Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 30, 1993 TAG: 9309290299
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WILLIAM RASPBERRY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We're near the beginning of another school year, and the air will shortly be filled with professions of yet another abiding faith: All children, if properly taught, can learn.
We believe it. We write books on it, preach sermons on it, elect school board members and hire principals on it. I've written more columns on it than I can count.
So why, if we believe all children can learn, are we - am I - always so astonished when some unlikely children actually do?
Why is Marva Collins still such a pleasant surprise after all these years? The children at her Westside Prep in Chicago do learn, but isn't that what we say we expect them to do? Why did it startle me to discover that Jaime Escalante was teaching his poor East Los Angeles students advanced placement calculus? Or to learn that kids at Franklin High in inner-city Philadelphia are fencing at the near-Olympic level, or that children at the Chad School in Newark are building and flying radio-controlled airplanes?
I still get goose bumps reading about P.S. 27 in inner-city Indianapolis where dozens of children - the ``Masters of Disaster,'' they called themselves - became outstanding chess players. I've been trying to chase down a report of a small town school (in Ohio, I believe) in which every last one of the children learned to ride a unicycle.
That report, many years old by now, has stayed on my mind because it strikes me as the very essence of what can happen when teachers really do believe - and make their children believe - that they can learn what they put their minds to learning.
I remember it for another reason. We talk a good deal these days about pedagogy, class organization, management arrangements - all the things that come under the rubric of reform and reorganization - as though they contain the answer to why so many of our children aren't learning. But the point of that Ohio (?) school wasn't the wonders of innovation. It was the power of expectation, of belief. The teachers expected the children would learn to ride unicycles and they communicated this expectation to the children, along with the assurance that they would give them as much time and support as it took.
It's what Jaime Escalante did with his poor Hispanic children at Garfield High, what Marva Collins continues to do in Chicago - what perhaps all successful teachers of ``unlikely'' children do. It begins with the belief that the children can learn.
Well, we believe it, don't we? It depends on whether you listen to what we say or watch what we do. Listen to us, and we will say with the straightest of faces that we believe all our children can learn. But watch us, and what do we do?
We give our children tests when they enter school so we can find out which are the smart ones with the capacity to learn and which the slow ones of whom we shouldn't make unjust demands. Sometimes the "test'' is a simple eyeballing; we look at the children and ``know'' which ones will never learn much.
Nor is it just teachers who profess a faith they refuse to practice. Policymakers, education critics, legislators - even the children's own parents - will frequently make quite clear that certain children (usually those ``crippled'' by social handicaps) aren't expected to learn much. The result is lowered standards, watered-down instruction - and less learning.
It's worse than that. Even when individuals are willing to act on their all-children-can-learn faith, they often face institutional roadblocks. We know we ought to see someone else's success as proof that we can succeed, but too often we see it only as a rebuke to our unsuccess. Those who should be role models become enemies.
It's probably too much to ask - even most ministers seem reluctant to ask their congregations to live as though they believe the faith they profess. But wouldn't it be nice if all of us - teachers, parents, politicians, business leaders, journalists - would pledge just for the next semester to act as though we really do believe all our children can learn?
It just might mark the beginning of an academic revival, a reaffirmation of the faith we all confess and the literal salvation of our nation.
Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB