In a December 15th letter to the Dayton school board, Dr. Wayne Carle, superintendent of Dayton's public schools, wrote: "Racial integration is both the number one social and number one educational problem confronting our country. If schools fully overcome the effects of racial isolation, there is considerable reason to believe that they can also unravel the related issues of humanization, motivation, accountability, financial support, and learning problems confronting public education in general . . .'

But as the histories of Mark Lewis and Melvin Robinson and others like them at Valerie School indicate, the problem of children ending up on the scrap pile will not be solved by integration. It will only be solved when administrators and teachers begin to hear the language of their students, and to understand it.

At St. Agnes School in Lower Dayton View, where 40 per cent of the 270 students are black and the class size of 30 is approximately the same size as public school classes, there has been one suspension and two paddlings in the past two years. “When a kid gets angry and says 'motherfucker', the last thing in the world I will do is be shocked and scream at him," explains St. Agnes counselor Betty Jane Kurtz. "Screaming at him is the best way to help him curse the next time he gets angry. If I can't act calmly and work with the kid to get at the cause of his anger and change his mood, then I'm not controlling the situation. I'm not helping anyone."

At St. James School on the West Side, where 140 out of 175 students are black, Sister Mary Ann Drerup, the white principal, recalls only one suspension in recent years. "A long time ago, before I learned to control my adrenalin, I remember slapping a girl who sassed me. And making another girl wash her mouth out with soap for cursing.

"But I learned. The first thing I learned was never to act when I'm angry. That is a rule for our teachers here,

too. When children misbehave, it is usually because they feel inferior for some reason, or they are jealous, or they are in a power battle with the teacher or another student. It takes time to get at the heart of the problem. If you don't calm down first and think, both you and the student are lost.

"I remember a girl that I just didn't like. She was so...I don't know... flip. She just rubbed me the wrong way. One day, in class, she was reading out loud to herself. Without thinking, I said, 'Read with your eyes, not with your lips.' And she looked at me and I could see how she hated how I spoke to her. I thought to myself, 'Wait a minute. First I better deal with myself before I try to change someone else's behavior.'

"It does take time to learn about children. But I don't know any other way of reaching them.".

XXII.

If the Dayton public schools continue to lack the patience to reach their thousands of "difficult" students, then suspension, dropout, and juvenile court referral rates will continue to rise. The administration's stated dream of "quality education" will simply never happen.

ХХІІІ.

Donald Blanton, Roosevelt freshman: "Some dude name Donald Catten he's my best friend. We've been knowing one another for four years, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th. We went to Weaver School in the 7th and 8th grade together and went to Roosevelt High for the 9th and 10th together and we get hi together fight together get suspended together. Me, him and Dudley Thomas all three of us get suspended all the time in the 8th grade...

"If I could do what I want all day with no one messing with me and my lady we would have fun all day and good fun too all day playing in the bed just playing not have sex or anything just be playing and having fun for once just like we would if we were little again and lay in bed, talk, laugh, play, eat food or popcorn in the bed or something like that...

"Me, Catten, and Dudley was taking dope we was shooting $70 a day habit all day every day we would shoot dope. All three of us had sons and they was seniors in high school. All three of them ran together, played football and basketball together and they did just like us. We played football, basketball and ran together, fight together. Sometimes they would drink some thing together and get hi and had a son all three of them...'

XXIV.

Edward Bratchette, Roosevelt freshman: "If I was head of Roosevelt High and I had a bad day I would expel any person who come in my office and beat my dog if he jump on me when I get home."

RAP OF DAYTON: JUNE 27