Brush Up Your Shakespeare

Monday, August 6, 2018

We heard from some movie mavens about multiple remakes of the same story under the same title.  Susan Beckerman cited Little Women, which was made in 1933, 1949 and 1994, with a new version scheduled to be released next month.  Susan Schorr pointed to Romeo and Juliet, which I don't think can be challenged with dozens of filmed versions, starting as early as 1908.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_Romeo_and_Juliet
 

Cindy Wilkinson McMullen also referenced Romeo and Juliet, but threw Hamlet into the mix.  Indeed, counting silent versions, there have been at least two dozen Hamlet's since 1907.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet_on_screen
 

By the way, A Star Is Born, unlike these other movies, was an original work.  Its only antecedent was a 1932 movie What Price Hollywood?, which borrowed some real-life plot elements.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Price_Hollywood%3F

On the other hand, would anyone like to suggest a singular movie that should never have been made in the first place?

. . .

With the Dow-Jones Average over 25,000 and Apple stock valued at $1 trillion, numbers that would have been hallucinatory in the past, I imagined that almost any economic measure (including the gap between the haves and have-nots) would be at or near record heights.  To my surprise, I learned that one economic area has been steadily shrinking -- the number of publicly-traded companies on exchanges in the United States.   https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/04/business/shrinking-stock-market.html
 

In brief, in the mid 1990s, there were 8,000 or so publicly-traded companies.  "By 2016, there were only 3,627," even as the U.S. population grew by 20% in the decade.  One factor for the sharp decrease is the inexorable merger activity in the global economy.  Another was the presence of so many eager enterprises in the dot.com era, hoping to emulate Microsoft and Amazon with the deft use of smoke and mirrors.

Tuesday, August 7, 2018

"Tradition" is the opening number in Fiddler on the Roof and last night I heard it in Yiddish, the natural language of the characters on the stage.  However, with the exception of a Yiddish version in Israel in 1965, the Broadway hit, several revivals and the successful movie were all in English, with a variety of Eastern European accents.  Now, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (people's stage) is presenting a complete Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof, with English and Russian supertitles for the linguistically challenged. 

The New York Times gave it a rave review, but, more important, I liked it.  In a word, it was tradition that stirred me, not just the song, but the sound of the Yiddish words, the personalities of the characters, their problems, their aspirations.  While I was born here, my Brooklyn was, to a degree, an extension of the Pale of Settlement.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement
 

My grandmothers spoke Yiddish; my aunts and uncles understood it and responded.  My father was expert, reading and writing as well as conversing in Yiddish.  Hearing the very familiar Fiddler libretto in the mama loshen (mother tongue) was incomparable.  Tradition grabbed me and pulled me back in time and space.  Fiddler is set in 1905 when pogroms and harsh Czarist edicts added to the misery of life for many Eastern European Jews.  Grandpa Goldenberg (né Chelchowsky) and Grandpa Gotthelf left the region in 1905 and 1906, respectively.  I didn't know either one, but I imagine that their lives over there resembled much of what was portrayed on stage, with much less singing and dancing.

Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Thanks to the generosity of Amy C., I went to the Mets game today and, mirabile dictu, they won resoundingly.  The afterglow of this rare victory should help me in the days ahead, until at least the next set of Robert Mueller's indictments.

Thursday, August 9, 2018

Here is more information on the issue of admission to New York City's specialized high schools, notably Stuyvesant High School, my alma mater, where one test solely determines access.  After a redesign in 2017, the test has English and math sections, each with 57 questions.  The English section, which is all multiple choice, focuses on reading comprehension and correcting grammar in sentences.  The math section is made up of multiple-choice word problems, as well as computational questions.   https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/21/nyregion/what-is-the-shsat-exam-and-why-does-it-matter.html

The redesign still produced a radically skewed student population compared to the overall ethnic composition of city schools.  

https://insideschools.org/news-&-views/8th-graders-get-high-school-admissions-results

This year, Stuyvesant made offers to 10 black students (1% of all offers), 613 Asian (68%), 27 Latino (3%) and 151 white (17%).  The current citywide ethnic breakdown of eighth graders (the potential test takers) was 26% black, 16% Asian, 41% Latino and 15% white.  https://tcf.org/content/report/new-york-city-public-schools/?agreed=1#easy-footnote-bottom-2
 

The ethnic disparity appears even as the students sit down to take the test; 29% of black eighth graders took the test this year, 72% of Asian, 21% of Latino and 45% of white.  This produced a testing pool 20% black, 31% Asian, 23% Latino and 18% white.  In other words, Asian eighth graders turned out heavily for the specialized high school test*, while black and especially Latino students stayed away.  Here is an obvious starting point for improving the testing process. 

*The one test serves 8 schools; offers for admission are based on test scores and student preferences.

Discussion of this issue usually focusses on the disadvantaged, the black and Latino student population that seems to be pushed aside.  It is a zero sum game, however, and New York’s Asian student population have mastered it, at least for the present.  While we obsess over our identity politics, it is not our problem exclusively.  "British Chinese youngsters are the highest performing ethnic group in England at GCSE [General Certificate of Secondary Education, a nationwide, multi-subject test for secondary students], which has been known for years.  It also showed that this group seemed to be singularly successful in achieving that goal of educational policy-makers everywhere: a narrow performance gap between those from the poorest homes, and the rest."     https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/feb/07/chinese-children-school-do-well?CMP=share_btn_link    

If educational success and the benefits that accrue to it are our goals, more attention should be paid to those who have done it right.