WGBH Journal; Murray Road School

Summer Hill is perhaps the best known of the alternative schools schools which have been founded in reaction to the traditional structure and academics of most educational institutions. Many of these schools were started in the 1960s a period which seemed to emphasize the value of free thought and free expression. Perhaps as a measure of changing times the oldest alternative public high school in the country is closing its doors. A eulogy for the Murray road school and you can Massachusetts is the first feature on today's edition of GBH Journal. Good afternoon and welcome my milk after. Today's program also includes an interview with a member of a group called Emerge a counseling service from and back to their wives. And then commentary on the news will be provided by Louis Lyons.

Now to begin a profile of the Maria Rhodes go from reporter David Friedberg. This is a eulogy for Mary Rohde The oldest alternative public high school in America. With. Its. Good. Man. Mary wrote school and island of freethinking for disgruntled students and teachers will close permanently this year after a decade of experimentation. The values of flexible and self-styled learning which Marie rode refined and legitimized over 10 years did not bring on the school's demise. It was

instead the intangible passage of eras. Now back to the basics in education that finally caused Mary Rohde to give up for lack of sufficient enrollment. It's disappointing to Rosemary Colson the guidance counselor at Mary road for five years I think during adolescence. People tend to fight for independence. And you see lots of problems coming up at home. I will cling to peer group and we hope that by giving students very real responsibility for their education they will begin to see themselves more as independent entities who have control over their own lives who can make decisions that will affect them and make them very consciously and in a healthy but safe atmosphere so that these decisions so that they can learn how to make decisions. Rose Colson along with the school's other small faculty she'll work next year at Newton North High School. A far more traditional setting that will absorb the Mary Rhodes

student body as well. Some of the young people fear they will get lost in a sea of matriculation compared with the style of personal learning to which they've grown accustomed. For David Bronstein a senior this year it was that intimacy that counted most. One of the brightest things about the school is the individuality and that sounds like a cliché I think but if people can try to see I think people can come here and say what they feel expressed what they feel and be understood by other people. They can feel like they're part of a community. One person in a small community that has an effect. Democratically and can make changes themselves can influence the course of events in a school can help set policy. If the sense of belonging I thing more than anything socially academically in terms of setting policy all around the boy people feel like they can make changes and I think that's something that a lot of students feel they can't do they get caught up in the bureaucracy and that's

I think one of the beauties of my road for me is just being able to make changes and influence the course of events in the school. I only wish that more kids could have really understood the school and had a chance to be a part of it. Mary Rhode a former elementary school turned over to several idealistic teachers working in Newton was spawned in an era when many had begun to question the institutions of our society. Even the sacred cow of public schools and their regimentation it was back in 1957 when the faculty boldly decided against giving grades and instead to evaluate students individually. Marie Rhode had no dress code at a time when blue jeans were banned at Newton's traditional high school. Those and other pioneering features of education have long since been integrated into most schools part of the ironic reason that Mary road has lost its unique appeal. But aside from the super officiality ease of fashion the program

offered a release from the rigid role playing that had stifled educators and students for Ron bot that even benefited his math classes. Students I think generally perceive their relationship with their teachers in a very authoritarian way partly because often they've experienced that way and partly because they overgeneralize some things too to school. And here I think the there is a and of a difference in authority between students and teachers but not based on so much on power that teachers have over the students in some political sense. But more that the students have a respect for us as faculty members based on their. Respect for his people and their respect for our competence in our particular field. And that gives us an authority which is based on something different from authoritarianism and that's a significant difference for the students It allows and interact with us in a lot more casual significant and brutal ways than they usually do with teachers there's usually a

difference in the relationship that's associated with the feeling that the teacher can do things to me. And here I think that's largely lacking there's a feeling more that the teachers respect us and we respect the teachers and we can work together collaboratively. And I think perhaps if anything made the difference it was the fact that we were all working together with exactly the same relatively small group of students so that when we were facing difficulties and problems we could talk very specifically about them and feel like like it was a shared concern rather than for example my talking about the difficulties I was having in my class to another teacher who happen to have none of the same students as newly liberated faculty and students basked in the freedom of merry road. It was inevitable that a small group would take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere and fritter away the time. For some it meant an adjustment to new expectations and accountability to one's peers who helped to run the

educational program. Nicky Davis a merry road enthusiast and one sad to see it go believes even slouches were better off in the program. For unsuccessful classes the situation is just that there isn't the motivation there to learn the material. And if there is a substantial part of the class that doesn't have that motivation it isn't really genuinely interested in the subject or in making the class work. Class will fall apart and people get hurt who are interested in in the subject. When someone here doesn't have the seriousness about the work I would say it's an advantage of a high school because here you notice them. They stand out like a sore thumb at the high school. They basically aren't as visible a key theme of Mary Road School is the process of independent decision making for students there.

Often that entailed attendance at painstaking general meetings. Once a pet peeve of Michael Ross now 23 and a graduate of the school from Murray road it may sound cliche at this point but I learned a lot about decision making process. The one that they had had serious for us but I store that city. And when I go to set up a decision making process now or in the future I remember what I learned from making decisions there. When I work on a play which is what I do when I work on a play there are decision making processes in terms of working on the play and also in terms of the business of running a play which is something else that I do and you have to learn how not to do things as well as how to do things and don't get me wrong because the decision making process there had very good things about it too. When most people were

satisfied with the way they were getting their education at a given time then. You got something pretty good there. I asked some of my graduating seniors a couple of years ago to tell me what they thought they got out of being at Murray road and they talked a lot about things about more self-awareness and better ability to work with other people more commitment to their own learning and a better sense of what they could do. And after that most of them talked about these kinds of things and when they finished I said to them Suppose somebody had told you before you came that these were the things you were going to get out of being here. What would you have thought. And most of them said that either they would have understood what the person was talking about or they would have thought it was just a lot of bull and they would have taken it very seriously and that I think shows why it's hard for us to convince people that the program is worth considering. Ron Barnes who has been with Mary Rhodes school since its inception 10 years ago in that time the program enjoyed fairly consistent support from the community of Newton

including many parents who were eager to provide their children with a challenging education if the rate of college admissions is any index. Mary rotors have in fact assimilated well but students generally seem more preoccupied these days with future security than taking risks at present. And so Mary rode with fond memories closes for good for GBH Journal. I'm David Freud Berg. Shelters for battered women are springing up all over Massachusetts and across the country

as women react more openly and actively to their domestic situations. The need for places to turn to when in danger has grown. But one of the battering men. Until recently very little had been done in the way of providing men with places to go to confront the trait in their own personalities. In response to a request made by several Boston shelters for battered women. The Boston men's Center found the group emerge an all male counseling collective in the Boston area. Up until now small numbers of men have been counseled by in marriage some in groups but most individual a member of Emerge Joe Morse spoke recently with reporter Amy Sands about the group and about the issue of battered women. The common I heard recently was that men have to decide that they have a problem and want help with it before they can be helped with their battering behavior that you can't assign a man to a counseling service such as yours that he has to

recognize it as a problem and recognize it is something that has to be dealt with. Would you agree with that. Most definitely. I think that the biggest step when a man takes in trying to correct his abusive behavior is to decide that he has some responsibility for it that it's not his his wife or lover who is it. Making him do this that it's not his right to do this kind of thing that he decides that it's a problem. First of all like you said and then he decides he has some responsibility for it. But if he were to come to us having been told by a court for instance that he had to seek counseling he may come and never want to be of really deal with the issues because he's there under duress had many men come to you. We're now getting one to two people a week who call us one to two men a week who call us. This is picked up in the last few months substantially as we've gotten more and people become more aware of the service that's available. Offhand I would say over the year that

we've well actually about nine months that we've been doing actual counseling. We may have been contacted probably by 20 or 30 people. It seems like a lot of Asian to deal with the problem until women begin as they are now beginning begin to refuse to put up with it simply refuse to give them any more emotional support. It's very true. I think that women who are abused in a relationship have more influence on the man seeking help or stopping than anyone else. And there's a well-known sociologist who feels that the marriage license in this country and in many western countries is a license for healing and that that's the cultural norm that we operate under. Now the problem the problem comes is that the society of course is set up in such a way that men receive no sanctions for this and women take over. You know if a man abuses his wife it's the woman who's going to suffer most if you know

when it's when it's all over with not only physically but in the case of if there's a family children it's usually the fact that the wife is moving out makes She's making a decision basically to live in poverty. Or to you know substantially limit her her income from what it was perhaps of the income that was available to her standard of living. She may very well be responsible for the children she may have to take the children with her the man takes has no responsibility for that so this is where we see it as a social issue. I mean I can think of many instances when I was an adolescent where it was. It was subtly indicated to me that if you really care for your girlfriend you might slap her around once in a while. You know she really like children. She really respect you for that. That's a masculine kind of thing to do. And I think that it's I would say it's very difficult for any man in the society not to hear some of that and not to get some of that. So I think that it's not a it's not of course not just women that have to be prepared to take the issues it's the social service agencies it's the mental health centers who have to look at this is a real

problem and that it's not going to be resolved just in that relationship but it has to be looked at by the support system around the family and and the relationship that has to support and woman not tolerating that and giving her other options. If that begins to happen. One thing you said right at the beginning of this part of the conversation was that the woman has to make it clear she will not tolerate beating. Now it seems to me that that puts the responsibility on the woman to stop the battering rather than on the man not to do it in the first place. I don't feel that it should be the woman's responsibility. I was speaking to the point that I don't think that women should assume. That because a man is a very quiet peaceful loving gentle person that he would never batter her. And that's been that's been shown to just not be true. I've talked with with women some who are friends of mine who have just been appalled that their lover would abuse them physically. He's just not that kind of a person. I mean I'd like for men to take that responsibility but the fact the matter is that men are taking that responsibility right now are not

very many men. And I guess I'm concerned that women don't get into situations that they're going to be abused in. I guess I'm interested in what you think is going to change that kind of behavior on a personal level. Well that's that's precisely the point at which we're trying to intervene we're trying to figure out ways for men to stop that kind of behavior. And the two issues that we've begun to focus on is first of all when when a man feels frustration and conflict and anger in a relationship how do you deal with that. OK and we were working very hard to help men figure out alternative ways of handling those kinds of situations which will come up in every relationship in which they will continue to face in their lives. That's the first area I think the second area is trying to help men become aware that they have no right to dominate or to be possessive about their their mates and their lovers. Have any of the men that you will have worked with taken. I made the

choice to leave the women there until they can take full responsibility for their violent behavior and not do it anymore. That's certainly the point that I think we'd like to get men to work toward. I think that in some cases men have seriously begun to evaluate whether they should continue to be in the relation with this with the person that they're with. OK. And I think that that's getting at the same issue. One of the things that very often happens is that men come to us after their wife has left you know either she's given them our number or they found her number through some some other organization that or a friend or what have you. And so they come to men very often come to us when they realize that they've lost their wife until they shape up. And very often it's just not a case of them coming to counseling and then expecting their their lover or their wife to come back because very often it's just not that simple and one of things that we're clear about is that we can't take responsibility for whether a man is actually going to change after he's been been counseled by us we

will do our best but we can't guarantee any woman that because a man has come to us that he will no longer batter. Close today's Journal commentary and more seasonably on the season ends June 21. Summer arrives lighted by a full moon full at four twenty two yesterday afternoon by the precision of the meteorologist. Too late for accompanying sound effects by a few hours. The thunder claps Monday night well to inaugurate a solstice as anything else the sudden violence of a summer shower. In contrast to the long siege of a winter's stone but the

time one could step outdoors to rescue a book the street was running rivers rushed to pull down all the windows but almost by the time it takes to cover the rounds of the house the rain is over. Put them up again. Television has hardly completed a shift of cameras from Fenway Park to the Pittsburgh game when the downpour ends in Boston the drenched crowd. So it soaks through the wait for the games restart Red Sox fever is that a seasonal peak. The affliction especially acute this summer and temperatures pushed higher by the arrival of the New York Yankees. Some sports writer describes their rivalry as the Harvard-Yale of baseball. But other favors abate to the pace of seasonal in activity. The violence of the news softens in the sultry weather State Department tones down its African rhetoric is a global headline. No change in Israel. The monitor had the fever over taxes 2 comes down the most radical proposals loads the first fervor of last week that sprouted new Concerned Taxpayers associations all over

Marshfield town meeting rejects their motion to abolish its mosquito control programme refuses to cut its recreation and library appropriations by $2000 or to cancel it $6000 lifeguard service. The Massachusetts Senate admits a bill to cut property taxes in two. It's a gesture no politician can vote against but the chairman of Taxation says it would be unrealistic to expect it to go anywhere this year. It's a very simple approach to a very complex problem. For himself he says my own town is holding a special town meeting to appropriate twenty five hundred dollars to start a high school soccer program. He plans to vote for Sen. John back on the Brookline challenges the meat of ax approach of the tax cutters. Let them put in their local papers the programs they are willing to cut back when it is all the summer rain had subdued high tensions to restore the resilience it nourishes in all our plants after the rain the new shoots on the shrubbery. Same growth pushed up another for

the shrubs that same surely destroyed under the frozen snow all winter now overhang walk and garden with a dense curtain. I'll have to trim some to let the mailman through I explained before breakfast. I nearly drowned or squeezed through the wet foliage that closed in over the front walk on both sides. But I rose in fullest Bloom held against Monday night's pelting rain without dropping a paddle. Possums have never been so large or magnificent on the Peace Rose and violets have run amok to the rhythm of rain and heat their leaves trying to reach the size of rhubarb drowsy June days good baseball weather. Reggie Jackson pulls out of his mom and the saggy eases in relations between the president and the Congress. Cyrus Vance reassures the congressman who worried that a Cold War climate was building up. The administration will try to extend areas of cooperation with the Soviets he tells the Foreign Relations Committee. The president has

75 congressmen to explain about Africa present vehement subsides the card Islam doesn't compare so badly with the condition of other governments. If one keeps a comprehensive box score governments seem to face a negative public mood all over the Belgian prime minister resigned over resistance to his effort to cut public appropriations that echoed California after five days crisis compromise has restored his coalition. The president rarely resigned under scandal that recalled Bert Lance the British Labor government survived a vote of confidence only by the grace of the two Welsh nationalists whose vote saved it and Israel begun put over a stand pat policy only at the cost of dividing his parliament 59 to 37. And further diluting his relation with the Carter administration whose response James Reston reports today it's a shut up and leave Mr vegan and his policies to the judgment of the Israeli people. In Massachusetts politicians

jockey for position to seize the chance for the kill of the wounded senator who faces about like a stag bag. The corruption hearings in the legislature are suspended toll for election is the name of the game as the season slips toward primaries. Normal political timidity is intensified by the added danger to incumbents of the cut in the size of the house. The issue of abortion holds up the state budget. John Harbor's reports in The New York Times that the concern of politicians across the country is the tendency to merger of the anti-abortion and anti-tax forces in a negative movement that drowns out all other issues. A strong antidote to the negative in the news is Archibald MacLeish His latest book that I got for Father's Day. Writers on the earth in his own deep sense of history. The poet notes as a symbol of the times the disappearance of the attic and so a loss of linkage with a national memory. We have become the first nation on earth to move bodily

into Metropolis says McLeish. In Metropolis there is no attic and therefore nothing to put into a farmhouse over the deaf ear a river remembers how Los Angeles flat can hardly think back to breakfast. As I browse through his refractions sitting under the now forward shade of Michael's I realise something else is missing in the hammock. The very symbol of a lazy summer afternoon has given place to what we call lawn furniture. For Wednesday the university June 1978. That's to be a journal or regional news magazine heard Monday through Friday at 4:30. Producer editor for The Journal is marching towards today's engineer Barry Carter and Bill cabinets. It's the longest day of the year. One day

past a full moon and it's Wednesday worthy of your work. When I think. It's a. Wonderful. Thing. Back. Me. Wall. Want. Me. To fall. You out.

For a. Moment. When. You get to. The ball. A.