Escalante

...Yet precisely because he remains a journalist and self-consciously rejects any "search for an enveloping theory," Mathews does not fully mine the implications of his findings...

...There's no mention of parental choice or voucher schemes, which he may justifiably consider beyond the scope of his book...

...But it made no sense to travel so far for just the upward mobility of an Ivy League degree...

...In addition to his knowledge of higher math and his teaching skills, he brought with him a crafty, profane hardness that one might associate with peasants from the Indian villages on Bolivia's altiplano, where his parents were teaching when he was born...

...Like any good organizer, he builds a following by keeping the costs of joining high...

...As a result, he motivates and trains his students to achieve beyond what would ordinarily be expected of them, but they may still be too group-oriented and insufficiently individualistic...

...a typical greeting is, "Good morning...

...He'll probably work in the body shop when he graduates...

...In his sharp-eyed vignettes of Escalante, his students, and their families, Mathews provides an extremely clear, uncluttered window on contemporary Mexican-American urban life...

...If they follow the pattern of other immigrants, Hispanics will be absorbed only slowly into our highly individualistic society...

...When he learned that the AP results for several of his students were being questioned, Escalante telephoned ETS and was told the subject could not be discussed because "It is a confidential matter, a one-to-one thing...

...With such perspective, Mathews could have scrutinized the effectiveness of Escalante's teaching methods...

...Indeed, the outrage at the presumption of the Princeton-based testing conglomerate that Mexican-American students were unlikely to score well on the AP exam did not fade away...

...Lay off the studies...

...It is certainly no accident that one of the administrators with whom Escalante has most effectively teamed is an East Los Angeles native and former training officer in the Army, where group dynamics are also relied on to train young men and women...

...Maybe he's just not right for your class, Mr...

...Far beyond goading, cajoling, and insulting his students into academic achievement, Escalante creates an alternative setting in which achievement leads not to loneliness or isolation but to participation in an exclusive group...

...Getting up at two or three in the morning to study calculus until breakfast, when the seven other people in the two-bedroom house where she lives resume their normal activities and noise, Escalante's student is told: "Your first priority should be your religion, your family and friends...

...You're not involved with it...

...Yet when Leticia's trigonometry interfered with her responsibilities at the family's restaurant, where her math skills were desperately needed, Escalante paid a visit to her parents, who were demanding the girl drop his class...

...So did earlier generations of community leaders in New York City, for whom the "Italian problem," as described by Nathan Glazer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan in Beyond the Melting Pot, referred to the high truancy and drop-out rates among Italian schoolchildren, whose strong families tended to undervalue education...

...Today, Americans don't know much about Hispanics, but they know what they like...

...It eventually inspired the film Stand and Deliver (to be aired on PBS's "American Playhouse" on March 15), in which "Miami Vice" star and East Los Angeles native Edward James Olmos plays the pudgy, balding dynamo, Escalante...

...Jaime Escalante knows this...

...Even when such kids manage to excel in school and are offered handsome scholarships from Ivy League colleges, they and their families hesitate and ESCALANTE: THE BEST TEACHER IN AMERICA Jay Mathews/Henry Holt and Company/320 pp...

...As the subtitle suggests, this book tries to capitalize on the persistent education reform movement...

...Mathews's book offers a fuller and more intriguing look at this teacher-celebrity than the film, which is, after all, subject to the dramaturgical limitations of watching kids study calculus...

...Hispanics have picked up on this theme (particularly during the Reagan years) and have taken to flaunting their family values—sometimes as if they believedthe rest of America was raised on one big Anglo kibbutz...

...Explaining why Escalante requires his students to stay after school every day until five o'clock, and why he requires students and their parents to sign a contract agreeing to such a requirement, Mathews observes: That was to remind the parents as much as their children of the seriousness of the venture...

...That's a good job...

...For if Jaime Escalante's methods do not maximize individual creativity, they help provide young Mexican-Americans with the skills and confidence on which they and their children can build...

...But he is probably the best teacher in East Los Angeles...

...They had to be persuaded the time might not be better spent in chores at home...

...Meanwhile, "Johnny" is an all-purpose name for the boys...

...His Anglo readers thereby miss out on some much-needed perspective on Hispanics...

...once there, they must do as they are told or risk being either thrown out on the spot or transferred to a distant, undesirable high school...

...Students must fight their way into his classes...

...The point is emphasized when Mathews relates an episode about Escalante telephoning a father whose son had missed two algebra homework assignments...

...Mathews does make passing reference to such parallels with Escalante's methods, but he neglects to explore them...

...An algebra teacher who majored in Italian, and whose teaching methods Escalante does not approve of, is labeled "the Medfly lady...

...U nswayed by academic dogma that dismisses cultural explanations of poverty as "blaming the victim," Mathews reveals the variety of obstacles—bureaucratic, economic, and cultural—impeding the mobility of barrio youth today...

...But as the example of Jaime Escalante serves to remind us, it would be equally unwise to expect too little...

...Doghouse" is synthetic division (whatever that is...

...As Mathews makes clear, fostering a team spirit among his students is central to Escalante's approach—hence frequent classroom allusions to team sports...

...And in his attempts to demystify difficult math concepts, Escalante apparently relies so much on group effort that individual creativity is neglected...

...Mathews shows Escalante and his team stymied by ETS's instinctive and thorough-going effort to deal with each student in a shroud of meritocratic privacy...

...To be sure, Mathews also describes how proud many of these parents are of the achievements their kids wring out of themselves, and how frequently they encourage their children to push themselves academically...

...Since that episode Escalante's efforts have placed East Los Angeles's Garfield High, with a 95 percent Hispanic student body, fourth among all public high schools nationally in the number of students taking AP calculus exams...

...After several frustrating years of teaching in La Paz, Escalante immigrated to Los Angeles in 1963 at the age of thirty-three...

...At least this possibility comes to mind when Mathews depicts the specific difficulties Escalante and his students experienced dealing with the cheating charge...

...In any event, his students have returned the favor...

...Leticia Rodriguez is the third of seven children of a couple who met in Mexico, came to the United States as cooks, and eventually started their own small restaurant west of downtown Los Angelesan apparent American success story...

...For example, some, including Escalante himself, have noted that the strikingsimilarities in AP test responses which prompted ETS to charge the twelve Garfield students with cheating have much to do with Escalante's heavy reliance on drills and cookbook problem-solving techniques...

...Despite this pronouncement—and with some threats about violations of the child labor laws—Escalante eventually prevailed, and the girl stayed in his class...

...And what they like is the focus on family in Hispanic cultures...

...Mathews goes beyond stale horror stories about big-city education bureaucracies and inner-city teachers who either give up on their students or do nothing innovative that would threaten or challenge their colleagues...

...In the same vein, we hear a Mexican-American mother fretting over her daughter's frantic schedule...

...Reading this book, I was struck that barrio youngsters, enveloped in their not always harmonious but nevertheless intense families, might well find academic achievement a rather isolating experience—and not just the loneliness of studying, but the more subtle psychological dimension of venturing into alien territory where close family members can be no guide...

...Mathews tells this story not to illustrate the patriarchal nature of barrio families, but to demonstrate how modest are the expectations some barrio parents have for their children...

...So do Mexican-American school administrators, truant officers, community organizers, and activists...

...Like reformers at the turn of the century, when we last received comparable numbers of immigrants, some Americans expect too much, too soon, of today's newcomers...

...But such treatment is hardly limited to Asians—or even students...

...The distinction underlines the moderation and patience we will all need as we cope with the inevitable difficulties experienced by millions of Hispanic immigrants and their children as they settle in our cities...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1989 41...

...And Mathews mentions several other Garfield graduates who spent a year or so at some elite Eastern university only to return and attend a local school like Cal State-L.A...

...Not all such obstacles are this dramatic...

...A vivid example arises when we see him at the classroom door quizzing students who must earn their "ticket" into trigonometry class with a correct answer...

...These get their due, but Mathews's honesty leads him to the equally frustrating problems a teacher like Escalante has struggling with barrio parents and their kids prone to settling for less than they deserve...

...And sometimes accompanying this renaming is ruthless mimicry...

...Typical was the decision of the Garfield valedictorian who turned down Harvard in favor of USC...

...For just such a reason, he has his quicker students tutoring his slower ones...

...Yet his steadfast reportorial stance also means Mathews does not tell us as much about Mexican-Americans as he might have...

...But Escalante's creativity is best revealed in his penchant for renaming everything and everyone in his domain...

...Similarly, he turns the beginning of class each day into a small pep rally, complete with warm-up exercises and heavy metal rock music with students singing and pounding desk tops in time with Escalante's lead...

...Go have some fun...

...The family might be fractured for survival," Mathews writes, "such as sending a brother or son from the barren farms of Sonora to the job-rich cities of the United States...

...And the process will likely be a paradoxical one, whereby immigrants become Americans not as individuals but as members of their ethnic group...

...In the end, Escalante never did get the chance to look at the disputed exams and explain how the pattern of answers might have reflected his teaching style T hus, it may be that Jaime Escalante is not "the best teacher in America...

...For example, Escalante may launch into a football cheer as a young girl on the cheer-leading team walks into class late...

...Still, he tells us quite a lot...

...Mathews does mention merit pay, about which he expresses some perfunctory skepticism...

...it is an outside evaluation for which preparation, Escalante insists, binds students and teacher together...

...M athews shows how a good teacher like Jaime Escalante overcomes these obstacles by putting demands on his students that deliberately and directly compete with those of friends and families...

...Escalante," said the father...

...Indeed, his students refer to "Escalantese," of which Mathews offers a glossary at the end of the book...

...The only private school sending more students to the exams is Andover...

...This broader perspective missing in Mathews's account also highlights the limitations of Escalante's methods...

...What good is a nice B in some class if you're in the hospital...

...Yet Mathews also shows that Escalante is revered—perhaps not exactly loved, but in many cases that too—by his students...

...Many adults living in East Los Angeles had never even attended a high school, much less taken a college-level course in one...

...Pleading a bad memory for names, Escalante refers to all his Asian students as "Kung fus," which I'm sure violates some National Education As-sociation guideline...

...Similarly, the team camaraderie that Escalante fosters corresponds to the rites of teenage gangs—serious competitors for the attention of barrio youth in Los Angeles...

...Yet aside from reminding us that disadvantaged students need to be challenged and good teachers need to be left alone by the kind of bureaucracy Escalante has had to battle, Mathews doesn't have much to say about urban education today...

...BOOK REVIEWS T aime Escalante first received national attention late in 1982 as the barrio math teacher whose twelve students bested the Educational Testing Service by retaking and passing the Advanced Placement (AP) calculus exam on which they had been accused of cheating...

...So much for Allan Bloom...

...Face mask," for example, refers not to a football penalty but to a mistake at the beginning of a problem...

...Yet to judge by the past, many Americans will lack the patience and insight into their own history to appreciate this pattern...

...Mathews begins with Escalante in his native Bolivia, where both his parents were ill-paid schoolteachers...

...S o the value of this book lies elsewhere...

...As Jay Mathews, Los Angeles bureau chief for the Washington Post, writes in Escalante The Best Teacher in America, those twelve students "vindicated themselves, Garfield, Escalante, East Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Unified School District, and—many community members declared—MexicanAmericans everywhere...

...After sitting through Escalante's pitch about Leticia's potential, the father (to whom the mother had already deferred) retorted: "Women are just here to get married and have kids and that's all...

...As a result, Mathews points out, Escalante has more than his share of enemies in the Los Angeles public schools...

...Escalante's students must also submit to his quirky personality and sometimes devastating wit...

...the girls, depending on the victim's foible, typically are called Madonna or Elizabeth Taylor...

...In addition to requiring his students (even those with after-school jobs) to stay late every afternoon, Escalante holds study sessions and classes on Saturdays and during the summer...

...Mathews touches on this point when he observes that "students followed his [Escalante's] idiosyncratic ways because he amused them and made them feel part of a brave corps on a secret, impossible mission...

...Still, his point remains (though he doesn't put it quite this way) that among such barrio families there can be a large gap between professed belief in the importance of education and the demands of daily life—in other words, between intentions and actions...

...For example, Mathews offers an anecdote that was also depicted in the movie about Escalante...

...19.95 Peter Skerry 40 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1989 often turn them down for something closer to home...

...But going no further, Mathews misses an important point...

...Finally, Escalante outfits his AP calculus class with jackets and sweatshirts emblazoned with his logo—a fierce bulldog wearing dark glasses and Escalante's trademark motorman's cap...

...almost malicious eccentric who is willing to try anything to get his students to learn math...

...Or he can get work as a j anitor...

...I'll charge you twenty-five, five dollars for the teacher...

...In 1987, Escalante's school produced more than 26 percent of all Mexican-Americans in the country who received a passing grade in AP calculus...

...For when not zealously committed to education (as Jewish and Asian families tend to be), and when so tightly knit that individual initiative is discouraged, strong families can hinder the social and economic mobility of their members...

...Sometimes the name is more pointed, as with Gordita ("my little fat one...

...Indeed, through Mathews's eyes we see Escalante as a gruff, manipulative, often brutally honest and, at times, Peter Skerry, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is completing a book on Mexican-American politics...

...The AP exam itself reflects this approach...

...half in jest, half in respect, they call him "Kimo," from Kemo Babe, which is of course what the loyal Tonto called the Lone Ranger...

...But this love-feast over the family, to which liberals now also pay lip service, has obscured the fact that strong families can be a mixed blessing...

...You're still failing...

...In typical style, he quips to his students, "The jackets cost twenty dollars...

...I say "learn math" advisedly, because Escalante's single-minded approach leaves little energy or tolerance for students and teachers interested in sports, music, and even history or English...

...How are you...