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PARTISAN REVIEW
element of heterogeneity, so that the problems here are much more
severe.
Kurt Scholz: I would agree with you, but there is also
;l
small minority
of Chinese and Southeast Asian children in our school and they have
absolutely no difficulty adapting to our school system. They are often the
most brilliant students.
Edith Kurzweil:We're going to talk about this issue tomorrow; there's a
whole panel about it and maybe you can come. However, I think all of that
has to do with the way our system is structured, and that's precisely what
we're trying to discuss here. Maybe we could restructure?
Linda Sartorelli: Chester Finn, you described quite accurately, ten char–
acteristics of American students as they come to colleges and universities:
they don't study hard, they're always told they do well, etc. As a faculty
member who confronts these students on a day-to-day basis what advice
could you give me?
Chester Finn: Bill Bennett always gets out of those kinds of questions by
saying, "I don't do retail." I'm going to have to give a variation on that
answer. I don't have good advice for how to deal wi th this problem at the
micro level. I think it is a systemic problem, a tructural problem, and I
think it needs structural solutions. There are many teachers in the K-12
system who triumph over the bizarre situations there. You could go see the
movie "Stand and Deliver," about a great teacher who triumphs over
adversity and manages to teach his students calculcus. There's a movie
waiting to be made about a college professor who does for entering fresh–
men what Escalante did for these high school kids.
Rita Kramer: Well, in the interest of full disclosure I have to tell you
am not a teacher. I have no classroom experience except as an observer.
But I would suggest to you something I would call the "Corn Is Green"
phenomenon, the movie in which Bette Davis played a teacher in Wales
and Evelyn Williams was her pupil. In a sea of unresponsive young people,
she found a young man whose genius she was able to nurture, and her sat–
isfaction late in life was knowing she had sent at least one person out into
the world better-prepared than he would have been without her. So, lots of
luck.
Harry Stein: Please do retail because you could help me with a problem
I face Monday morning. I'm a follower of Tip O'Neill from across the
