Time Steals South-Central Third-Graders’ Hope

Students at the 61st Street School in Los Angeles have cheered me on and cheered me up. Grade schoolers here, prompted by an energetic teacher named Donna Schoenkopf, first wrote me when I was assigned to cover the Persian Gulf War.

“For God’s sake, get out of that place,” one student wrote. “I’m begging you, before you get killed.”

That kind of youthful advice indicated I was dealing with some smart, sensitive kids.

We exchanged more letters, and about a year ago, back from that assignment, I visited the 61st Street School. It is, to use the charged code of the day, in South-Central. In other words, the youngsters are all minorities.

There is no lawn at the 61st Street School. The adjacent Harbor Freeway fills the playground with the shrieks and fumes of traffic. Spray paint and rusty wire fence and cast-off tires piled high in the alley encircle the place with inner-city gloom.

But it is one of our enduring myths that our children bring forth, with their amusing wisdom and beaming energy, fresh optimism for the generations. So it was good to visit the school and have that myth renewed a year ago. These were tough kids, they lived a tough life, but they told me they were going to make the world better. So I figured they had a chance at it.

Now in 1992, I figured the students at the 61st Street School were as good as any Americans to sound out for a concluding installment in my election-year journey.

Schoenkopf’s third-grade class, plus a few of her fourth-grade students from last term, added up to 33 faces. These children would be voters in the years 2000 and 2001. Most of them were natives of Los Angeles, but one boy was from Africa, another from Belize. Several were from Mexico.

Their smiles were still there. But they had not been told they were keepers of a myth.

Of 33, only half a dozen raised their hands when asked if they felt they were lucky. Only two said they felt America was a great country. Asked if they expected to have success in life, hands went up and hands went down, and up and down again, nervous signals of uncertainty.

On the eve of this election on the doorstep of the 21st Century, these children live in fear for their lives, and without a lot of faith in the future of their nation.

“I don’t think America is the best country because there is so much shooting,” says Canarie.

“If America was the best country, there wouldn’t be so many poor,” says Aja.

“My brother was shot two times. He’s walking now.” No need to name that student.

“They’ve got guns out there and they shoot people,” says Jorge.

“All during the riot what we saw! And our house could have been burned, too,” says Melissa. She paused. “It’s just too much.”

“They shoot a lot and they kill the kids,” says Marisa.

“The gangs rob and shoot and break windows,” says Alberto.

To these children, the coming of a holiday brings dread, not joy.

“On Halloween the gang-bangers come out and shoot babies,” says Randolph.

These youngsters yearn for the most basic of freedoms.

“There’s bad people in my neighborhood,” says Antonio. “Me and my mom and my family never get to go out, go anywhere.”

“I can’t go anywhere,” echoes Darell.

They worry about what they hear and see of the world outside their besieged community.

“They’re cutting down all the trees. There won’t be any trees left,” says Charles.

“The trees are going down,” says Miguel.

The third-graders cannot make sense of national priorities.

“The government is taking people’s money and building bombs and there isn’t a war. . . . But we have teachers and this strike (threat). And moms don’t have money to put you in a private school,” says Darell.

They cry out for escape.

“Will you pick me up this weekend? I’ll give you my address. . . . No? Next weekend?” This boy can go nameless, too.

“You’ll be my dad,” says another. I think he meant it as a question.

Their wishes are simple to express, if nearly impossible to envision.

“We need electric cars and not too much pollution,” says Miguel.

“Blacks and whites should get along with each other,” says Melissa.

“We need to give the poor more,” says Jessica.

I’m soft on Donna Schoenkopf. I’ve seen her work and been touched by it. She is there every morning, shoulder to the chalkboard, even as the creases form around her eyes. Her students read the newspaper; they know there is power in writing a letter. Her classes hold together, if sometimes only in her arms.

She imposed on friends to buy her students two easels for painting. She tried to start a garden out back on a tiny strip of asphalt adjoining the freeway, but vandals shattered the tiny pots on the classroom wall. She is worth more than society pays her, or ever will.

Today, as she listens to the despair in the voices of her students, sadness scars her face.

But she knew it was coming. Sadly, maybe tragically, these kids have come to share the view of many adults--that only some kind of unimaginable magic will make their world right again.

Last term, she asked students to write their own ending to the Los Angeles riots.

Darell wrote this: “My end was space creatures came down and fixed the stores and took the furniture and gave it back and everybody fell in love and money fell from the sky and people cleaned the air and rode bikes and gave the cars back and stopped having riots and gave everything back.”