Education: I Will Keep My Promise

Entrepreneur Eugene Lang makes a long bet on young learners

How far is it from a scruffy Harlem elementary school to the top of the heap? Not all that far, in the benign perception of Entrepreneur Eugene Lang, 66, if you can stick with your books and show a little hustle. Before he was nine years old, Lang was doing plenty of both. Each school day he walked the two miles back and forth between his home in Manhattan and P.S. 121 in Harlem to save the nickel carfare. Along the way, he picked up extra nickels from other boys by selling checkers that he had carefully lead weighted to become...

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