‘Teachings for All Humanity’ : Schools Write 9th Chapter in King Essay Contest

School rivalries are usually settled on the athletic field. But each year, students from Portola Junior High in Tarzana and Emerson Junior High in Westwood defend their schools’ honor on a different sort of playing field: the classroom.

For the past nine years, a student from either Portola or Emerson has been a winner in the Martin Luther King Jr. essay contest sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Portola officials brag that one of their students has been a winner each year the contest has been held. This year, Robert Morimoto, a ninth-grader in Portola’s Highly Gifted Magnet Center, won the competition for his grade level.

Emerson had a flurry of winners when the competition started in 1977, but was shut out of the winner’s circle in the early 1980s. The school returned to its winning tradition with back-to-back winners in 1984 and 1985, yet failed to win this year.

“It’s really exciting for those of us who read the essays because we always expect outstanding entries from Emerson and Portola,” said Mary Kreip, a former teacher who has been a judge for the essay contest since it began. “Of course, we get winners from other junior high schools, but we can always count on someone from those schools being in the final group of essays.”

Sparking the Creative Urge

When told of what the SCLC perceives as a rivalry, administrators and teachers at the two schools downplayed the competition. Winning, they said, is not as important as finding a way to get the students to write, research and apply their knowledge of history to current events.

“Of all the essay contests that come across my desk, the SCLC’s is one of the best, because the topic isn’t so broad that the students can’t focus their thoughts, and it gives students a chance to put their knowledge to practical use,” said Barbara Riead, an English teacher at Emerson who encourages her students to enter the competition.

“By exploring Martin Luther King Jr.’s movement, our generation might be able to begin doing something to improve conditions for all people.”

-- Kimberly Karp, Emerson ninth-grader

There are two topics, depending on grade level. For elementary school students it was, “How I Plan to Celebrate Dr. King’s Birthday.” The topic for students in grades 7 to 12 was, “Back to the Future: Exploring Our Past to Create Our Tomorrow.” Writers were asked to tell how King’s dreams and beliefs could be applied to solving current world problems such as apartheid, the nuclear arms race, hunger and economic exploitation.

“One of the primary aims of the SCLC is forming strong partnerships with educational institutions in this city,” said Genethia Hayes, a SCLC program director who served as an essay judge. “I guess this goal comes directly out of Dr. King’s philosophy about children being judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin.”

Each year, the SCLC distributes competition information to all 618 Los Angeles Unified District schools, to schools in the Inglewood and Compton districts and to several parochial and private schools in predominantly black neighborhoods of Los Angeles.

The competition is open to students in grades 3-12. This year, Hayes said, the SCLC received a record 925 entries. There is a winner for each grade. Besides the winners from Portola, there were two winning entries from Woodlake Avenue School in Woodland Hills.

Four judges for SCLC read each essay, looking for excellence in composition and style, creativity and originality. They also evaluate the research that went into the essay and how the writer applied the research to current events.

Essays that make the first cut are reviewed a fifth and final time by a panel of judges made up of active and retired teachers, members of the Black Journalists Assn. of Southern California and a member of the SCLC board of directors.

‘Difficult to Decide’

“We had 150 essays in the finals and they were all so good,” Hayes said. “This was the best crop of essays we have ever had. It was very difficult to decide on a winner. But in a way, it was also gratifying that it was so hard to make a decision because it showed that teachers are really teaching and that students are really learning.”

Hayes added, “It’s heartwarming to see that so many children from so many ethnic backgrounds participate in the contest. Celebrating Dr. King’s birthday is not just a black holiday. It has become a holiday for all people.”

“Turning back to the future now, in countries such as South Africa, where racial injustice still occurs, it seems that a capable civil rights leader could look back and constructively use the techniques of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.”

-- Robert Morimoto, in winning essay

When preparing to write their essays for the SCLC competition, Leon Yen and Angelik Smith of Portola talked to their parents about the impact of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Mark Paskowitz used an encyclopedia and other reference materials. Morimoto relied on research done a year ago for the 1985 essay competition, which he did not win.

Learning about the role King played in the civil rights movement was the most obvious benefit Portola students gained from taking part in the competition, teachers said. But English instructor Carol Stabler had other goals in mind when she had her students enter.

Lesson in Essay Writing

“I used the contest as a springboard for working on the essay form,” Stabler said. “Students have to learn that writing is more than staring at a blank piece of paper. . . .

“This was an excellent exercise because they had to wrestle with philosophical ideas.”

After completing work on the essays, the Portola students said they had a better understanding of King’s tactics and why he worked outside the system to change laws. They also said they believe that nonviolent civil disobedience might be a better protest tool for black South Africans protesting apartheid.

“Dr. King protested peacefully and that was a good example for people,” said Charles Chiu.

“ I feel that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings should be seen less as teachings for blacks and whites and more as teachings for all humanity .”

-- Mark Paskowitz, Portola ninth-grader

To the ninth-grade essayists in Emerson’s journalism class, Martin Luther King Jr.’s principles go beyond the civil rights movement.

“He wasn’t only trying to bring blacks and whites together, he wanted Christian and Jews, Russians and Americans to understand each other, too,” said Jason Rosen.

“He knew it was better to use nonviolent methods and talk it out,” Kimberly Karp said. “That’s what we should do about nuclear weapons. We should talk our problems with the Russians out instead of building more weapons.”

“If Dr. King were alive today I believe he would use the same protest methods to help end apartheid,” added Seema Amar.

Support National Holiday

The Emerson students were also fiercely supportive of having a national holiday in honor of King’s birth.

“He was fighting the system, but there’s nothing wrong with that,” said Katrin Cohen. “It’s our system, but that doesn’t make it right. He showed the world what was wrong and how it should be made right.”

“Dr. King opened people’s eyes,” Niloofar Ghodsian said. “Instead of people saying ‘Oh well, America is a great country,’ he showed us that it is not as great as we think and that we have to work to make it great.”

“If we all pull together and strive for all of the people in the world to be free, we can do it. . . . Although he was jailed and scorned and eventually killed, he didn’t give up and neither should we.”

-- Loretta Woolfolk, Emerson ninth-grader