We Put It All Together

Its hall is decorated with a picture of Malcolm X and the red-green-and-black flag of black liberation. As its leader strolls down the corridors, he frequently greets his pupils with the black-brotherhood handshake. This is no revolutionary institution, however, but a Catholic parochial school, Holy Angels, one of the largest and most unusual in the U.S. It is both strict and successful.

Holy Angels' 1,300 students all come from Chicago's crumbling South Side ghetto, home turf of the feared street gang, the Black P Stone Nation. Their parents, half of whom are on welfare, must promise in advance not only to pay $18 a month but also to attend monthly P.T.A. meetings and weekly Mass--even though less than half of them are Catholic. "This is a Catholic school first, not a community school," declares the black parish priest, the Rev. George Clements. "We want them to set an example for their children, and we want non-Catholic parents to understand what their children are learning in school."

This learning, which lasts all year round, includes both religion and black heritage, but the emphasis is on relentless drill in reading and math. "We're preparing them for predominantly white high schools," says Clements. "They won't be getting ghetto tests there." The school's stern discipline includes even paddling as a last resort. So while classes in neighborhood public schools are frequently disrupted by unruly children, the Holy Angels are serene. Explains Sixth-Grader Diamian Bellamy: "If you shoot spitballs in class or throw trays in the cafeteria like you do in public school, you're really in trouble. You might get paddled or have to work in the cafeteria all of lunch period, so you don't get a chance to play."

Parents welcome the discipline. Says James Smith, a diesel mechanic who has sent four children to Holy Angels: "In public schools, the kids come home with their heads busted open from fighting, and they also have drug problems. I don't have to worry about that at Holy Angels." Adds Teacher Lucille Whitehead, who also has sent four children to the school: "Parents are more cooperative. In public schools, kids do whatever they feel like doing and many parents don't seem to care. At Holy Angels, they even call if their kids don't have homework."

In defiance of much modern educational theory, the combination of drill and discipline seems to work splendidly. In the two years since Clements came to Holy Angels, its students in grades four through eight have raised their scores on standard tests to about the national average, while those at a nearby public school still score two grade levels below national norms.

The church and school that Clements took over had long been drifting toward ruin. Erected in the 1890s when the neighborhood was heavily Irish, the buildings were in sad disrepair, attendance and revenues dwindling rapidly. Clements, 41, was a native of the South Side and an active militant who once declared Martin Luther King Jr. an unofficial saint "because blacks have made him a saint." One of Clements' first actions at Holy Angels was to recruit a black staff, including the Rev. Paul Smith as principal of the parish school. Clements also installed a new altar inscribed with what has become the parish slogan: WE PUT IT ALL TOGETHER --BY OURSELVES.

To carry out that boast, Smith organized parents, teachers and children to help rebuild the school. They repainted rooms in bright colors, made new classrooms out of an old storage closet and an unused back entry, and knocked out walls in the cobwebbed basement to create space for a library of 5,000 volumes, mostly discards from the Chicago public library.

To avoid interference by the conservative officials of the archdiocese, Clements has made the once subsidized school completely selfsupporting. Its meager $375,000 annual budget comes entirely from tuition, supplemented by public drives such as the one now raising funds for additional air conditioners. The 34 teachers (17 of them nuns) must clean their own classrooms.

Now Holy Angels is preparing to expand, but in its own peculiar way, to accommodate the hundreds of students it turns away for lack of space. The parish has leased an abandoned railroad embankment that towers three stories above the school grounds. Parents gathered on recent weekends to help clear brush and weeds, and next year the parish will install six mobile classrooms. Says Clements: "This is going to be our school in the sky."

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