46 Glen
Ellyn Way
Rochester,
NY 14618
July 7,
1970
John W. Bennion, Superintendent
Brighton Schools
Rochester, New York 14618
Dear Mr. Bennion:
Both my daughters,
Jessica and Diana, have now been through
the Brighton schools, and it seems to be time for me to
summarize their
experience there as I have observed it, for whatever good the
summary
can do for you and the children who follow them.
My children are
apparently counted among the successes of the
schools. They learned to
read and write very well; they received high
marks in school and on Regents' and College Board tests, and
they are
now placed in fine colleges.
If the Brighton schools ever have to match
their product with that of other towns these children will
surely fatten the
Brighton score.
Yet I believe this
attitude would be mistaken. Jessica and
Diana
were not successes at all, they were failures. They learned to read and
write because their parents and neighbors were literate, not because
their
teachers were. Whatever
is good in their view of their world and fellow
men they learned from home, from experience and from real books,
not
from their textbooks, which were usually puerile, or their
teachers, who
were often models of ignorance and ill-will.
There are some
things, unfortunately, which are not easily
learned from parents, neighbors, friends and the public library.
Mathematics, science, economics and foreign languages are such
things.
It is precisely in these areas that my children ended up
weakest. There
was one exception:
Biology. In the eighth grade
there was a Mrs.
Silberman, who has since departed, who was a very fine teacher
indeed.
And this past year the AP Biology course Diana took was very
well
constructed, though the teacher was uninspiring.
But mathematics,
physics and chemistry were uniformly
disastrous. the teachers
were ignorant and the textbooks were mostly
ignorant and partly pretentious. My daughters and all their friends are,
in consequence, woefully ascientific, and will now probably
never be
cured, since science and mathematics rarely penetrate where
there was
poor early preparation.
I will not take time
to document this failing of the Brighton
schools; I merely tell it to you as one responsible citizen to
another.
You should look into it, and by this I do not mean that you
should
consult Miss Foley or anyone else within the Brighton
schools. You
could, for example, ask any -- any! -- member of the physics
department
of the University of Rochester to compare your textbooks with
some
others which are available; then talk over the matter with him
and your
own best science teachers.
The same for mathematics and chemistry, of
course.
There were a few good
things here and there, mainly music and
English. Jessica had a
good German teacher and Diana had -- briefly --
a good Latin teacher, who left.
There are a couple of perfectly awful
French teachers, but this sort of uneven quality is, I suppose,
to be
expected. What should
not be tolerated is a bad program and bad books.
Brighton has too many of both.
Each of my daughters
ran up against at least one particularly foolish
and vicious teacher in her career. Jessica had a Mrs. B---- as a homeroom
teacher, who wanted to mold her character more than she should
have, and
Diana ran up against a Mrs. H----- in connection with
Galaxy. Mrs.
H----- behaved quite badly there. I hope whoever supervises Galaxy in the
future will be a person better equipped by temperament to guide
without
interfering, so that Galaxy can be the joy of its producers once
again.
All in all, I do not
believe Brighton high school is any better than
Polytechnic High School in San Francisco, which Diana attended
one
semester. Polytechnic is
full of whores and dope addicts, and criminals
of various sorts, and very little is learned there, so that
people point to it
as a sad example of a ghetto school, "inferior education
for the blacks";
but the truth is that the difference between Poly and Brighton
is only in
the homes of the students.
Teacher for teacher, textbook for textbook,
program for program, Poly is no worse.
On the other hand,
the best year of school my children had was
1961-1962, which they spent in Newnham Croft School in
Cambridge,
England. This was a
local school, public (not 'public'); it had small
windows and very little central heating. The classes were large, there
was no gymnasium or school bus.
My children, ages 8 and 10, bicycled
the two miles every day, or took the city bus.
But they loved
it. The teachers didn't "teach
children"; they
taught subjects:
history, English rhetoric and grammar, arithmetic,
science, and Scripture for those who didn't have a religious
objection.
(Fervent Catholics, Atheists and Jews could play outside during
that
period.)
The principal of
Newnhamn Croft had a pride in his work, which
communicated itself to all who worked there, teachers and
children. The
discipline was plain and effective. The students learned what their elders
thought they should learn, were tested and ranked, and knew what
they
had or had not accomplished.
Brighton is not like
that. Diana, my younger daughter,
graduated
last month at long last.
Neither she nor her friends has any sense of
pride in what the school has caused them to accomplish. Rather, they
feel as if released from a long bondage. Now, finally, there will be time
to learn something, instead of going to school.
Diana is no radical,
no bearer of signs or manifestos. She didn't
bother to go to Commencement, so I suppose everyone thought she
was
content. Actually her
absence was not a "protest"; it was more of a
condemnation.
Sincerely
yours,
<signed>
Ralph A. Raimi
c: Herbert Elins
Brighton School Board
*******************************************************************************
Brighton
Central Schools
Monroe
and Elmwood Avenues
Rochester,
NY 14618
John W. Bennion
Superintendent of Schools
July 30, 1970
Dr. Ralph Raimi
46 Glen Ellyn Way
Rochester, NY 14618
Dear Dr. Raimi:
I appreciate your taking time to express your impressions of the
Brighton
Schools. It is good for
us to hear directly how the schools are affecting
our students. As you
would expect, I was disappointed to learn that we
have not been as successful as we might and should be in meeting
the
educational needs of Jessica and Diana.
In a school community such as ours there is always the
temptation to
become somewhat complacent and self-satisfied inasmuch as so
many of
our students achieve at a relatively high level. In my judgment, our
continuing challenge is to help each student to make the most of
himself
and his educational opportunities in terms of his unique
abilities, learning
style, and talents.
Feedbacks such as yours reminds us that there is still
much to accomplish toward the realization of that goal. As an educator
yourself, working in a formal academic institution, I am sure
you are
well aware of the various human and institutional limitations
that are
imposed on formal organizations. Nevertheless, our task is to make the
schools as responsive and effective as possible and I appreciate
your
criticisms. We will
certainly take them into account as we plan for the
future.
Sincerely yours
<signed>
John W. Bennion
Superintendent of Schools
JWB:shw
********************************************************************************
46 Glen
Ellyn Way
Rochester,
NY 14618
September
30, 1970
John W. Bennion, Superintendent
Brighton Schools
Rochester, NY 14618
Dear Dr. Bennion:
I believe your
letter of July 30, which replied to my condem-
nation of the Brighton schools, missed my essential point. I was not
complaining that my children in particular had been badly served
by the
system; I only exhibited them as the best examples I had to
support the
thesis that all Brighton is badly served.
Your letter
contained the following key statement:
"In my
judgment, our continuing challenge is to help each student to
make the
most of himself and his educational opportunities in terms of
his unique
abilities, learning styles, and talents."
This is cant, you
know. Please be a little more
modest. You
might then be more successful.
"Unique learning styles," forsooth! In a
class of thirty, with a common textbook and lesson-plan?
Your continuing
challenge should, I think, be something like this:
To provide your students organized access to a certain limited
display of
human knowledge -- that which is basic in history, arts and
science; to
outline carefully what the community expects them to know of all
this;
then to find out, for their sake and ours, how much of that
expectation
they have met.
Their uniqueness
should be, and except in a tyranny is, beyond
community control.
Beethovens and Hitlers are not created by school
systems; why pretend to try?
It is the common characteristics of
civilized men which a school is entitled to nurture. I would want your
schools to attempt to teach children what everyone should
know. This is
already a large order.
Sincerely yours,
<signed>
Ralph A. Raimi