The BURG

This is the year when we all talk about schools, and why the school system in our country is in crisis. Of course, there hasn't been a year I can remember when we haven't talked about the crisis in our schools. It's become something of a national mantra. The question needs to be revisited. I was thinking about this lately when I read a letter written by my dad when he was nine - a letter of such artistic proportion and elegance of style that Shakespeare would have sat up and marveled, "Man, this is so cool!"

Good writing betrays good thinking. My dad was lucky to attend a superb school. There were 20 stu­dents and eight grades at Prescott Elementary. And one teacher. When he finished his fourth-grade lessons, my dad was allowed to work on the eighth grade questions.

His mind was chal­lenged; he learned to work hard and to think clearly. If a school can do this, it is a good school. This wasn't unusual for the time, when a million immigrants each year were coming to our shores. They looked and talked funny; wrote in a weird Cyrillic alphabet, ate strange foods and smelled differently. Of course they were picked on and taunted by students who knew better.

When you are taunted and teased because you talk funny, look different, and do weird things, it doesn't take long to become motivated. And motivated students are good students.

I thought about this when I taught at a large sub­urban high school in Kirk­land in the 1960s. My col­leagues and I noticed that our Japanese-American students invariably were the most re­spectful and hard-working in the class. They shared a com­mon history - most of their parents, whether citizens or not, had served four years in American concentration camps.

We wondered why these students always seemed to end the term at the top of the class. It wasn't until the late '70s that I knew the answer. At that time, we had an in­flux of Vietnamese children whose parents had supported the U.S. during the war and needed to escape their home­land for fear of reprisals. Here we had a large group of immigrants entering a brand new country with a brand new culture. They looked different from the Caucasian majority, who took language and culture and history for granted.

If they did well in high school, they had to do it in a foreign language. Why then, at the end of the term, did we find these Viet­namese students at the top of their classes?

The answer to this ques­tion might bring us a lot closer to solving the "crisis in our schools."

It wasn't the school or the quality of teaching; these were the same for everyone. Charter schools - alternative schools weren't necessary. Money was not a factor. Nothing the school did or didn't do was a controlling factor. The teachers, of course, were just as dedicated as always. (If we don't believe this, we might talk to our local teachers. The whole profession is probably no less dedicated.)

So the ingredient that allowed these Vietnamese students, in aforeign country, speaking a foreign language, surrounded by a completely foreign cultural landscape, to succeed in school to such a remarkable degree - this controlling factor must have taken place at home.

I have no insight into the Vietnamese home, or the parents. But there are certain behaviors we can observe that might give us insight into the remarkable academic success of their children, and they are all behaviors they didn't participate in. These Vietnamese students did not: a) own or drive cars, b) work at after-school jobs, c) play interscholastic sports, or d) engage in serious dating.

But, in a small town espe­cially, aren't these the very behaviors that consume a high school student's life? Beyond these, what is left?

Studying, I suppose. But do we really think a normal high school student who, after a strenuous football workout, drives to his job, after which he has a late date with his girlfriend, has any energy (or interest) left for academics? I am not suggesting that young people dispense with these recreations and spend all their time studying. But if our republic continues its slide into third-world status, it is far from reasonable to suggest that our schools are to blame.

They are not. Paul McCaw is a long-time resident of the Touchet Valley.