One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories by B. J. Novak Read Free Book Online

figure out what that means. You will! It’s just too interesting, it’s too relevant, it’s about you and money. You’re not going to let yourself get screwed.
    “Now, do I wish you all knew math? Were
great
at math? Were fucking
mathematicians
? Of course! It’d be better. But not
much
better, listen to me. Not so much better that it’s worth turning eight years of potential heaven—wait, nine? K-one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, yeah, nine”—he wasn’t, as was becoming clear, much of a math guy—“nine years of
heaven
of just reading great books and jotting down your thoughts about them—it’s just not worth turning nine years of heaven into nineyears of hell. You’ll get to high school, and you’ll be behind in math, fine. But probably not that far—the other schools in this town are shit, let’s be honest.”
    Here there was a sound wave of school spirit:
“Whooo!”
    “So you all get to high school, and, yes, you’re behind in math. But you’re so
happy
. Listen to me. This is so big-picture important. You’re
so
good at reading and writing. Okay? You write the most amazing college essay, you ace all your English and history and social studies classes—it’ll all even out. At
least
even out. Plus,” he said, “
plus
, you had the best eight years of your
life
! Childhood! Years you’ll always remember—hell, maybe you’ll even write a book about them—a beautiful one! So I’m just going to do this. I’m the principal. We are, now, a zero-mathematics school. See, you get what that means: zero, none. How did you know what ‘zero’ meant, just now? From your incredible math educations at Clark Street? No.
Life
. Context clues. See? So: who is ready to make school something that is only about reading and writing—reading fiction and the great true stories of history, and then writing about what’s cool and interesting about them? And also music and art and gym and all that stuff, and math teachers, don’t worry, you’ll keep your jobs, we’ll just put you on other stuff. But mostly, reading and writing. How about it? How about we go for this plan and have the happiest, and most literate, kids in the state—
come what may!
”
    The students and many teachers cheered.
    “Now I need to know you’re all in on this,” said the principal, lowering his tone. “Because you are giving up your math educations. That could be a serious thing. I don’t want you guys running up to me, crying, ‘Mr. McLaughlin, Principal McLaughlin, we didn’t learn maaaaath, now we can’t get into colllllllege.’ You just won’t know math. Are you really fine with that? Is anyone not okay with that?”
    One small hand went up. A few bigger hands clapped for the small hand.
    “Arush? You want to learn math?”
    The boy’s head nodded.
    “What if we set you up with a private tutor? Would that be okay?”
    The boy nodded again and the hand went back down.
    “Does anyone else want private math tutoring after school and on weekends? No one wants that, right? I really think you’ll all be fine,” said the principal quickly. “I promise. I really do believe in this plan. I just needed to say that, full disclosure, etcetera. But it looks like you guys are on board, right? I think this is a good decision, I really do. An exciting one! So from this moment onward: I declare, no more math! This is a math-free school! Do you want that, Clark Street K–8? Do you want to say NO … MORE … MATH … EVER?!”
    The auditorium shook with cheers. All the children got swept away in it, even the ones who had secretly liked math, their shy enthusiasms for the shapes of numbers and the comfort of order suddenly crushed to death forever by this unprecedented force of peer and authority pressure teaming up on them together, in a surprise attack, right in the middle of their auditorium, where nothing interesting had ever happened before.
    “All right. Now, nobody can say anything,” said the principal.