Marva Collins: Real Education for Black Students

Really, I teach because I love me and I want to learn. Every time I teach my students, I learn something. Marvel Collins is found of a West Side Preparatory School in Chicago. Many of the schools' 200 Black pupils are labeled problem children and come from backgrounds of poverty. Marvel Collins believes in excellence. And before she's done, so do her students. I'm Femmental Henderson. But Black Educators was a word of Black kids need with Plato's Republic. I think there's nothing any more profound to explain to us where we are. If more Black people understood Plato's Republic, we would understand why we are where we are and why we are going to stay where we are and how to get from where we are. Because Plato created the classes of people, the gold, the bronze, the silver, the copper. And those classes were created intentionally because if I take you two and put you into a class and I decide I'm going to teach you the classics and I'm going to teach you Latin and I'm going to teach you words of light, garb, chagrin, and dame them on, and entrepreneur. And I'm going to teach her C. Pepper and C. Sue.

Don't tell me you're not going to emerge as an intellectual group. It's as simple as that. I can take you in this room and keep you here one hour and give you a test. And the group that I lower the standards for is going to do poor on that test. And I can only take me one hour to do that. As I say, it's all intentional. I mean, look at the textbooks that our children have taught. Then they go home to our parents who do not have PhD degrees. Our parents do not have Wall Street Journal on their breakfast table in the morning. World affairs are not discussed at our breakfast tables. At our tables, let's face reality, most Black people were did not come from individuals educated homes, and then Black educators will sit and talk as if they came from the Paragons of Excellence. You know, I came from a small town in Alabama where my mother said, my grandmother said, Oveana, D. Share, and damn, and I understand that. But I also understand universal language, too. What should the schools be teaching? That's been generally debated all across America.

Well, the first thing you need to get rid of is the easy to read, easy job. There's been billions of dollars on junk. Going to the average school, they have more balls than pictures and rabbits and bunnies. The textbook says, how many bunnies? Of course, they have three. And the child doesn't know three when they see it. And they can't spell three. Then no children learns multiplication tables. And now we're putting computers in the schools. And the children never learn to multiply. They never learn the multiplication facts. And black parents are running around. You see, oh, it's going to be a computer or a literacy age. Of course, the computer company told you that. It's to benefit them financially. And you know, every black parent is running around thinking that their child is deprived and that they don't have a computer. Will we never learn to read right and spell and speak English in the first place? What kind of textbooks do you use for your class? We use the spiff off of the Omoguffy readers.

The readers that were used by royalty in England and the 1800s. The Royal Ballet readers. Because I want it. What was best for our children? I found what the best used. People running around talking about the Kennedy's being so bright. All they do is cite from Euripides and Aristophanes and from Keats. One of Kennedy's speeches said, though much has been taken, much abide. It comes from one of Keats' poems. And you know, it's so sad that we think these people are brilliant. And all they're doing is holding the masters of the past. But since we don't know the masters and we think they're brilliant. Now to what side do you have grades divided the way they are in traditional schools? Our children are from our started three, our three year olds as I say, are reading and writing sentences. And everybody thinks it's phenomenal. They're reciting whole pages for memory. But it's consistent, too. We don't do it one day and then not do it the next day. For example, if our children are doing the Pythagorean theory, they will do a research paper on Pythagoras.

They didn't know how to spell Pythagoras. They know what it means. They're not just, they can't tell me the Pythagoras theory. What is a theorem? Who is Pythagoras? Tell me something about them. Spell it. Use it in a sentence. If that's that, why? Why is it that? Why is it that? I mean, are not just giving me an answer. What do you think? Or if we are doing the Greek gods, one child yesterday from the housing project told me he had forgotten one of the continents and he says, Mrs. Collins, I need Namasini, the goddess of memory, to help me memorize. But do you realize how that shakes somebody from a project child who's not using the word MF and who has learned that there's another word that we need the goddess of justice to bring some justice back to the poverty and the people there. And these children's parents are so proud of them. I don't want to hear. They don't always come to the meeting. They don't show that they're proud. But they'll tell everybody they meet. My child goes the worst side. Prep it. My child knows you should hear the words. My child can say, every parent is proud of their child.

They don't always show it. And I'm not always pleased with their participation. I get angry with them. But I have their children anyway. Now, you have 200 students. How many, what kind of a ratio is this? We have 50 children sometimes in one classroom. The good teacher teaches. And the poor teacher makes excuses. The good teacher will always make the poor student good and the good students superior. Collins appreciates the relationship of high self-esteem and high academic performance. You have to learn to life yourself. You have to learn to life yourself. You have to learn. You know, if that sounds very trite. But I think as a people, we have been so busy with the crab mentality that you learn. I have to say to the receptionist. When parents come up in their room, listen. When parents come in and get rid of me, and you did this to my goodness, and you did that in the works to her. Yes, Mrs. Jones. I will make sure it is. I want to hurt and get her out the door so I can continue to do what I'm going to do with Johnny anyway. The whole thing is we have very argumentive at times. Because I'm going to help that child.

I don't care if she kills me. I don't care if she calls me a name. I don't care what she says. But the quicker we agree with her, the littles of time we keep them there and I still have finally had to learn that. I think we spend a lot of time arguing. I love Marvel. I really do. I look in the mirror and I really like me. To the point where people often say that they find me intimidated. When you walk on stage with people who hit. For example, I got an award. The public service was washed in with David Stockman. Mrs. Kennedy was there. Jackie Kennedy. I walked in the room and walked across. I said, well, here is Mrs. Kennedy, from red cliff. And he was walked across. I was a Rhodes Scholar. And my recall is from black college in Atlanta. But I think you have to feel good and not put on airs and be who you are. I mean, when I walk in a room,

I walk in with the attitude that my daddy taught me. He always taught me. I was a pretty child in the whole world. And to walk with your head high. And when I got dressed, I couldn't get dressed rapidly enough to go in for him to see how I looked. And I suppose though, you really have to like you. When I come into the school in the mornings, I really dress for me, for the children. I don't dress any differently for speaking again and then I dress to go to school. And I did that when I had the school in my house. And my children will say, you are so pretty, but I say, not as pretty as you are. And I think that's the whole thing though, is we don't like ourselves. And we're constantly trying to get an upper on another person. And we just have to feel good about ourselves. Touching the children and positive reinforcement are frequent approaches to students at a West Side Prop. Collins even believes in beneficial punishment. If a child is turning around, I will say, or I think your life is in front of you, not behind you. I love you.

But I won't have that. If a child insists on doing something and will not start, I will say, come and stand before the class and give your speeches to why I'm too bright to waste my time. I think everything can be positive. We give them these dumb lines like, I will not chew gum. They write that a thousand times. I think that's the dumbest thing in the world. Our children will do the etymology of them. For the first gun came from our one parent, calming one night and said, my child say, would you please thank him? He is so tired of trying to find a way to hit kicked a child. And he had to do the etymology of kicking, who was the first person they ever kicked. And she'd say, had all of this encyclopedias, and I said, look, he got himself into that. Ask him, whose foot kicked the child yours or he is? And since he did the kicking, you got yourself into this. So this is what you have to do. And then we grade those papers and we hang them on walls. And then some teacher will come in and pilfer, actually pilfer papers from the wall. And there will not be how that paper occurred. I mean, it's been a whole series of situations.

If they insist on talking, I will sit in their seat and take their pencil and pen and say, now I'll show you I can behave, now you do the teach. You've put them on the spot and they're standing before an entire classroom and they stand there and they look silly. And many times they have the confidence to go on and teach. And you become the student. But you respect that. And it is convinced her way is better than most. I don't wait for someone else in America to tell me, that's what's wrong with America. Everybody's using this product. So it's for me. I mean, everybody is going to this vacation spot. So it's for me. If everybody's doing it, I figured there must be something wrong with it. Can you predict what that's going to do to the course? Thousands of black students. All I'm doing right now is I can only start my own teacher training institute. None of our teachers have a teacher's desk by the way. We are among our students all day. Every day. Teachers at West Side prep walk around the room maintaining distal pen and providing assistance to students. With this system, Collins finds no needs for desk for teachers.

She points out, the attitude of your child's teacher may be the most important variable to what? And if the child learns? If the teacher is not secure and you make waves, you're going to make worse problems for your children. Some teachers can't be changed. That's why I want to start my own high school. Because just a week before last, my daughter has 165 IQ. Three in child. It read all the classics. The most college freshmen had not read. When she went to this high school, where they're only about maybe 20 black children there. Very wealthy private school. And the teacher called me and said, the sister, Mrs. Collins, you will never guess what your daughter has done. I said, oh Lord, she burned that in school. That you killed someone. That's great. And she says, she was sitting in the middle of the piano with her legs crossed. And so when she came home, I said, well, I'm glad you were sitting like a lady with your legs crossed. But I'm not condoning that. For 14-ager, it's not going to get into mischief.

Why couldn't she just have taken care of that there? I would have said, no, you're too bright. You're not after my collater. And then she went on to tell me that was her home training. That was the kind of home she came from. Yet she's never seen my home. See, these are suppositions. So what do you do with a person like that? Well, I already have these preconceived myths and ideas. I went into the same thing as a parent. She went on to tell, well, she knew better than to tell me that, but she told her that that was her home training. And that's what she does at home. And if she has that kind of attitude, think that that happens at your own learning. Some of those teachers will say dumb things like, of course, Ms. Jones would know the answer to that question. It's really cute with me. Children, instead of doing it with life, a child is sleeping, I will do it jokingly and say, it must be tough. High as a husband and kids, or if it's a male, I'll say, high as a wife and kids. I know, I feel so sorry for it. It's tough working at nights and taking care of a family and coming to school during the day.

And the kid laughs, and we laugh, and we go on. Well, still that doesn't... I'm saying that if the teacher is insecure, you know, you want bad answers, we all in this together. I'm not an expert. I can't give you. I've had to find my own answers. And I think everybody is looking for a messiah to come up with... This is not lemonade instant dinners that you put into an oven. You're looking for instant answers. I said that to say, I do have my problems with schools. I mean, you're looking for a panaceaer. Sir Thomas Moore, look for Utopia. Play to look for. There's no perfect situation. But if you go to a teacher who's insecure and make waves, your child is going to get in trouble. And you don't have to go to the secure teacher anyway because you're going to do a good job. And if a teacher could teach, they would. Those who can teach do. And those who can't, they can't. And I don't care what you say. They can until they're retrained. And now this matter of materials that you referred to earlier

should parents be monitoring that and writing school boards that they're dissatisfied with what testing you have to start with the school boards and see what they're selecting. But how many parents are intelligent enough to know what their children should learn? That's putting a big responsibility on parents. Say, if your child is in medical school, how do I know how to teach my son to become a doctor? That's what I depend on. That's what you said in school. This satisfaction with public schools led Colin to start west side preparatory school. It teaches preschool for three year olds through the eighth grade. Continued dissatisfaction causes her to realize she may need to start a high school and teacher training school as well. She suggests each parent should do what they can, including interacting with principals and school boards to ensure the quality of their children's education. She too decries American education. There's going to have to be a change in education. There's going to have right now. We can continue to be called a nation at risk. We can continue to have the kind of

epidemic literacy that we know here. Do you support the merit teacher, master teacher concept? Yes, if I respected the way Americans usually do things, but the whole thing, how do we know it's not going to be a personality thing? If we were paid on merit pay at my former school, my principal never would have given me merit pay. Because I was constantly making waves. Many times merit pay might come from a teacher who doesn't make waves and who goes along with the system. Absolutely. So you have to be sure that it's an outside source because I never would have received merit pay. My principal told someone the other day, you know, I really made her, I did her terrible when she was here. And I really lost a good teacher and I really should have been better to her. I really should not have done the things I've done. So I never would have. The only thing was her to get her out of here and shut your mouth. So when you're talking about merit pay, who's going to do the merit?

Who's going to make sure that cheating does not come about? I think some of the other proposals, I'm just feeling out the recommendations of the president's commission had to do with longer school days. Well, that's kind of stupid. You don't expose person to more misery for a longer period of time. And you don't give more homework for something they never learn to read in first place. And I've told him the very same thing. I mean, that's stupid at most. Well, the poor, here you have a doctor that's killing you. So to make sure he makes you better, you leave him with that poor doctor a longer period of time. That doesn't, that's causative at least to me. Our day begins at seven for the teachers. And we are there sometimes at nine and ten o'clock at night. I really like for people to ask me that, because I don't expect anyone to say, I can't tell you, it's like saying, how many hours do I have to put into succeed? You have to put in as many as necessary for you. I do, we do it because we want to do it. I mean, we're there on, I might run out there on Christmas day after we've opened our gifts and eaten dinner. I might run out there on Thanksgiving, our Sunday, Saturdays.

I can't tell anyone else what they must do. I do it because it's a part of us. I mean, I have to tell my teachers, why don't you go home? Sometimes I'll call back out there in the afternoon and I'll say, why are you still there? Why don't you go home? But we do it because we see success and we want more success. Does Collins believe private schools are better than public schools? It's not just public education. That's bad. We have bad private schools too. We have good private schools and we have good public schools and bad ones. Our whole methodology of training teachers to teach is what's wrong. That's a problem. Are the private schools any better off of? Some of them and some of them aren't. It gets to be a real... I mean, that gets to be a real... We want little airtight vacuum, you know, either answer yes or no. Think, for example, for a moment, if you can, of a black child having to celebrate,

say, Patrick's birthday, but can't celebrate Dr. King's birthday. Think of a black child, for example, who has to... who must... celebrate the Irish heroes and heroines, but not their own. And you can't blame those people because it's their school. The wealthier, the school, the more bored the children are, the more things in junk they have, the more paraphernalia runs around, like drugs, that kind of thing. Of course, you don't hear about it, because their parents are the policy makers and their parents decide what in-use a press and what does not enter the press. You take an average street poll and ask the average college graduate what they've rat recently. The only thing they can tell you is perhaps Daniel will steal or sit in a children or some paper bag. But the classics here are not steeped in. To show you how far behind we are, a million-dollar, celebrate newsperson the other day, call the word,

J-U-N-T-A, J-U-N-T-A, on the word is hunter, believe. You can see the demise of language everywhere. Our schools are giving children fewer choices, and not only public schools, rather than more choices. My children were much brighter before they went to school than they were, because I was reading the Iliot to my children when they were six and seven, while we waited for the bus to pick them up every day. And then they went to school with C. Sue and C. Pepper, and G. I mean, what a comparison. They were reading when they went to school, but then still, each one of my children were reading before they entered school. My daughter, who is now still a year ahead of her, sat the kindergarten teacher said, I will not have a five-year-old in my first grade class, so she could read everything you she picked up. But she gave her a bad time, and she would never let her read, she would skip over her, and that was a private school, by the way, $4,000 a year at that time.

She would skip over her, always in the reading, and she would say, Mommy, but she never let me read, and then say, don't worry about it, you know, you know how to read, but that was still difficult for a small child, though I still told her, don't worry about it. But here was a teacher who couldn't stand the fact that a minority child could read, and that you had to be six years old to be first grade. Collins explains, the method many schools used to teach reading originated at Guadaladette College and was intended to teach deaf mutes to read, not normal children. She also notes that for teachers to buy tests that would measure their knowledge and competency, as is alleged in Arkansas, further indicates the need to improve teacher training. She believes in active teaching. We're doing Macbeth, we will give a background on why Shakespeare wrote Macbeth, because he wanted to, or please King Jane, who's the King at that time, he says, I'll give him which is the seven deadly sins that's inherent in Macbeth, and what are they, and the quest for power, and what are some of the things we learn from the Bible, that should not kill, and here they want a power war, we have to do to get power, then after that we will have the trial of

Lady Macbeth, where we have a jury, we have a juror, and we have a judge, we have an attorney, we have people in the court, and you should hear the carrying on, but it's a reinforcement of what they've learned, then they learn this little queasy, have to learn those from memory, then they write letters to the characters, to Lady Macbeth, to Macbeth, and we don't just read to be pedantic. When Julia Caesar says, beware of Cassius, for Cassius is a lean man, a lean man, a thinking man, and thinking man are dangerous, and our children will tell me all the time, Mrs. Collins, people don't like us, because we're thinking people, people don't like thinking people, and they can people are dangerous, and these children that you will say, read Macbeth today, you're not paying attention down, of course you're not reading, you know, silently, but when I say read, and then I'll say, stop, go, and you never know when it's going to be your turn to go, so it makes everybody pay attention. When is the right time to start teaching them these kinds of things? What is the first thing to teach? To teach children? A young child. As soon as they're you can teach a baby to read first, all you need to do is draw a picture, parents can do that,

they can draw a picture of something that the child knows. As soon as the child says apples, he no one taught me this, I just did this, oh my god, you draw a picture, say the child is already saying apple, then you draw a picture of an apple, you write the word apple, you show it to the child enough, and then you take the word away, take the picture away, and one day the child, the baby will tell you apple. I don't expect an expert, I tried things, oh my, oh a child can learn to read in the grocery store. In fact, I think maybe we should take them to the bathrooms to read, where they write all the graffiti, because they wrote it. We will not let a three-year-old use the word big with us. They knew the word big when they came to school, okay, it's got going to it, and I tell them the story of gone going to an impantic girl from rabbi law, and then I will tell them huge, gigantic, as soon as I learn another one. You know, what we keep letting them use, I'm such a smart child, but they'll tell you I'm a sigacious child, but that's what we've

talked to them that way. I'll see, now you knew smart when you came. Now, I want you to go home and tell mommy today. Mommy, I'm a very sigacious child. What did I say? Seagacious, and they'll keep saying it, and then I says, wait until you go home today. Mommy's going to fall out when she hears that word, and they'll come. Mrs. Collins, when I told my mom about that word, she says, where did you learn that? And then they'll say, Mrs. Collins, teach me another way. Collins maintains that they begin preparing their students for Dartmouth or Harvard from the moment the students first enter West Side Prep Store. What does she think of a minimum 700 scholastic after test score for college admission? Whatever the maximum is for anyone's child, I'd like to be for our children too, but I'd like for them to be given the opportunity. I think all anyone needs is an opportunity. I see nothing wrong with it. We keep lowering the standards, but then not only what you want, but you must have the skills to get there, and you must be very good at what you do. No one's going to lower the standards here, so why don't we lower them for the SAT?

Are we saying that our children are so illiterate or so inferior? Then we're given support to the people like Jenna, who say they're black children or inferior. We can learn anything that anybody else can learn. If we survive slavery and made it through the stripes and toil of slavery, then we can do anything else. Hard work and preparation of what makes her effective according to Collins. Among her success stories is that of Kevin Ross, a six foot nine-inch basketball player who went through college until his eligibility was used up. After that, he came to Westside Prep, reading on the second grade level. When he left Westside, he was reading above 12th grade level. Another reason Collins worked so hard to educate her students is that she feels she was poorly educated. I am a teacher, and I realized that I received a very inferior education. I realized I received a black diploma. Someone wrote me a letter and said, you get a lot of negative, crazy letters as well as good ones. I hope you're not given a children a black...

I hope you're not using your black diploma to teach a literacy to children, and I wrote him back. And it's in a frame on my wall in the school. And I wrote him back thinking, very much, and I said, yes, you're very right, I did receive a black diploma and a black education, but I did something about it. So sometimes we get angry instead of facing the truth. I knew nothing about the classics. I made sure I did that myself. We read the winter I discontent, not realizing that it comes from our Shakespeare's plays. We read the book Fatal Vision, that realized it comes from one of Shakespeare's also little quiz where the blade is coming toward him. We read bloody instructions that most of the textbook titles were taken from, and that's what good attorneys have to know. When people are talking about plagiarism, you can go right back and say, it's not plagiarism. We say that Dutero Roosevelt said, oh, there's nothing to be feared so much as spirits itself.

He didn't say that. Him or David Thoreau said, nothing is feared so much as spirits self. And he said, and the reason I know, he must have said it first, because he never. Collins attended a press conference at North Carolina Central University today, after an informal address to students. She speaks there tonight at Alfonso Elder's Student Union at 730. We usually might speak just mostly about return to excellence, relighting the gallons of excellence in America, stab using excuses, and about becoming a good place and really thinking that we're good enough. You know, you're never good at what you do. There's so much to learn. Like the example you said, how did you get to be so smart? I really think I'm such a dummy because there's so much to learn. Unless they call a moratorium on books, I will never learn all the things I'd like to know. When I look in the dictionary, I realize how illiterate I am. Marva Collins, founder of West Side Preparatory School in Chicago. I'm Thameshul Henderson, for WUNC.