Sacramento Bee

Opinion Forum

Governor's mentoring machinery

By David E. Drew — Special To The Bee

Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, June 12, 2005

If anyone can inspire California's struggling and failing students to confront the main barrier to their academic success, it is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Why? His greatest strength is his compelling life story. He learned how to brush aside negative expectations, which are the greatest hurdle most failing students must clear.

Schwarzenegger ignored the naysayers who scoffed at his lofty goals and his bodybuilding.

With an indomitable will and hard work, he turned himself from a scrawny adolescent in a small city in Austria into a world-class athlete, a movie superstar and governor of this country's largest state. The aspiring weightlifter with the heavy accent who went on to become one of the world's best known success stories can serve as a role model for overcoming negative expectations and fighting for success.

In my research about mathematics and science education, I found over and over that the greatest obstacle disadvantaged students face - especially immigrants - is negative expectations. Many adults believe that poor and minority students simply aren't smart enough to master academic material. And, although these expectations have been shown to be erroneous, they undermine the self-image, aspirations and achievement of countless students.

Children find it hard to believe their teachers are wrong when those teachers make it clear that they believe the student lacks the intelligence to learn. Unfortunately, this happens to African American and Latino students, poverty-stricken white students and poor immigrants, among others.

Much of the pathbreaking research about expectations, self-image and resilience has been

conducted in California. For example, mathematician Uri Treisman created calculus workshops for African American students at UC Berkeley who were flunking that course. These were not remedial workshops. Rather, he expected the participants to study in groups and to solve many extra homework problems. The result: His workshop participants excelled and achieved higher grades in calculus than whites or Asian American students with comparable SAT scores. Martin Bonsangue, a California State University, Fullerton, mathematician, discovered that the “Treisman workshop" model achieved similar dramatic results with Latino students.

Stanford psychologist Claude Steele identified the phenomenon of "stereotype threat" - performance anxiety that results from an awareness, often subconscious, that others erroneously believe you are less intelligent because of your ethnicity or poverty.

Claremont Graduate University's Gail Thompson has identified the factors that facilitate the resilience and achievement of successful African American students, including effective and supportive teaching. She also discovered that improving self-esteem, but not achievement, becomes a cruel hoax based on a false promise.

Lately the governor is embroiled in disputes about budgets, pensions and contracts. If he resolves those disputes, that will be effective management. But leadership is something more, involving inspiring people with a vision, particularly young people.

This is the governor's opportunity. Now is the time for him to use his bully pulpit to raise those students' self-expectations. Some students won't listen to a teacher, but they will listen to the Terminator because of his own success and his clear belief in himself, despite the rejection he faced on his way to the top. This wouldn't cost much, but it can yield great benefits.

Specific programs could be directed at students, teachers or schools. The governor could ask each school district to nominate five hard-working, disadvantaged students who would attend  special workshops and receive mentoring, perhaps from business leaders.

The governor could establish awards for outstanding teachers and mentors. It's true teachers should be paid much more, but they also deserve, and will respond to, recognition and respect.

Let Arnold be Arnold. A tough guy who cleared one hurdle after another can't help but inspire those who desperately need to achieve in the one area that stands the best chance of propelling them into the middle class - education. They can't all be movie stars or governors, but they can do well in school, and that's vital for them and for society at large.