[Ohiogift] Boston Special Issue

[Will Fitzhugh]

In 1993, after Albert Shanker's second column about The Concord Review in the New York Times, a senior, very influential, and civic-minded lady in Boston called me to suggest I open a competition for a special issue of the eleven best history research papers by Boston public high school students. I had published a special issue of Extended Essays for the International Baccalaureate Organisation two years before, and, as I had not yet received a history paper from Boston, I really liked her idea. I thought we could send a class set to one history class in each Boston high school, and also send copies to education departments in many other U.S. cities, to show them the exemplary history papers of which urban HS students were capable.... 

She and I met with the person in charge of Boston high schools, and the mayor's media person, and I met with the heads of several high schools. In a meeting with five social studies chairpersons, I showed them copies of the journal and laid out our plan. One stopped me, and said: "You don't understand. Our kids can't write a sentence."

After 18 months of talking about the project, not a penny had been raised, even for the printing of an issue, and they had developed the idea that the eleven high school history students who were to be published would be volunteers, chosen in advance, each of whom would be assigned a local college student as a mentor (the assumption being, apparently, that their teachers would be no help). So died the Boston Special Issue competition.

In Boston, high school sports competitions are managed differently….


Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
www.tcr.org
fitzhugh at tcr.org






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