Among Schoolchildren

Tracy Kidder. Among Schoolchildren. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.

Among Schoolchildren is, in essence, an account of one year in the working life of an elementaryschool teacher, "Christine Zajac," in the somewhat decayed industrial town of Holyoke, Massachusetts. In this work, Tracy Kidder, best known for his account of computers, The Soul of a New Machine, has presented what amounts to a "nonfiction novel" about Chris Zajac. As a vivid account of teaching a culturallymixed (mainly "white" and Puerto Rican) class of fifthgraders in conditions that are more nearly innercity than suburban, Among Schoolchildren is a lively account of the experience of teaching or at least, of Mrs. Zajac's experience of teaching, as presumably witnessed by Kidder himself.

Wellwritten by an author with a background in both journalism and sociology, Among Schoolchildren could be heartily recommended to the general reader who wonders what teaching is like, with two important provisos: we do not know how typical are the experiences of Room 205 of Kelly School and for that matter, we do not really know how the author's view of Room 205 compares to Mrs. Zajac's view, to that of her students or their parents, to Al Laudato's (the school principal), or to that of another outside observer. It may be said that Kidder is more successful as a journalist than as a educational sociologist. The picture he draws is vivid, but it lacks perspective; it is not adequately en

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whom school seems to pass by like a river current past rocks, but as an active rebellion. He is one of those students who seem to deal with their anxiety about failure by actively embracing it. Early on, Zajac notes that Clarence's cumulative file "cume," in the argot of Holyoke school system teachers is a thick one, and that the thicker the folder, all too typically, the more problems the student has. At the beginning of the year, Zajac makes the conscious decision not to look in Clarence's (or anyone else's "cume," so as not to be prejudiced in her dealing with the students (pp. 8ff). But eventually, as Clarence's problems become more pronounced and it becomes clear that "something" will have to be done about him, Zajac surely must have looked into the "cume." The reader would dearly like to know what is in it, but we are never told. Now, school system confidentiality regulations may play a part here, but they could surely be gotten around, since the names given in the book are in any case changed. Nor are we ever given a view of Clarence through the eyes of the school's psychologist, when eventually the decision is made to evaluate Clarence for possible transfer into a special program "Alpha"

Category: Psychology - A