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In Honor of Steve Farkas – The Epitome of a Mensch
By Terry Ryan
My friend Steve Farkas passed away this Memorial Day Weekend at the age of 64. Steve was a highly regarded social science researcher who conducted hundreds of focus groups with thousands of parents, students, educators, education stakeholders, policymakers and politicians across the country and in Idaho over several decades. I interviewed Steve when I last saw him in March of this year. Much of our interview appeared in the national journal Education Next in April.
But, there were more personal parts of the interview that I want to share out of respect for Steve now. Steve lived a meaningful life that straddled two countries – Israel and the United States. He was a great friend and a wonderful thinker. He was honest. Sometimes painfully so. He made me and so many others he shared time with smarter and more humble. Less certain. I was always proud and honored to be Steve’s friend. He truly was the epitome of a mensch.
Steve Farkas (in blue hat) in the Bitterroot Mountains with Idaho Educator and Rancher Jim Smith.
Q&A with Steve Farkas Part 2
Terry: When I first met you, it was in New York City just a few months after September 11th. Do you believe that tragic event still impacts education in America?
Steve: What I remember about September 11th and the days immediate after was, for the first time in New York City, a fighter jet pierced the skies looking for planes turned into weapons. And I remember the city being stone quiet. No one was honking, no one was talking. It was so somber. I walked down to see it. What I saw was like a breathing heap. Like a dragon that had been slain, and it was fire and smoke coming out, and it seemed almost alive. And I remember people taking pictures, and I said, that’s the wrong thing to do, because there are men there and women that have lost their family members. It’s not a tourist destination, of course, now it is, and it took, took a long time. Yeah, it still has an impact, I think, on education and on our politics.
Terry: How did you go from being a kid in an Israeli village to a nationally renowned education survey expert who has had research cited in the United States Supreme Court?
Steve: I was born in Israel to a father who was a multiple concentration camp survivor. I came from a very modest family. My father was a baker. He was a man who knew right from wrong. He was a true Zionist and fought for Israel. He moved us to New York when I was ten. You know I internalized what love of country means. I have loyalty and love in my heart and soul for both Israel and the United States. When Jimmy Carter reinstated registration for the draft after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, my brother and I were the first ones at the post office writing down our names.
Terry: What was school like for you in New York City?
Steve: We lived in Brooklyn, and like one of the first things I learned is that you couldn’t hold hands with a man in America. My brother and I used to walk to school. We used to hold hands. We used to kiss in public because kissing is normal for men in Israel. It still is, but that was not allowed, you know, socially in Brooklyn. So, we cut that out after the first day of school. We also learned that we were expected to learn English. My brother and I would speak Hebrew to each other and these old Jewish ladies in the neighborhood would admonish us, “You’re in America now. Speak English. You must speak English.” These old Jewish ladies were right. So, I changed my name from my Israeli name (Shabbi) to my American name Steve. Per my elementary education I was just thrown into the classroom. Sink or swim.
Terry: So you went to New York City public schools.
Steve: Yep.
Terry: How’d that go for you? Must have gone pretty well.
Steve: I remember the first time I answered a question in class, the class gave me a round of applause. I was 10. They put me back a grade because I didn’t speak any English. One thing I had, which always served me well, was a love of reading. I read in Hebrew and I wanted to read in English. So, I swam in a sink or swim situation. By middle school they skipped me a grade. I was in something called special progress, which did not mean what it sounds like today. So, I skipped eighth grade, and I was all caught up in terms of my age. I was with the smart kids as I went off to high school.
Terry: Someone must have been paying attention to you as an individual student.
Steve: That’s right. Somebody was paying attention. You know who paid attention to me? Mrs. Liebowitz. I was the valedictorian of the first school I went to. Can you Imagine this little Israeli boy, you know, she helped me with my language. Mrs. Liebowitz. She saw something in me. She was a good teacher.
Terry: How did your high school experience go?
Steve: I went to a high school called John Dewey High School. You can just imagine the name is everything. I went there because friends went, and you had to elect to go there.
Terry: So, it was a very progressive?
Steve: It was pass or fail. That’s the only grade you got. And so what did I do? The bare minimum necessary to pass. You give me a grade that tops out at a 100 and I’m going to make the 90s, right? But if you’re going to tell me all I need to do is reach the bare minimum as a teenager that’s what I’ll do.
Terry: What did you do after high school?
Steve: I wanted to go to Israel and join the army. But my mom pleaded, “why are you going my son?” I was 17 and I had people telling me I should apply for college. I applied to Brooklyn College. You know, it’s a college. Anything that’s cheap. And my best friend walks by and says, “Steve, where are you applying?” I told him, “I’m applying to colleges.” I told him where I was applying to and he said, “You’re smarter than that, Steve.” I said, “Yeah, but I can’t afford a good college.” He said, “Apply to Columbia. Apply to NYU. They’ll give you money.” Make a long story short, I did apply to NYU and Columbia. NYU accepted me with a full ride.
Terry: How did things work out at NYU for you?
Steve: I paid nothing. I made extra money working while I studied. I came out of college with some money in the bank. Can you imagine that today? By the time I finished my NYU schooling I was in love with a woman who I ended up marrying. I told her from the beginning when I finished college I was going back to Israel to serve in the army.
Terry: Your father probably had an influence?
Steve: My father fought in three wars. How do you not go serve after that? My father came out of the camps. He said, “This is our homeland. Everything is on the line here.” He was a true believer. When I was in the army I saw a picture of my dad with another woman. I asked my aunt, “Who’s this woman?” She told me, “It’s a sad story. Your father married a woman, and she couldn’t have children. He divorced her.” He said, “We must have children.” My father made four kids. You know, for the survival of the race, so to speak.
Terry: What year would have this been?
Steve: That was 1982. Okay. Lebanon war. First Lebanon war. We do our times by wars. First Lebanon war. Second Lebanon war.
Terry: Which was yours?
Steve: First one. That was a tough war.
Terry: So, you go back to Israel and walk into a recruiting office? How did this work in practice?
Steve: In Israel I had to wait six months before I could apply for the military. I wanted to go immediately so I had to fight the system; the bureaucracy, to get into the army as fast as possible. I didn’t want to miss the action. I had a cousin who was like a second father to me or like a big brother. He ushered me though the process and I lived with him and his family. He knew people and they got me through. I had to take a psychometric exam and I’m taking it in Hebrew. I had a 10-year-old’s knowledge of Hebrew. It worked like this. You finish one part. They tabulate results and half the class is dismissed because they didn’t do so well. I’m still there. They keep me. They give you the second part. Then half of the half is dismissed. I’m still there. I took it to the end. They sent me to pilot school.
Terry: Fascinating. They just saw talent?
Steve: Raw intelligence. They’re looking for raw intelligence. They’re signing me up to be a fighter pilot. It is the most prestigious thing you can do. You’re responsible for a $50 million aircraft. I get the letter in the mail and my cousin, who had adopted me, said, “Shabbi,” my Israeli name, “Shabbi, what is this? You’re going to be a pilot?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “No, no, no. You can’t go. I said, “Why?” He said, “Because you can’t see.” When I took the test I had contacts in my eyes and I didn’t tell them. I had scored perfect on the vision test and I didn’t tell them. He said, “You know, that’s a $50 million machine you’re going to be flying. What if your lenses pop out. You can’t. You’re going to hurt people.” That scared the hell out of me. He said, “You go back there and you tell them you can’t see.” So, my profile went from a 97, which is as close to perfect as you can get, to 74. I’ll never forget that number. At 74, you can go to the artillery. I didn’t want to be artillery. I wanted to be a commando. I wanted to be a fighter. So now, so they’ve lowered my profile. Now I’m going from being a pilot to loading artillery. I’m not interested in that.
Terry: So, what happened?
Steve: They tried to send me to the artillery. And this is one of my favorite life stories. I said to them, I’m not going. I didn’t come here to be in the artillery. I came here to be in the Golani Brigade. The Golani Brigade is elite; like the Marines. And one of the officers said, “you can’t get into the Golani Brigade with a 74. You’re 74. That’s you. You can’t do this.” He said, but “if you write a letter to the head of the base in Hebrew, then they might make an exception.” I write a letter. I can’t write a lick in Hebrew. And I’m begging. And I go there with tears in my eyes. And the next day, this is after one week of refusing all of their appointments to these other forces that I wasn’t interested in. The next day, they call me for the Golani brigade. And I was so happy. And I’m running to the Golani, you know, to an officer. And I want to hug him. I’m so excited. And he says, “What the hell are you doing? Get out of here. Take 10 steps back. This is the army. This is not a lover’s nest.” I was such an idealist.
Terry: You went to a progressive high school in New York, right? And then you went to a progressive university and now you’re in the Israeli military special forces. I mean, how does that work?
Steve: You know what’s interesting about the Israeli army. There’s a little bit of chaos and anarchy in it. I refused several orders, direct orders. Not about shooting someone but about how to get from point A to point B. I was never punished for any of that. It was just merely a Jewish army argument. We argued. You spoke up and you didn’t just keep it to yourself. You said, “hey that’s the wrong hill.” Israel is a small country. It’s the people’s army. So, it’s not like this professionalized isolated military. It’s part of and integral to the society itself. You serve with your neighbor. He could have been a sanitation man in your neighborhood, but when he goes to the army, he’s your sergeant. So, you got to, you know, respect him.
Terry: What lessons did you take from the military?
Steve: That experience, first of all, taught me that I knew how to suffer. That I could gut things out, that I had some grit in me because you want to test yourself. I believe most human beings, male, female, want to see, do I have what it takes? And the army was a great opportunity. I didn’t think about it that way at the time, but I now understand it better. My father survived depravities of the worst kind and fought to live. And you question as a child, do I have what it takes? Would I have done what he did to get through it all? Do I have the character, the courage? I don’t know if I had what he had, but I knew I had something. The military taught me that when the chips were down and we were in some very stressful situation, I was calm. I was very calm. I did my job. I didn’t fall apart. I wasn’t fearful. You can walk through life knowing that you have that confidence.
Terry: You were able to walk towards the shooting?
Steve: Yes. that’s true. I had a colonel. I won’t talk about myself. I’ll talk about this colonel in the middle of a firefight and he’s telling us what to do but he’s so calm. He’s walking around talking to us and checking everything out. But he’s walking so calmly and when you see that you emulate it. Or you put your head down. But I emulated him. That’s the way I want to be. And what I also learned in a couple incidents in Lebanon was the value of leadership. And what does leadership mean? It means staying calm under pressure. It means not forcing your will, but people willing to follow you because they believe in you. What do you call it? Put your shoulder to the wheel. My best officers did the hard dirty work with us. It wasn’t like the officer’s dining where the privates sat way down on the end. We were all in it together.
Terry: Anything else you want to share from your time in the Army?
Steve: The other thing I learned in the military was the value of practice. The value of knowing how to do something without having to think about it. I take my gun apart and put it back together without looking at it. And you can do it fast. If you know that 4×5 is 20 you don’t have to waste time calculating. It becomes automatic. In education, too many people really look down at memorization and rote learning. I worry about giving up on things that have worked for us over time. You still need know who the founding fathers were and to understand the concepts of American history. There are such things as eternal truths.
Terry: Why did you return to the States?
Steve: I had an American wife. That was it. They really wanted me to stay in the army.
Terry: I bet they did. Now you come back to United States. You become an accomplished public opinion surveyor. You did hundreds of surveys on all types of issues across the country with thousands of people. Do any stick out?
Steve: One was in Cleveland with parents, inner city black parents. And these parents all had kids with special needs. You go into the room and the sadness and the anger inside was so strong. I was like, man, God really gave it to you, right? God really gives it to some people. And the other sad focus group that I did was on the Constitution post 9/11. I love these people. It was in Philadelphia. Some things really stay with you. And I really clicked with them. They were beautiful. We were talking about important things. They were talking about how we can’t go too far, you know, overreach militarily. Of course we have got to defend ourselves. They loved America, but they were very realistic about what had been done to them as Americans. And then at the end they said, “well, you know, about this 9/11, you know what really happened, Steve?” And I said, what happened? And they said, “well, you know, the Jews got warnings about 9/11. The Jews left the building. It was all orchestrated.” It just broke my heart, you know, to have this. I just got up. I remember shaking my head. The focus group was over. I got the information I needed. But my heart was broken that this blood libel had taken root in these people’s minds. And you got to take it, man. You got to take it. The conspiracy theories among the African-American community is alive and well. Unfortunately, now they’re alive and well in the American mind at large. So, it’s kind of spread and amplified by social media. It’s like, yeah, smart people actually buy into it now.
Terry: Since 9/11 and then the pandemic. There’s more fear. More distrust.
Steve: Distrust is the greatest threat to American democracy. And it’s caused so much damage. But it’s not because people are crazy. Politicians who play on distrust. That’s there. Somebodies feeding the fire. They make s*** up to play on the distrust. But here’s the truth of the matter is people have been lied to. Institutions have lied to people. Big pharmaceutical company that got Americans hooked on Percocet. Then, fentanyl followed and thousands have died. It’s not a stretch for parents to think, “maybe this school does not have my child’s best interest at heart”. Maybe they are just looking to make money, and we’ve seen that across the country in district and charter schools. You’d have to be naive not to think that way sometimes. We’ve had serious failures at two levels – institutional and leadership; ethical failures, moral failures where people now do not take for granted that they can trust their institutions.
Terry: Let’s talk about schools briefly. What advice would you give to our public schools to help ensure that they stay relevant, vibrant places that parents want their kids to attend?
Steve: Number one, make sure that the schools are safe and comfortable places for kids and their families. It’s not a militarized situation that parents are looking for. Orderliness is a better word maybe. It’s a productive place. Kids are doing work rather than horsing around and throwing things at each other all the time. That’s number one. Schools can do that. Teachers need to communicate authentically with parents. I say authentically, even though I hate the word. It’s a very trendy word, but it is appropriate in this context. There’s 5,000 ways to reach parents now. Cell phones, texts, emails, online platforms, right? But what a parent would love to hear is if their child is struggling, they’d love a phone call from the teacher who knows and cares about their child. That’s communication. It’s not something that you just check off. Communication is so important, and the teachers can do this. Teach in a way that engages the kids. This is the hardest part of making schools work. I rarely find schools that routinely and consistently keep kids engaged and interested in learning and wanting to go to school. The earlier grades are easier but as kids go through school many of them get bored and uninterested. The hormones hit at middle school and teachers see this also. They start seeing their kids get disaffected with their school and then by high school too many kids are like “why am I doing this? Let me just get through this”. Very few students love going to school anymore by the time they get to high school. Kicking and screaming is how most people end up leaving school. Thank God that’s over and funny enough, many then end up going to college.
Terry: I think we got the school side of this. Now, okay, what advice would you give a young couple who just had a child and you know they’re starting their journey as parents?
Steve: First of all, reading. Reading and a love of books is the most important gift you can give a child. And it opens up the world to them. It makes them comfortable with the language. I learned how to speak English by reading it. Expose your children to books early and read to them. And let them tell stories. Discover the joy. So that’s at home. At home is just the respect and love of books and learning. As your child gets older, pay attention and talk to teachers because a teacher will tell you the truth about the schools if you get friendly with them. And I would look at test scores. Most parents don’t. Most parents are not critical consumers.
Terry: Do you think schools are honest with parents most of the time?
Steve: I think they try but it’s hard. I don’t think schools tell parents enough that they have responsibilities if they want their kids to do well in school. As a result, schools take on more and more social responsibilities that were not theirs to begin with. And they can’t do it. They’re not good at it because schools are to a degree political institutions. Schools take on more responsibilities that belong to the parents and then they say we don’t have enough money. Well, of course you don’t have the money. You’re can’t to do it all and frankly they shouldn’t.
Terry: Does it take courage to tell a parent you have some obligations? You have some responsibilities.
Steve: Schools are afraid to have those conversations now. Schools and school districts have become very fearful institutions. They are wary of causing ripples, of saying, “I don’t think you’re doing a good job with your child”. They’re very fearful of calling in authorities when that needs to happen. They’re very cautious. The schools are taking on more and more and it does create a lack of honesty and they’re afraid of lawsuits. And even before lawsuits, principals will tell you, “Do I want 10 parents at my door?”
Terry: Exactly. You’ve talked about parents and educators. What would you share with policy folks and lawmakers?
Steve: I would urge caution before rushing into making new laws. Law making is a very difficult thing and be mindful that what you want probably won’t work. Sadly, over the decades we’ve learned that many efforts to legislate school policies are non-starters yet they’re still on the books. They add to the regulations that administrators have to work on and often defy reality. Let’s be real and honest with ourselves. Most school laws and regulations accomplish very little. I think humility and being humble is important here.
Terry: Sage advice that will mostly be ignored.
Steve: I would agree with that, but you asked.
