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FREEDOMWAYS  FOURTH QUARTER 1968

teachers were themselves very poor, without education, and had not had the benefit of a Headstart. Never in my professional experience, which includes 22 years as an elementary teacher and superintendent of schools, have I ever entered a room of children and not been able to talk with them. But with these children there was no verbal response--even more frightening, there was no language behavior. They sat listless, riveted to their chairs, silent, malnourished, their eyes dull and vacant. There one memorable, ironical response was to sing a song without animation or enthusiasm but loudly, "If you're happy and you know it, Clap your hands...." The loudness of the song and the words denoting joy did not make up for the unresponsiveness to life caused by poverty.

If the raw material was unpromising, the educational program was even more so. Mostly it consisted of what these teachers remembered school was like for them--teachers talking, children repeating. Little or no thought was given to objectives, to children's motivations or interests, to community resources, to children's stories, to activities, to children's needs. I observed, unbelievingly, three- and four-year olds being "taught" to memorize the parts of the mosquito's body, the mosquito having been drawn laboriously on the chalkboard by the teacher. Few educational materials were in evidence. The exception was some wonderful life-size stuffed dolls and animals, the handwork of the teachers. But, alas, those beautiful cuddly toys were carefully wrapped in cellophane and placed so high that the children were unable to see them let alone play with them. Children counted and repeated words, but there was no evidence of meaning, no spontaneity. All this went on in the same dingy, crowded, hot quarters with little change in pace and almost no movement on the part of the children.

More happily, there were provisions for feeding the children. Kitchens had been equipped, cooks hired, and foods distributed. Breakfast upon arrival at 8:00, a mid-morning snack, and a fine dinner before going home at 2:30 filled empty stomachs. The children were learning to eat some new foods, milk being one of them. They had a balanced diet. There were also plans for health examinations and treatment where necessary. To me, the food and health program alone seemed worth all the efforts and expenditures of the entire program.

While I doubted that anything I said would be at all workable considering the obstacles with which these people were dealing, I, nevertheless, felt compelled to quietly, gently, firmly, and persistently

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