612
RESPONSE:IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE?* ROBERT E. FULLILOVE, ED. D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Public Health School of Public Health Columbia University New York, New York
IHAVE HAD A NUMBER OF INTERESTING EXPERIENCES over the years that
have some direct bearing on the topic at hand. For example, my experiences as an educator run the gamut from a year as a substitute public school teacher in Newark, New Jersey during the 1970s to a five-year stint with the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, a unique funding agency within the U.S. Department of Education that funds educationally innovative projects. Between 1964 and 1967, right at the end of my adolescent years, I was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and spent the summer of 1964 working as a community organizer with SNCC's Mississippi Freedom Summer. On and off I spent a little more than three years working on voting rights issues in the South along with a group of young people who nicely fit the description of the young people we are so interested in talking about today. This is all to say that I have been given a number of unique perspectives from which to examine the issues of adolescents and their potentials, and I have a few observations to offer about what we have heard thus far today. Our assignment today as presenters was simple and direct: focus on the good news about today's youth and avoid, whenever possible, talking about their "problems. " What I believe has happened, however, is that, despite our best efforts, our discussion of adolescent potential has been placed in the context of the problems young people encounter. Thus, the word "problem" has crept into our discourse with great frequency. The listener is almost led to believe that we are unable to talk about "potential' without mentioning "problem" in the same breath. In fact, a good working definition of "adolescent potential" -as seen through the eyes of our speakers-might be: those personal, psychological, and physical re*Presented as part of a Conference on Strengths and Potentials of Adolescence held by the Committee fealth of the New York Acldemy of Medicine March 8, 1991.
on Public
Bull. N.Y. Acad. Med.
IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE? HERE?
IS THERE A PROBLEM
613
sources youngsters possess that will allow them to overcome the many obstacles life will inevitably throw in their paths en route to adult life. Why this fascination with problems at a gathering that consciously wanted to avoid mere mention of the word? I have a hypothesis that comes, strangely enough, from my knowledge of France and its culture. For reasons I have never fully understood, I have always been fascinated by the French and their language. I read their magazines and newspapers and am even able to sample their radio (via Radio France International). I mention all of this because the French believe that Americans have a utopian world view. Many of them attribute our peculiar way of looking at life to the comparative youth of our own culture in comparison to theirs. In any event, they believe that we are sometimes blind to the simple fact that the world is a rather miserable place where failures are the rule, not the exception. My own reading of their perception of us is that they recognize how much we are prone to develop procedures and programs to "solve problems" but are at a total loss when they don't meet our expectations. We seem to lack patience. Our nation's public schools change the way they teach reading and mathematics every three or four years, for example, because in our national obsession with taking our own pulse, national tests of academic skills (e.g., the National Assessment of Education Progress) constantly suggest that "Johnny can't read" or "Mary can't do simple calculations." Magazine covers go through a regular ritual of trumpeting the dire peril facing our youngsters, and calls are issued with predictable regularity in newspaper editorials to scrap the school curriculum. The previous curriculum -the one that was created in response to the crisis of two years ago-is dumped in favor of some new, more promising approach to teaching. The end result rarely varies: we never give any program sufficient time to succeed, and teachers burn out at a horrifyingly rapid rate. I would be curious to know, for example, how many of those in attendance at this conference began professional life as classroom teachers and "Peter Principled" themselves to a position in the system that resulted in (among others) an invitation to this special conference? I know that, in my own case, elementary school teaching became synonymous with facing intractable problems with totally inadequate resources. It quickly became clear to me, as it may have to many of you, that it was better to be in administrative control of the classroom than it was to have the classroom in control of me. I think that I was a reasonably good teacher, but I wanted to see visible, tangible, dramatic results of my efforts. Not surprisingly, I opted for opportunities that would get me out of an arena where I Vol. 67, No. 6, November-December 1991
614
FULLILOVE RE. IiULLILOVE R.E.
was doing well and into one that would grant me the power -or at the least the illusion of the power-to change the conditions I found so intolerable. This impatience with ostensibly unchanging problems as well as with solutions that do not bring an immediate return on our investment, I would maintain, is typical of a utopian viewpoint. In a perfect world our efforts would be met with instant success. In the imperfect world that we actually inhabit success is rare and, at best, fleeting. This inability to reconcile what we want to see with what we actually see directly impacts on many of the issues that have been raised at this conference. Typically, for example, we ask the people who have developed potential solutions to seek funding to implement their ideas. The traditional private foundation will give some fraction of its supplicants two or three years (at most) to prove that they have been successful -typically through an evaluation that has quantitative evidence of success -and then will tell them that to continue their success, they must find a way to have their ideas institutionalized. The message that gets sent typically sounds like this: "You can't expect this foundation to carry you for the rest of your institutional life, after all!" The result is that many programs that might have succeeded are never given enough time to develop and mature, and a good many programs that do succeed go out of business because they can't find the funding to continue. If you recall the myth of the elephants' graveyard, let me also suggest that there is also a successful program graveyard, as well. In it are found all of those promising ideas that never got their day in the sun or never found the means to be institutionalized. The comment has been made here already that we know what works with adolescents. True. And at the risk of being simplistic, let me suggest that because we want panaceas -that is, solutions to every problem-we give up too quickly and too easily and continue to chase after perfect solutions that can never be achieved. I think we focus on problems at gatherings like this one, therefore, because we don't recognize how frequently we have succeeded. In an earlier life I directed a program at the University of California at Berkeley (The Professional Development Program) that taught me something about how adolescent potential can be developed. The program was designed to promote high levels of academic achievement in mathematics among first-year Berkeley minority undergraduates. Despite the fact that the typical student we served had Scholastic Aptitude Test scores in mathematics a full standard deviation below that of the average Berkeley student, our youngsters managed to earn final grades in first-year calculus (a "must pass" course for engineering, Bull. N.Y. Acad. Med.
IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE? PROLEMHER?
IS THR A-
6151
business, and science students at Cal) that were almost one half of a grade point above class average. Our students also graduated from the University at a rate (65%) comparable to that of all Berkeley undergraduates (66%) and more than twice that of black students not in the program (27%). One clear-cut key to our success was that we advertised the program to students as an honors program. Earning honors-level grades was not the price of admission to the program, rather it was the goal that students who wished to get into the program committed themselves to strive to achieve. The program was designed to find and to support our students' strengths, not to correct their weaknesses. The honors program label was a simple but effective means of communicating to students that we had high expectations for them and they responded-as they continue to respond, 15 years after the program's founding -by demonstrating that our expectations are justified. I propose this approach as an alternative to one that examines the potential of adolescents by describing the kinds of problems they must overcome. I think we need not only to recognize that we must expect adolescents to achieve, we must also recognize that we have frequently succeeded as a nation in figuring out how to maximize their potential. We need to recognize that our challenge is not to figure out how to solve their problems, it is rather to discover the means through which we can translate the solutions we have already developed into strategies that can work in any setting. This is the challenge of what is popularly referred to currently as technology transfergetting a program that works with undergraduate math students at Berkeley to work equally well with high school students in rural Alabama. I recognize that we are currently facing hard times as a nation, and that our resources are stretched beyond all reasonable limits. In times such as these, suggestions of this nature may themselves appear hopelessly utopian. I believe, nonetheless, that there is a certain inevitability to the progression of events. I believe that eventually we shall end our chase for panaceas, and when that time comes, we shall find the means to persevere. We shall, as the old saying goes, stay our course and give ourselves and our programs a chance to fail because we will have found the means to believe, ultimately, in our ability (and that of our young people) to succeed.
Vol. 67, No. 6, November-December 1991
RESPONSE:IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE?* ROBERT E. FULLILOVE, ED. D. Assistant Professor of Clinical Public Health School of Public Health Columbia University New York, New York
IHAVE HAD A NUMBER OF INTERESTING EXPERIENCES over the years that
have some direct bearing on the topic at hand. For example, my experiences as an educator run the gamut from a year as a substitute public school teacher in Newark, New Jersey during the 1970s to a five-year stint with the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, a unique funding agency within the U.S. Department of Education that funds educationally innovative projects. Between 1964 and 1967, right at the end of my adolescent years, I was a field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and spent the summer of 1964 working as a community organizer with SNCC's Mississippi Freedom Summer. On and off I spent a little more than three years working on voting rights issues in the South along with a group of young people who nicely fit the description of the young people we are so interested in talking about today. This is all to say that I have been given a number of unique perspectives from which to examine the issues of adolescents and their potentials, and I have a few observations to offer about what we have heard thus far today. Our assignment today as presenters was simple and direct: focus on the good news about today's youth and avoid, whenever possible, talking about their "problems. " What I believe has happened, however, is that, despite our best efforts, our discussion of adolescent potential has been placed in the context of the problems young people encounter. Thus, the word "problem" has crept into our discourse with great frequency. The listener is almost led to believe that we are unable to talk about "potential' without mentioning "problem" in the same breath. In fact, a good working definition of "adolescent potential" -as seen through the eyes of our speakers-might be: those personal, psychological, and physical re*Presented as part of a Conference on Strengths and Potentials of Adolescence held by the Committee fealth of the New York Acldemy of Medicine March 8, 1991.
on Public
Bull. N.Y. Acad. Med.
IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE? HERE?
IS THERE A PROBLEM
613
sources youngsters possess that will allow them to overcome the many obstacles life will inevitably throw in their paths en route to adult life. Why this fascination with problems at a gathering that consciously wanted to avoid mere mention of the word? I have a hypothesis that comes, strangely enough, from my knowledge of France and its culture. For reasons I have never fully understood, I have always been fascinated by the French and their language. I read their magazines and newspapers and am even able to sample their radio (via Radio France International). I mention all of this because the French believe that Americans have a utopian world view. Many of them attribute our peculiar way of looking at life to the comparative youth of our own culture in comparison to theirs. In any event, they believe that we are sometimes blind to the simple fact that the world is a rather miserable place where failures are the rule, not the exception. My own reading of their perception of us is that they recognize how much we are prone to develop procedures and programs to "solve problems" but are at a total loss when they don't meet our expectations. We seem to lack patience. Our nation's public schools change the way they teach reading and mathematics every three or four years, for example, because in our national obsession with taking our own pulse, national tests of academic skills (e.g., the National Assessment of Education Progress) constantly suggest that "Johnny can't read" or "Mary can't do simple calculations." Magazine covers go through a regular ritual of trumpeting the dire peril facing our youngsters, and calls are issued with predictable regularity in newspaper editorials to scrap the school curriculum. The previous curriculum -the one that was created in response to the crisis of two years ago-is dumped in favor of some new, more promising approach to teaching. The end result rarely varies: we never give any program sufficient time to succeed, and teachers burn out at a horrifyingly rapid rate. I would be curious to know, for example, how many of those in attendance at this conference began professional life as classroom teachers and "Peter Principled" themselves to a position in the system that resulted in (among others) an invitation to this special conference? I know that, in my own case, elementary school teaching became synonymous with facing intractable problems with totally inadequate resources. It quickly became clear to me, as it may have to many of you, that it was better to be in administrative control of the classroom than it was to have the classroom in control of me. I think that I was a reasonably good teacher, but I wanted to see visible, tangible, dramatic results of my efforts. Not surprisingly, I opted for opportunities that would get me out of an arena where I Vol. 67, No. 6, November-December 1991
614
FULLILOVE RE. IiULLILOVE R.E.
was doing well and into one that would grant me the power -or at the least the illusion of the power-to change the conditions I found so intolerable. This impatience with ostensibly unchanging problems as well as with solutions that do not bring an immediate return on our investment, I would maintain, is typical of a utopian viewpoint. In a perfect world our efforts would be met with instant success. In the imperfect world that we actually inhabit success is rare and, at best, fleeting. This inability to reconcile what we want to see with what we actually see directly impacts on many of the issues that have been raised at this conference. Typically, for example, we ask the people who have developed potential solutions to seek funding to implement their ideas. The traditional private foundation will give some fraction of its supplicants two or three years (at most) to prove that they have been successful -typically through an evaluation that has quantitative evidence of success -and then will tell them that to continue their success, they must find a way to have their ideas institutionalized. The message that gets sent typically sounds like this: "You can't expect this foundation to carry you for the rest of your institutional life, after all!" The result is that many programs that might have succeeded are never given enough time to develop and mature, and a good many programs that do succeed go out of business because they can't find the funding to continue. If you recall the myth of the elephants' graveyard, let me also suggest that there is also a successful program graveyard, as well. In it are found all of those promising ideas that never got their day in the sun or never found the means to be institutionalized. The comment has been made here already that we know what works with adolescents. True. And at the risk of being simplistic, let me suggest that because we want panaceas -that is, solutions to every problem-we give up too quickly and too easily and continue to chase after perfect solutions that can never be achieved. I think we focus on problems at gatherings like this one, therefore, because we don't recognize how frequently we have succeeded. In an earlier life I directed a program at the University of California at Berkeley (The Professional Development Program) that taught me something about how adolescent potential can be developed. The program was designed to promote high levels of academic achievement in mathematics among first-year Berkeley minority undergraduates. Despite the fact that the typical student we served had Scholastic Aptitude Test scores in mathematics a full standard deviation below that of the average Berkeley student, our youngsters managed to earn final grades in first-year calculus (a "must pass" course for engineering, Bull. N.Y. Acad. Med.
IS THERE A PROBLEM HERE? PROLEMHER?
IS THR A-
6151
business, and science students at Cal) that were almost one half of a grade point above class average. Our students also graduated from the University at a rate (65%) comparable to that of all Berkeley undergraduates (66%) and more than twice that of black students not in the program (27%). One clear-cut key to our success was that we advertised the program to students as an honors program. Earning honors-level grades was not the price of admission to the program, rather it was the goal that students who wished to get into the program committed themselves to strive to achieve. The program was designed to find and to support our students' strengths, not to correct their weaknesses. The honors program label was a simple but effective means of communicating to students that we had high expectations for them and they responded-as they continue to respond, 15 years after the program's founding -by demonstrating that our expectations are justified. I propose this approach as an alternative to one that examines the potential of adolescents by describing the kinds of problems they must overcome. I think we need not only to recognize that we must expect adolescents to achieve, we must also recognize that we have frequently succeeded as a nation in figuring out how to maximize their potential. We need to recognize that our challenge is not to figure out how to solve their problems, it is rather to discover the means through which we can translate the solutions we have already developed into strategies that can work in any setting. This is the challenge of what is popularly referred to currently as technology transfergetting a program that works with undergraduate math students at Berkeley to work equally well with high school students in rural Alabama. I recognize that we are currently facing hard times as a nation, and that our resources are stretched beyond all reasonable limits. In times such as these, suggestions of this nature may themselves appear hopelessly utopian. I believe, nonetheless, that there is a certain inevitability to the progression of events. I believe that eventually we shall end our chase for panaceas, and when that time comes, we shall find the means to persevere. We shall, as the old saying goes, stay our course and give ourselves and our programs a chance to fail because we will have found the means to believe, ultimately, in our ability (and that of our young people) to succeed.
Vol. 67, No. 6, November-December 1991
