Teach me!

About this book

Egleston Community High School in Jamaica Plain, an impoverished and broken-down Boston suburb populated mainly by Latinos and African Americans, was where Murray Levin, a retired Boston University political scientist, had gone to work, trying, as he puts it, to "teach and feel useful." Levin set out to teach social sciences; what he achieved was not only an awakened desire for knowledge among kids who had been routinely discouraged in that pursuit, but an insight into a world view derived from their everyday alienation. From his experience teaching about matters as diverse as God, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and television, came this book, a rich and literate account of "how black and Latino adolescents see the world. ... It is an account of their politics, their apoliticality, and their transcendent dreams." But Teach Me! is more than that: it is, as Levin puts it, "a record of new ways of teaching that dramatically changed the way of thinking of some troubled kids. This is a book that describes the evolution of a new and successful pedagogy that can be used in any schools where teachers are willing. Teach Me! is not just a description of ghetto life. It is a prescription for change in urban education.". Rather than teach the usual American political mythology that epitomizes the standard high school curriculum, Levin taught the value of clear thinking. Egleston's kids had difficulty reading, but they were remarkably subtle when it came to telling stories. Levin put that talent to work in writing poetry and short stories, and then in learning logic and social science methodology. Using these tools may have been difficult at first, but they empowered these students and gave them the tools to make sense not only of history and politics, but of their implications.