Bucks
Tom Peterson, Philadelphia Schools Part One
Dear friends,
Good morning. “Where can I go where the need is the greatest,” Tom Peterson answered when I asked the Quakertown man, why in the world would he volunteer to teach in one of the worst schools in Philadelphia?
“Everyday I come home with a story where at some point, I say, ‘stop me when you think I’m lying,’ ” Peterson continued. “But they’re true stories.” He gave me an example.
“I don’t have my home work because my house burned down,” one-ninth grader at the Frankford High School told Peterson.
In 1970 he taught science in the Philadelphia public schools before entering the private sector for more than 30 years. I remember chatting with him at Richland Meeting one Sunday. Peterson was a former Chief Clerk at Richland Meeting. It wasn’t unusual for him to talk about one of America’s most pressing problems…desperately poor children growing up in urban streets, filled with violence and neighborhoods offering no hope. So I wasn’t surprised to learn that he’d left the world of computers and big bucks to become a teacher in a very unstable Philadelphia slum.
Two years ago he got the urge to try teaching once again. “I wanted to find out if I could still teach,” Peterson said, “So I took a job driving a school bus for a year. I figured that if I can control kids at 45 miles per hour [in a school bus], I could control kids in science class.
“Of all the school districts within commuting distance, Philadelphia has the greatest shortage of science teachers,” Peterson told me. The administration placed him in a ninth grade physical science classroom. “There’s a terrible discipline problem,” he said, “the kids are too young to drop out.”
But they’re not hesitant about attacking teachers. Peterson was a victim of five separate assaults and has a missing tooth to prove it. “In Philadelphia, if you commit a crime as a juvenile, chances are that you’ll commit a crime as an adult,” he said. “If you’re black, you have a 9.2 more likely chance to be in jail than if you’re white.”
That’s because there are insufficient black role models in the poorest neighborhoods where there’s a disproportionate number of black young adults…who are either in jail or dead.
“In the city, more than 50 percent of children fail to graduate from high school,” Peterson said. “It’s not unusual to have ninth graders reading at third grade level. Unfortunately, social promotion is current S.O.P. (standard operating procedure),” referring to 6th, 7th, and 8th grades…the middle school years.
“The worst urban problems are poverty and violence,” Peterson continued. When children experience violence in their neighborhoods and come to school hungry, there’s little chance that they’ll excel in the classroom.
“When the brain doesn’t feel safe, it will get rid of what’s to be learned in less than 20 minutes,” Peterson observed sadly.
So what’s the solution, I asked?
“I’d eliminate poverty,” he replied. “It’s a chicken and the egg thing. I don’t know how to eliminate poverty, but I can’t provide an education when the environment’s filled with violence.”
Peterson offered two solutions.
“First, you have to stop the violence,” he said. “There must be a rigid adherence to a set of rules that allows for a safe environment. There must be consequences if you bring an unsafe issue to school. The leadership in the building must set the standard of whether rules will be enforced.
“I watched kids using cell phones urging their friends to come to school and fight,” Peterson continued. “Cell phones have become instruments of violence. I think that cell phones make schools less safe.
“Second, I’d raise the expectations for each grade,” Peterson added. “A ninth grader needs to know what’s required before getting into the tenth grade. Unfortunately kids learn, at a very critical time in their lives, that failure is acceptable.”
On one subject, Peterson and I agree. In city schools across the nation, we think that the only way to break the endless cycle of poverty is to keep the schools open 24 hours a day, 52 weeks of the year. The public school is the only place that can feed, educate, and provide role models for children that are very much at risk.
Yes, it would be expensive. But what’s more expensive? Today, two million Americans are in jail, each at a cost of $40,000 per year. Friends, that’s 80 billion dollars every year…and no end in sight. Running the schools 24/7 would break the poverty cycle in 30 years…according to Meredith.
As Derek Bok, the President of Harvard University once said, “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.”
In September, Peterson will teach physics and Advanced Placement (AP) Physics at a very different Philadelphia school. The Franklin Learning Center in center city is one of four magnate schools, has an excellent reputation…and it’s safe.
Peterson will occasionally supply us with his thoughts as he heads back to school. Stay tuned.
Sincerely,
Charles Meredith