Interview with James P. Comer, M.D. /Technos
BBr...@aol.com
By Carole Novak
http://www.technos.net/journal/volume1/4comer.htm
<A HREF="http://www.technos.net/journal/volume1/4comer.htm">Interview with
James P. Comer, M.D.</A>
Child Psychiatist Dr. James Comer is director of the School Development
Program (SDP) at Yale University's Child Study Center in New Haven,
Connecticut. Before 'School-Based Management' was a buzzword, it was in
practice in the Comer schools. Beginning with two New Haven schools in 1968,
SDP has spread to 200 schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia.
Comer's philosophy is based on his upbringing, which he recounted in his 1988
book about his mother's life, Maggie's American Dream: The Life and Times of a
Black Family (New American Library). Comer is a member of the Atlas Communites
design team that received one of 11 grants from the New American Schools
Development Corporation as a “Break-The-Mold” school project.
Is it true that when you tried to explain child psychiatry to your mother, she
said it just sounds like ‘common sense’?
Yes, that's true.
If it's just common sense, why is it taking so long to figure out?
Because we are not really rational beings; we are insecure beings. We don't
always do the reasonable thing. So we are always looking for ways to keep up
our defenses. As a result, we act in ways that are not logical and rational.
Will we make things better someday?
I'm fairly pessimistic. Especially in this day and age when we are in crisis,
yet—given the ability to change public opinion on such a large basis—we can't
turn things around. But I'd say things are pretty bad right now.
There's this terrifying trend toward violence we're experiencing again.
Violence isn't the underlying problem, in my opinion. It's a symptom of social
policy that's the problem. It's a breakdown of the social contract. We ask
people to live a certain way in society and, in return, they should have
certain rights and opportunities. When society violates that contract, then
you can expect violence. The riots in Los Angeles are no different than the
labor riots at the turn of the century. They occur after a basic social
contract is broken, when people fight for basic opportunities. It is not an
issue of simple violence, or of law and order, but an issue of economic
opportunity.
Your School Development Program is based on understanding how children develop
and offering them opportunities through education.
That's true. And yet, we already know how children develop. And we know that
they have certain needs, and that if those needs aren't met, children won't
develop and learn well, even in the best of circumstances. We know what
children need. It's just that we don't provide it as we should.
Is it because we don't value education the way we should?
No. It's because we don't value certain groups of people. We don't value poor
children; we don't value minority children. There was a time when we could get
away with that in society because those children, as adults, could be absorbed
into the economy into jobs that didn't require education. Today, we can't get
away with it. Since the 1950s, education has become the ticket of admission to
living in our society. And those jobs that offered the opportunity to provide
for oneself and a family—to develop high expectation through economic
opportunity and the possibility of a sense of social and psychological well-
being—were lost.
Today, ‘education’ means not just a high school diploma, but a bachelor's
degree and in many cases, a master's degree.
Yes. And the other thing that's happening now is that we require children from
families that are uneducated, poorly skilled, to become well-educated, well-
skilled—even sophisticated—in one generation. Now, that's never been the way
it has worked for most people. Most poor and minority families take three
generations to complete the process, which parallels the three generations of
change in the American economy.
The rest is on the website.