An Experiment in Inspiration

History teacher Gene Almeida took a group of high school students from the California Academy of Math and Science, which meets on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills and sends 95% of its graduates to college. Across the aisle from them were Elijah Woodson’s special education students from Locke High School in South Los Angeles, where three of every four ninth graders drop out before graduation.

Screening for them onstage at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance was a PBS documentary that had messages for both groups of kids.

The film, “Partners of the Heart,” tells the inspiring story of a 34-year partnership between a white surgeon and his black research assistant that challenged racial prejudices and led to life-saving advances in cardiac care. It was supposed to nudge toward a career in science the high school students invited to its premiere last week. But it offered other just as valuable lessons as well.

For Woodson’s kids, it was a chance to learn the meaning of words like “cardiology” and “congenital” that were already familiar to magnet school students. For Almeida’s, it was a chance to see a painful period of American history that had affected science and medicine in ways they never dreamed. For all the students in attendance, it was a testimony to the value of medical research, the cost of societal prejudice and the power of perseverance and humility.

“Partners of the Heart” tells the little-known story of Vivien Thomas, a black man whose dream of attending medical school evaporated when he lost his savings in the Great Depression. He went to work as a hospital janitor, but his talent was recognized by white surgeon Alfred Blalock, who took him on as a lab technician. And in an era when racial segregation kept the two men from even eating lunch together at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, they partnered in 1944 to conduct one of the world’s first successful heart surgeries, pioneering a procedure that saved the lives of thousands of so-called “blue babies,” born with congenital heart defects.

Later Thomas, with only a high school education, was awarded an honorary doctorate and an official position on the faculty of Johns Hopkins, where he helped train some of the country’s most prominent surgeons.

“The film is much more than the simple story of a medical discovery,” producer Andrea Kalin told the student audience last week. “It’s a story of struggle and triumph” over social barriers and cultural differences.

Sitting in the audience among her students from Monroe High School in the San Fernando Valley was chemistry teacher Mary Stepter. She didn’t need a movie to acquaint her with the travails faced by black pioneers in science. She grew up in Mississippi in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when even the smartest black girls were steered toward menial jobs. She got turned on to chemistry by an encouraging high school teacher who “was willing to let me create,” she said.

She so loved what went on in that lab that she went on to major in chemistry in college, even though she was the only black student and the only woman in her classes at Texas Christian University. That meant she did every experiment alone, because none of the white, male students was willing to be her lab partner.

Now the overt discrimination is gone, but obstacles to the pursuit of careers in science and medicine remain. Stepter has no lab of her own on the overcrowded campus, so she hauls her supplies on a cart wheeled from room to room. The equipment must be minimal and scaled-down to make it portable, so no complicated experiments can be done. And she has just 58 minutes to unpack, prepare, teach and clean up after what should ideally be a two-hour lab.

Still, she had 73 students eager enough for inspiration that they signed up to attend the documentary premiere last week, even though it required extra homework and in-class assignments. “It broke my heart,” Stepter said, “that we only had room on the bus for 51. We tell the students, if you really want something, don’t let anything stop you. Then we wind up leaving some kids behind.”

The state of science education is the subject of much hand-wringing these days. Last year, California’s eighth-graders tied for last among 40 states on a prominent national science exam. In the push for higher math and reading scores, California has de-emphasized the kinds of hands-on science that encourages students to pursue research.

The deficiencies are particularly glaring among black and Latino students in urban districts like Los Angeles, where students are handicapped by a shortage of qualified science teachers and by outdated, overcrowded labs.

You can see the results of that gap in the crowd at Los Angeles County’s annual science fair, where the vast majority of the entrants are typically white and Asian kids, most from suburban or private schools.

“That’s something that concerns us, and we’ve started asking why,” said science fair President Gilbert Dean. “It’s not that kids of color aren’t able or interested, but there are obstacles some of these kids have that other students don’t face. Schools that don’t have computers, no money for materials.... Sometimes it’s a self-esteem issue that makes them think they can’t compete.”

Last year fair officials launched an outreach campaign to knock down those obstacles. They trained teachers to teach students how to do research, recruited college students to act as mentors for promising kids, got the Metropolitan Water District to donate money for project boards and provide vans to ferry kids and their projects to the competition. The effort paid off, as the number of schools submitting science fair entries this year jumped from 89 to 160, with many of the newcomers inner-city campuses that had not previously participated.

“When you look at the quality of the work these kids can do,” Gilbert said, “you realize how important it is to help remove those obstacles.”

And when you watch a movie like “Partners of the Heart,” you realize how much we owe to those who showed us that obstacles can be overcome. And wonder whether we’re doing all we can to encourage every young scientist’s aspirations.

Sandy Banks’ column is published Tuesdays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes .com.