
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, October 9, 1993                   TAG: 9310090293
SECTION: SPECTATOR                    PAGE: S-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SCOTT MOORE THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

HBO DOCUMENTARY FOCUSES ON CHILDREN OF THE INNER CITY

When award-winning documentary filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond turn their cameras on the public-school system for HBO's "I Am a Promise: The Children of Stanton Elementary School" (Monday night at 10), it's the viewer who gets the best education.

This 90-minute film is not so much for children as about them - and about a world that few who subscribe to the premium cable channel will recognize.

This cinema verite look at inner-city education is set in North Philadelphia, but it's not so much the city as the setting that's most important.

Ninety percent of the 725 black students at Stanton live in poverty. Circumstances may be against these children, but they have at least one thing going for them: Principal Deanna Burney, a white, middle-class educator who constantly encourages them, telling them they are "talented, intelligent and gifted."

The Raymonds' fifth HBO film shows the talented and the troubled, as Burney and her staff try to raise spirits as well as test scores. According to the film, each year in Philadelphia more children drop out of school than graduate.

In one response to the students' behavioral, family and environmental problems, John Coates, who was raised and still lives in the neighborhood, provides a role model for an experimental all-male class of first graders that he will continue to teach through fifth grade. In the film, he seems to spend as much time on survival and life skills as on the Three Rs.

"Here we have education, race, poverty, crime, drugs . . . It's a microcosm of children growing up in the inner city," said Alan Raymond, who with his wife did the cinematography, sound recording, editing and direction of the film. "For an education show, this doesn't have the typical profile. There are no teachers saying what a great job they are doing."

In private, Burney doubts how successful the school can be. "It makes me angry that our kids are sold short, that there's a perception out there that they're not capable," she says in the film. "People have more or less just written them off and given up."

"I Am a Promise" focuses on several children and their situations. It's a mixed bag of successes and failures, with heart-tugging tales of crack babies, prostitute mothers, incarcerated fathers and children abandoned altogether. For balance, there also are scenes of successful, concerned parents and guardians.

by CNB