The Fields School - An African American School Without Failures
In a time when schools are failing our children, especially African Americans, could it be that taking a careful look at schools, including schools attended solely by African Americans, that were effective in the past, provide insight into why schools are failing today and empower the educational system to operate schools without failures?
One such school, worthy of examination, is the Fields School - a school in Rural Alabama without failures - which served African American children from 1933-1949. Over three-quarters of the sample subjects attending this school had completed a bachelor's degree. Of these, over half, had completed some graduate work, one-third had master's degrees, one a doctoral degree and one a law degree.
President Barack Obama said he was looking for a candidate who demonstrated empathy when he nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be a justice on the Supreme Court. Empathy was as important as the three R's in the Fields School. Renown psychologist Carl R. Rogers says "The state of empathy is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the 'as if' condition." That is the way my first and only teacher during the first eight years of my schooling demonstated empathy. Empathy triumphed over lack.
The Fields School has been meticulously researched. A personal interview was had with eighty percent of the students and fifty percent of the teachers who taught at the school during the period it existed in the 1930s and 1940s.
The researcher concluded that "The overwhelming success of the Fields School despite the limitations of the physical setting, furnishings, and available materials and books represents a triumph of the unusual family over difficult circumstances. ..the school was an extension of the family's commitment to its children. The story of the family is yet to be written."
Copyright 2009 by Uriah J. Fields
