Gore Immersed in 6th Grade, Grunts and All

Gibberish.

What came out of the vice president’s mouth on Friday was--no quarrel from anyone--gibberish.

He was playing a part in a sixth-grade drama class, a lesson in which two students, with exaggerated emotion, expression and gesture, improvised a scene where neither speaks anything but guttural sounds, growls and high-pitched squeaks while a third student interprets. The vice president fit right in.

From the moment he awoke shortly after 6 a.m. in the home of sixth-grade teacher Claudia Amboyer--”she cooked me a good breakfast,” he said--to his departure from the L’Anse Creuse Middle School North at 2:15 p.m., Al Gore plunged into the life of the students, faculty, parents and administrators who make up the school community.

Why?

“The purpose is to learn as much as possible about how we can improve our schools,” Gore said. He did not mention the political potency of the county he visited.

Of all the schools in the country, from Florida to Alaska, Hawaii to Maine, the one he picked was in the heart of Macomb County, adjacent to Detroit, where swing voters have played central roles in presidential elections on and off for 20 years.

The vice president spent more than six hours in the two-story brick building. The school opened in 1966 with 424 students and now bulges with a population of 905, 95% of whom are white.

It was, as much as possible, a normal school day.

“We had a typical commute to work this morning--with a motorcycle escort,” Gore said of the trip in a Secret Service armored Chevrolet Suburban. He had stayed up until after midnight, talking with Amboyer and her husband, Donald, about education--and laughing at a routine the vice president had taped two weeks ago for “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” which all three watched as it was broadcast.

The vice president arrived at 7:47 a.m., forgot his Palm Pilot and reached back into the truck to retrieve it. No books; no lunch bag.

He talked with school-bus drivers, janitors, teachers, parents, students and administrators. He helped teach an eighth-grade civics class. He went through the lunch line, picking up two pieces of pepperoni pizza, a fruit bowl, cookies, and a bottle of water. He paid $7 for his lunch and the lunches of two students assigned to eat with him. Others crowded around his table in the noisy cafeteria-auditorium.

At the end of the visit, he met for more than an hour with a group of parents, teachers and students. He offered them a lesson that applied as much to his own quest for the presidency as it did to the student--a would-be Broadway dancer--who asked how one reaches one’s goals.

After a thoughtful sigh, and in a deliberate, quiet voice that bore echoes of Mr. Rogers, he instructed her:

“Be true to yourself. Be honest. Keep a good sense of what’s important in your life. Set priorities. And, if it is important enough for you to reach your goals, you can reach your goals. Know what your intention is. Don’t get distracted. And then, go straight to work on your goal. Empower yourself with knowledge about how to reach your goal. . . . Take care to remain true to your values. And be kind to people along the way.”

Throughout, there was a political undercurrent: Here, a warning to resist the “temptation and distraction and fool’s gold” that might be suggestive of the Republicans’ economic plan--no mention, though, of his rival, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas. There, a snippet from the Democratic candidate’s stump-speech pledge for “revolutionary” changes in American education. In the civics class, studying the Industrial Revolution, a plea for a worldwide ban on child labor.

Polls show education often tops the list of voter concerns. Although a new survey shows Gore leading Bush by 6 percentage points, he trailed the Texas governor, 41% to 44%, when respondents were asked who would do better in education.

Democrats are generally given higher marks on education issues, but “all of Bush’s jawing on education has had some impact--he runs pretty well for a Republican on this issue,” said Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for People and the Press, which conducted the poll.

Gore came to Macomb County to court the so-called Reagan Democrats, blue-collar voters who in 1980 abandoned their party allegiance to support the Republican presidential candidate.

In the Michigan Republican primary election, the county narrowly favored John McCain; now the supporters of the Arizona senator are being courted by both Gore and Bush.

But it is the nationwide “parent generation,” in the words of one Gore advisor, that the vice president was primarily targeting on Friday.

On a broader basis, the advisor said, education has become in the campaign “a metaphor for all issues affecting kids--violence, jobs, Internet access.”

The day was a learning experience for Gore. He spoke of the need to reduce the size of classes--a message hammered home by parents, he said--and the difficulty parents find in making time to take part in school activities.

“One thing that I didn’t realize, that I learned throughout the day,” the vice president said with surprise in his voice, “is that the bus drivers are the first adults representing an institution outside the home that many kids ever encounter. . . . and their tone and demeanor and friendliness and relationship skills turn out to be pretty important for setting the mood for the way the kids relate to the entire school. I wouldn’t have realized that, or thought about that.”

In the 50-minute civics class, where Gore talked about the invention of the cotton gin and telegraph, of the political pressures to build turnpikes and of global warming, the 22 students remained focused on the vice president--paying little heed to the Secret Service agent at the door and the three Gore staff members and 19 journalists pressed along the back and side walls.

“It was great, just meeting him and getting to speak to him personally,” said Dan Lindeman, 13.

As for the gibberish, campaign spokesman Chris Lehane couldn’t resist the political jab. “We’re getting ready for our debates with Bush,” he said.