TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121790/1217120.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 111 lines

                                                                                EDUCATION, Page 102

The Bus Doesn't Stop Here


In Chicago an inner-city school copes without integration

By Sam Allis


    The 6600 block of South Ellis Avenue anchors one of
Chicago's scarier neighborhoods. Students who attend the
Alexandre Dumas Elementary School located there have had their
$100 Nike sneakers stolen off their feet on the way to class in
the morning. Drugs are everywhere. "It's a constant battle for
the children to get here," says principal Sylvia Peters, who
oversees the institution's 682 pupils and 40 teachers.

    Dumas is a 100% black inner-city public school, the kind of
place that has an appalling reputation. By all rights, things
should be just as bleak inside the scarred cinder-block building
as outside. But there are no graffiti on the walls, no violence
in the halls. Attendance thus far this year is an astonishing
94%, and there are 70 students on a waiting list to get in.
"Black parents who bused their kids are coming home," says
Peters, 52, a no-nonsense veteran educator who will begin her
seventh year on the job in January.

    Dumas is becoming a symbol of a growing belief among blacks
that busing is not the solution to the ferocious problems
afflicting inner-city schools. In the past, all-black schools
were considered by many blacks and white liberals an anathema to
be destroyed by court order. No longer. They are a growing
phenomenon in urban America, as whites continue to flee to the
suburbs. Unlike the institutions created by the forced
segregation that existed until the Supreme Court outlawed the
practice in 1954, these schools are a function of changing
demography, not of statutes. Disillusioned and frustrated by the
failure of busing to improve the quality of education for their
children, black parents are leading the fight for good black
neighborhood schools like Dumas. "There's nothing wrong with them
if it's simply a matter of geography," says black Boston state
representative Byron Rushing.

    The fact that Dumas is all black matters little to students
and parents. What matters is that, unlike many schools, it is
trying to be excellent. "As a black American, I want the best
education money can buy at this school," says Peggie Bartlett,
president of the Dumas local school council, the institution's
governing board. "I don't care if white folks don't come down
here." Says Sokoni Karanja, a community leader: "Integration
never really made any sense for quality education. I've got four
kids who never were bused. I would just go into schools and kick
behinds to get higher standards."

    Principal Peters chafes at the notion of the integrated
classroom as the sole avenue to sound education. "Forget the idea
that black children can't learn unless they're sitting next to a
white child," she argues. "Some values are universal, like self-
love, respect, integrity and perseverance." She incorporates
seven such principles into a candle-lighting ceremony at the
beginning of each school year for the new eighth-graders. "We
tell them, 'This is your beginning of becoming young black
adults. There is nothing wrong with you.'"

    Peters also kicks behinds. "Our kids are no different when
you instill the work ethic and tell them, 'You've got to move
your buns.'" Students will start wearing uniforms in January.
They listen to Mozart in music class and begin Latin in the fifth
grade. James Coleman, a sociology professor at the University of
Chicago, argues that black schools can challenge black youngsters
in ways integrated ones cannot. "You can make very strong demands
on the kids. They can't blame it on whites," he explains. "In
integrated schools, white teachers are often afraid to make
strong demands on black kids." At Dumas, that means offering
sympathy that a student's parents had a fight the previous night
but then insisting on the need to do one's homework anyway. Bart
Simpson, in short, is a lousy role model; try Martin Luther King.

    Dumas is far from perfect: its students still test below the
Illinois state average; its physical plant is fraying; services
are bad. "They send me inferior hamburger, moldy bread, spoiled
milk," fumes Peters. But Dumas, with its emphasis on bootstrap
help, is light-years ahead of most black public schools in the
U.S. "There are several hundred black schools in Chicago alone,
and most of them are still doing terribly," says Gary Orfield, a
visiting professor at Harvard's graduate school of education.

    Some blacks and a lot of whites are concerned that all-black
schools amount to debilitating racial isolation. Stan Conner,
whose grandchild attends Dumas, concedes, "You don't know whites
on a personal basis. You grow up more isolated." Sociologist
Coleman believes integrated summer camps could help offset the
classroom separation. Students themselves are unconcerned. "We're
not prejudiced," shrugs eighth-grader Keith Harris, 12. "White
kids are welcome here."

    Most black parents are far more concerned about good
teachers, discipline and curriculum. And it is parental
involvement that makes Dumas special. Upwards of 60 parents (all
women) volunteer on any given day to work as teacher's aides,
help out in the cafeteria or cut up frogs for biology class. It's
9 a.m., and they know what their children are doing. So does
Sylvia Peters, who tries to keep discreet tabs on the sexual
activity of her seventh- and eighth-graders. She proudly cites a
lone pregnancy during her tenure.

    Yolanda Raddle, a Dumas parent, marvels that her daughter
Danielle, 6, can recite two poems by Langston Hughes, the gifted
black writer. "I never heard of him in high school," she says.
Dumas has already made a difference.