it’s the insanity of it, the intentionality, the inhumanity. All condemned by Muslim leaders around the world. In an official statement, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani called the attacks a “crime against humanity.” Indonesian president Joko Widodo condemned the “violence that took place in Paris,” and called for more international cooperation to fight terrorism. Leaders of Arab states called the attacks immoral and inhumane. Qatar’s foreign minister Khaled al-Attiyah denounced the “heinous attacks,” adding, “these acts, which target stability and security in France are against all human and moral values.” Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah called the attacks “criminal acts of terrorism which run counter to all teachings of holy faith and humanitarian values.” The Saudi foreign ministry called for global cooperation to “root out this dangerous and destructive plague.” And it is Muslims, mainly, who are going to have to fix it. Because if it is mainly we — and other primarily Judeo-Christian nations — who are bombing and occupying Muslim nations, toppling their regimes and humiliating them with our superior strength and technology, we may further lose their hearts and minds. (Start with our removing the democratically elected leader of Iran in 1953 — read it on the CIA website — and go from there.) It is horrible. It is complicated. And, taken literally, it may be hard to argue that Islam is a religion of peace. (I was dismayed to read this interpretation of “…whoever kills a person, it is as if he had killed all mankind. And whoever saves one it is as if he had saved all mankind…”) But taken literally, Jews would be stoning practically everybody to death. (What? You’ve never worked on a Saturday?) And there’s always Queen Isabella’s wonderful quote: “I have caused great calamities. I have depopulated provinces and kingdoms. But I did it fore the love of Christ and his Holy Mother.” We will get through this. The better if we act rationally and in cooperation with all those who oppose ISIS atrocities. Vive la France. [Seen on a friend’s T-shirt: “If your religion is worth killing for, please start with yourself.”]
Leaders of Arab states called the attacks immoral and inhumane. Qatar’s foreign minister Khaled al-Attiyah denounced the “heinous attacks,” adding, “these acts, which target stability and security in France are against all human and moral values.” Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah al-Sabah called the attacks “criminal acts of terrorism which run counter to all teachings of holy faith and humanitarian values.” The Saudi foreign ministry called for global cooperation to “root out this dangerous and destructive plague.”
Sit Up And Pay Attention November 13, 2015 I’ve been bragging to you about Success Academy for years now, most recently here; yet in all that time, I never knew this story, which is so fundamental to everything they’ve achieved. (Remarkably, their 11,000 students, drawn almost entirely at random from New York City’s most challenging neighborhoods, outperform all but a very few of their peers statewide. Which means the cycle of poverty can be broken . . . and at scale . . . and at no extra cost. Which has profound social implications as most of these kids grow to become productive citizens and responsible parents. Imagine multiplying this success 10-fold and then 100-fold, nationwide. Voluntarily, of course; but if the methods work in these 34 public schools, why not adopt them more widely?) Anyway, here’s the story, as told by Success founder Eva Moskowitz writing in the Wall Street Journal: Why Students Need to Sit Up and Pay Attention By EVA MOSKOWITZ Nov. 12, 2015 7:05 p.m. ET Success Academy Charter Schools, New York City’s largest network of free charter schools, has recently been the center of controversy over its policies on student behavior. Our critics accuse us of pushing out children who might pull down our test scores, and in doing so creating what some call “a kindergarten-to-prison pipeline.” In reality, our attrition rates are lower than those of the district schools. How then do our students, chosen by lottery and mainly children of color, routinely outperform even students from wealthy suburbs? I wish I could claim that I’ve developed some revolutionary pedagogical approach at Success, but the humbling truth is this: Most of what I know about teaching I learned from one person, an educator named Paul Fucaloro who taught in New York City district schools for four decades. When I founded Success Academy in 2006, I hired Paul to coach our teachers. I soon learned that while he was quite instructionally sophisticated, Paul was decidedly old school on the topic of student behavior. Every child had to sit up straight and show he was paying attention. I wasn’t completely sold on Paul’s approach at first, but when one of our schools was having trouble, I’d dispatch him to help. He’d tell the teachers to give him a class full of all the kids who had the worst behavioral and academic problems. The teachers thought this was nuts but they’d do so, and then a few days later they’d drop by Paul’s classroom and find these students acting so differently that they were nearly unrecognizable. Within weeks, the students would make months’ worth of academic progress. Teachers couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. But Paul did it over and over again. And incredibly, the kids seemed to love Paul more than the teachers who were far less strict. So what did he do? Well, imagine that a man to whom you’re speaking at a party is looking over your shoulder. You’ll suspect he isn’t really listening. The same is true of kids. Their physical behavior reflects their mental state. Therefore, Paul set behavioral expectations to reflect the mental state he insisted his students have. Paul’s students had to sit with hands clasped and look at whomever was speaking (called “tracking”). They couldn’t stare off into space, play with objects, rest their head on their hands in boredom, or act like what Paul called “sourpusses” who brought an attitude of negativity or indifference to the classroom. Paul made students demonstrate to him that at every single moment they were focused on learning. He also had more sophisticated techniques. He’d call on students randomly rather than ask for hands, so students had to prepare an answer for every question he asked. He made students repeat or comment on what their classmates said to make them listen carefully to one another. And he’d never repeat what a child said, as most teachers do, because—besides wasting precious time—it suggested to students that they didn’t have to listen to one another, only to the teacher. These practices ensured that while only one student could talk at a time, every child was continually engaging in what Paul called “active listening,” meaning thinking critically and preparing to participate if called upon. Success Academy in large measure uses Paul’s approach, and that is much of the reason why we have schools where more than 95% of the students pass the state math tests in neighborhoods where on average fewer than 20% of students do. Some critics find our approach rigid and overbearing. I’ve got two of these critics in my own home: my kids, who attend Success. They complain when they get into trouble for not tracking the speaker. They were listening, they protest. Maybe so. But sometimes when kids look like they’re daydreaming, it’s because they are, and we can’t allow that possibility. As Paul repeatedly preached to me, it’s morally wrong to let a child choose whether to pay attention, because many will make the wrong choice and we can’t let them slip through the cracks. So if a student had trouble paying attention, he’d move him to the front of the class, call his parents, keep him after school to practice. Whatever it took. Paul was relentless. Some critics say that it’s hard for young children to focus. True. But it’s our job to teach them this. Recently, I was at a news conference at which I was asked why Success has strict rules regarding behavior. As I answered, the reporters didn’t stare off into space, look bored or fiddle with things. Because they were focusing. A school that fails to teach students this necessary skill isn’t doing right by them. People have understandably expressed concern that some students may have particular trouble meeting our behavioral expectations and ask why we can’t simply relax them. The answer is that Success Academy’s 34 principals and I deeply believe that if we lessened our standards for student comportment, the education of the 11,000 children in our schools would profoundly suffer. In my case, that belief has nothing to do with any ideological predisposition or pet pedagogical theory. I came to it only because Paul Fucaloro—the most gifted educator I’ve ever met, who spent four decades honing his craft before retiring last year—showed me that it works. Have a great week-end.