Principals, Not Heels
Why good schools have clean bathrooms and principals who don’t wear high heels.
Former Texas Monthly editor in chief Gregory Curtis was born in Corpus Christi and raised in Kansas City, Missouri. He received a BA in English from Rice University and a master’s in English from San Francisco State College. While in San Francisco, he ran a small printing and publishing company. He came to Texas Monthly in 1972 as part of the original staff. In 1981 he became editor in chief, a position he held until 2000. In addition to Texas Monthly, he has written for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Fortune, and Time. Curtis is the author of three books—Disarmed: The Story of the Venus de Milo, The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World’s First Artists, and Paris Without Her: A Memoir. He lives in Austin. Once an adequate equestrian, he is now an aspiring magician.
Why good schools have clean bathrooms and principals who don’t wear high heels.
Scripting success.
Head of the class.
THERE IS AN OBLIGATORY SCENE in every movie about the border between Texas and Mexico: A man draws a line in the dirt with his boot. The line means something different in each movie, and yet, there it is, a narrow little rut in the ground that the characters gesture
The art of throwing punches, the science of skipping rope, and other reasons why boxing is a hit with me.
A new book about Lee Harvey Oswald reveals that conspiracy theorists are still straining to repackage old news into something new.
The conventional wisdom is that the independents are good and the national chains are evil—but don’t judge a bookstore by its cover.
Two grim incidents involving guns, three dead teenagers: Reflections on self-defense.
Two poets, well versed in the ways of Houston, reflect on the city’s effect on lives and letters.
Why are so many students in Texas unable to read? The answer is obvious: because the school system has failed them.
Donald Trump is one. So are Boris Yeltsin and John Gotti. So was Emily Dickinson. What are they? Texans of course.
The death of a federal program in Amarillo shows that cutting the budget isn’t the answer to everything.
More criminals are condemned to death in the Harris County courthouse than anywhere else in the world.
Edward Blum ran for Congress in 1992, lost, and then decided to change America. He has succeeded. He was one of six plaintiffs in a Texas case that, along with similar cases in North Carolina and Louisiana, will help reverse the racial separation and antagonism that infects our public life.
The judge could surprise everyone, but it is no longer likely that the case of Hopwood, et al. v. Texas, et al., which concluded in Austin in late May, will change America by rewriting the law of affirmative action. For a while, the suit brought by four white applicants who
Once, you needed the price of oil to predict our ever-changing economic future. Now you need the want ads, the stock tables, and a whole lot more.
Twenty and counting.
The Same or Better?
IT WAS JUST TEN DAYS after the close of the Republican convention, and here I was at a much smaller gathering of Republicans at Fairview Farms in Plano, just north of Dallas. Proclaimed a “Boot Scootin’ Olde Tyme Political Hoe-Down,” this campaign kickoff was also, of course, a “family event”
YOU COULD HEAR A GASP from the audience when Clint Eastwood suddenly appeared on the screen. It was just a preview of his new movie, Unforgiven, but there he was in a long, dark slicker, his face in profile, staring menacingly from beneath a dark hat with a flat rim:
Ross Perot is a candidate for president because a lot of people want him to be. He has acted in a very clever, innovative way to arouse and build that support, but the support truly did arise and grow. That means that Perot’s campaign is a pure expression of democracy.
George H. W. Bush's commencement speech at Southern Methodist University was long on rhetoric and short on specifics.
Ten years ago I guess you could call yourself a Texan if you hadn’t been to the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston, but an easy conversance with the OTC and its ways certainly bolstered your credentials. Back then the OTC was, like riding a horse or drinking a beer in
This year is the twenty-sixth anniversary of the hardest test I ever took. Then, about to graduate from college with an English degree, I had been in school for so long and had liked it so much that I had no particular yearning to go out into the world. Perhaps
ERIC ANDELL, THE JUDGE OF A JUVENILE court in Houston, peered down from the bench at the small cluster of people before him. In the center stood a lean sixteen-year-old boy in blue jeans and a light-green jersey with a hood. He and a friend had stolen a car to
If Texas is already overburdened with lawyers, and if, nevertheless, our law schools are still bursting with students, then I have a simple solution. Before submitting an application, all who want to apply to law school must sit down and read every word of the Texas constitution that was passed
Conventional wisdom about education holds that local control, a strong principal, and active, involved parents are crucial ingredients in the mix that makes a successful school. This wisdom is so pervasive that the Legislature has made local control, in the form of “site-based decision making,” a legal requirement in Texas
Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any pumpkins; they would have shown vividly the violence these guns could do. But we didn’t let that slight disappointment stop us. At a remote rifle range, we blasted away. Or, to be precise, I blasted away, as my two friends, a law enforcement officer and