Part of an occasional series of oral histories, as told to Anne Ford
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I came out here from New York in 1964. Over the years I’ve had over 10,000 students, always individually. I don’t run classes; I don’t believe in classes. If you’re sitting in the class and I’m the instructor, and you ask me a question I can’t answer, I can turn to one of the better kids and say, “Well, Bill, how’d you do it?” And you’ll never know I can’t do it. But if you’re seeing me one-on-one, you will know. You’re not buying the emperor’s new clothes here.
I have lots of kids who can’t do anything without a computer. They can’t write without spell check and grammar check. One kid said to me, “I don’t have to learn this. It’s on the Internet.” I said, “You carry a computer up your ass? What do you do when there’s no computer around?”