Longtime readers will know that my teaching experiment here has been something less than a success. There are a variety of reasons for that, most of them having to do with my own failings and lack of experience, but a simple one I haven't mentioned much is that rural South Africa is, in general, a lousy place to learn how to teach. A friend of mine did Teach for America in New York, and while she is superior to me in most teaching-related qualities, it's instructive to compare the situation there to mine. Where I was entirely on my own in all respects—when I would ask the educators at my school what to do when the kids wouldn't listen, the sum total of their advice was: "beat them"—she had both colleagues with a deep reservoir of experience and serious accountability from the administrative level. This accountability, in the form of occasional classroom monitoring and close inspection of all required paperwork, would have been tremendously helpful for me. B