Needed: Strong Soldiers

"What urban education needs is not more money but more parents willing to give their children care, motivation and chastisement--the will to learn." The speaker is the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a former lieutenant of Martin Luther King, oratorical spellbinder and director of Chicago-based Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), a community development organization founded to help the urban poor. Jackson has been preaching a new gospel of self-discipline to replace self-pity among black high school youths. "We keep saying that Johnny doesn't read because he's deprived, hungry and discriminated against," says Jackson. "One of the reasons Johnny does not read well is that Johnny doesn't practice reading." Is Jackson blaming the victims of discrimination and deprivation for their own plight? No, he replies emphatically. "Racism is the enemy," he says. "But it takes strong soldiers to fight a strong enemy, and you don't produce strong soldiers by crying about what the enemy has done to you."

In Washington (where school enrollment is 97% black), Jackson's remarks have been warmly received by Acting School Superintendent Vincent Reed and many teachers. But some of his listeners wonder: Can students, by an act of will, overcome chaotic family lives and schools with overworked teachers and inadequate equipment, textbooks and libraries? Jackson's answer is bound to stir hot arguments. "Nobody will save us from us," says he, "but us."

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