TECHNOS

February 9, 2012

TECHNOS QUARTERLY Winter 1992 Vol. 1 No. 4

Interview with James P. Comer, M.D.

With Carole Novak

Child Psychiatrist 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. TECHNOS spoke to Dr. Comer in June 1992, after the riots following the Rodney King Verdict. Sadly, Maggie Comer died in September.

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.

But in your family's case, things were different, weren't they?

There are exceptions. In my family's case, in some ways we went from uneducated to highly educated in one generation. But that's unusual.

Your mother, Maggie, is a person who has a spark, something inside of her that absolutely will not be defeated. And she found a like person in your father. When the two of them got together, there was just no stopping them. How can we help the kids who don't have that spark?

That's what schools must do—and can do, if they're willing to adjust. One of the problems is the assumption that education is an isolated activity, that there is a certain amount of information that we can pour into kids' heads. But education cannot be isolated from the environmental context, because it affects motivation and the kind of personal development and discipline that is necessary to enable a person to gain an education. So you've got to provide an environment that allows children to feel wanted, valued, and accepted, one that allows them to accept you.

So they can trust…

That's right. And then you can encourage them and give them experiences that will help them develop all the skills necessary to gain an education. But, what we've done is write off kids who come to school underdeveloped, personally and physically, and undermotivated. And we write them off as if they're not able or they're bad—as if they want to be bad or unable. We lose those kids.

Very early, apparently.

Yes. There are kids who are on their way out in kindergarten. You can tell. Veteran teachers know. And unless we can do something in the schools, beginning in kindergarten, to help those kids, we'll lose them forever.

What are some of things the Comer schools do to save these kids?

One of the things that people point out who've observed our schools is that our children feel comfortable, wanted, valued, and are secure in their environment. I still argue that—while there are ways to teach that are more efficient, more effective, more pleasant, exciting, and so on—children will learn, no matter what method you use, if they feel wanted, valued, and accepted in an environment in which they can interact with caring people they trust. So we've focused on creating that environment.

What happens to kids once they leave a Comer elementary school?

Our experience has been that there is a wash-out by the eighth grade if the program isn't continued. Some of the kids will do okay, though, even if they don't get the support of their parents.

That's true. Is it wrong to think that some people have a spark—or some stubbornness—that keeps them going, no matter what?

I think it's a combination of a spark and an innate intelligence. Bright kids who have it will make it through. But it also takes a problem-solving mentality. That's what my mother and father had; they were determined to hang in there for as long as necessary. With a problem-solving mentality, nothing can stop you. You meet an obstacle head on and deal with it. And my father said that to me very directly in regard to race issues: ‘Never let your race stop you from doing what you want to do.’

You've said that the advent of television changed the way people were educated and how they've thought about education since World War II. It seems you have ambivalent feelings about the medium.

Well, television itself is a two-edged sword. It gives information, but it also exposes us to things we may not be ready for, such as too much violence. Unless you use it as a stimulus for creativity, it can crush creativity, because people can get accustomed to having images presented to them and watching others use their imaginations, rather than using their own. On the other hand, in schools that use it as a stimulus, imagination and creativity are developed. So, television can be a benefit or a detriment.

Part of the problem may be that teachers don't know how to use television effectively.

Or they just are against it without thinking about how they might use it. A major problem in education is this notion that there's a certain body of information that we pass on, rather than setting it up for discovery and making certain that body of information is obtained. You set it up for discovery; you manage that discovery process. And it has to be managed at the building level on an ongoing basis by the staff and by the parents. This is not, for the most part, the set-up we're comfortable with.

It's harder to do, isn't it?

Sure it is. Because it's risky; it may not happen the way we want it to. Part of what schools of education could do to change the way they train teachers would be to make applied child development a core course in education. A teacher ought to know what a fight on the playground means. It could be an impulse control problem, or it could be a frustration management problem, or lack of negotiation skills. It could mean a lot of things. But you can help kids learn from an incident rather than punish them or call them ‘bad.’ It's an opportunity to promote growth and development. It's also essential that teachers learn to manage the system of learning. When you do that, it creates an atmosphere where you can do your job; you can teach.

Would you term this ‘school-based management’?

Our governance and management systems are the basis of what's now being called ‘school-based management.’ But we say that this system is not enough. Because when most people talk about it, they're talking about managing the school so the curriculum and the instruction interact. We're talking about the way you relate all of the stakeholders in the program and the school appropriately and enable them to interact well so that they can support the development of the children. And then you can make the connections to curriculum and instruction.

And the stakeholders are?

The parents, teachers, the staff, the janitors, the kids—everybody.

Your program is mostly about empowering the stakeholders, and that means that people like teachers and principals have to give up control.

That goes back to what people are basically like. People aren't decent, sharing beings, by nature. We want to be, we strive to be, but we're basically insecure and fearful. And we're always trying to create what will make us more secure.

People find their comfort zone and don't want to leave it.

That, again, is basic human behavior. The comfort zone is security. That's why change is so threatening to people. It means we must move out of our comfort zone. Change, then, is moving to a level of incompetence—and we are uncomfortable there. But we must learn to move on.

It can be very exciting, but very scary, too.

Yet with courage, we can set up systems to manage change whereby we don't punish people for poor outcomes; we manage in order to obtain good outcomes. That's one way to deal with change so it isn't so scary.

You've said in the past that you ‘don't like standardized tests’—assessments—because teachers and others tend to focus too much on the tests and forget about the learning process.

Well, I guess some means of evaluation is necessary. That's why I like [Harvard professor] Howard Gardner's idea of the student portfolio. The kind of testing I value most and see as most useful is internal testing for the purpose of finding out what children know, so a curriculum can be developed that enables them to grow. I realize you do have to be accountable to the people who pay the bills, to parents, and to society at large, and so at some point external evaluation is needed. But it shouldn't be often, so that you're always testing the kids and worrying about the tests. You really should be worrying about evaluation for the purpose of adjusting your academic program.

I don't like the national standards because we know they will be misused. We know they're not for the purpose of teaching for better growth and development. Everything in our society, all of our history, tells us that what we'll do is compare poor kids and rich kids, and see which people do better, and then we'll say, ‘See, these kids deserve it, and those kids don't.’ There is no question about it—that's what will happen.

We will not develop an index of academic implementation. We won't ask whether there's a full-time teacher who is trained in a particular subject teaching every day in those classrooms. In poor areas, often only substitute teachers teach some classes. And there is tremendous turnover of both teachers and students because of the economic conditions, so there is very little school stability. In such situations, there is no way to evaluate those test results.

Without the context…

Right. We'll have the results without the context. And that'll be used against poor kids. I know some people argue that they would use national standards and assessments to point out that kids aren't receiving proper care. But I don't believe it. We already know kids aren't receiving proper care, and nothing's being done. So, I'm opposed to it on that basis. Plus, it's just not useful anyway.

What is your opinion of using technology to keep track of students' progress?

I think that's valuable. Students should probably do that themselves also. That's part of the portfolio method wherein students become responsible for their own track records and progress through school.

Can a computer in the classroom help?

I think it has value. But there's a notion I want to get across of ‘increments of gain.’ I think most learning is made possible by creating a climate in which kids can learn. And it's only a part of the total learning experience. The next thing is the quality of the curriculum and instruction, which helps to increase the amount of learning. The next element is technology and all the resources you can mobilize in support of the educational process.

Technology is important. It can increase your efficiency and effectiveness; it can reduce time spent; it can help you keep track of records; it can help you organize and manage the process. All those things are very valuable. But, if you have technology in the absence of good curriculum and instruction or in the absence of good relationships, then it is much less useful.

The computer is blind. It can't see if I'm black or white or if I'm male or female. Kids can take a chance on an incorrect answer.

That's very valuable. Kids need to be comfortable enough to take chances. But, again, a child has to be to that point to be able to take the chance and to be a manager for himself, which means you have to have relationships and conditions in which the student feels accepted.

In a November 1988 Scientific American article, you called for the formation of a National Academy of Education. Do you still think it's a viable idea?

I'd like to see it, but I don't think we'll do it unless we get a change in administration. We're going to have to struggle over the next few years, as we privatize education, with a big-stakes atmosphere. In a free market, private enterprises don't have the same responsibility as public ones. If there's no money in it, they can pull up stakes and leave you high and dry. I don't think this country has the luxury or the time to experiment with our children's future. There are enough examples of what happens to poor people in private institutions. If you ask them to meet the same responsibilities as the public system, they can't do it, because they can't make money doing that. You can't provide for the children with the greatest needs and still make money. You can't do it. The reason we have ghettos is simply because there's no money to be made there. And the same thing will happen with education. We're just going to create a different ghetto. We have it already in the public schools. We have more public schools serving affluent areas than we have public schools serving ghetto areas and other troubled areas. One's a higher-cost education than the other.

The danger is that we can't stand as a society with a continued low level of funding for education among that group of children most vulnerable. We can't stand it in our society much longer, or we'll pay the price very soon—it's already happening—and it'll be terrible. There's a geometric progression of social problems, because the undereducated children can't be absorbed into the economy in unskilled jobs any more. So, one kid who doesn't do well in one generation means there will be five in the next generation, 25 in the next, and 125 in the next. That's a very real education problem in this country.

Actually, there are two kinds of education problems. We talk about them as if they were the same, but they aren't. One is the problem of middle- and upper-income kids: They aren't doing well because the culture is rather anti-intellectual. But they're going to make it, one way or another, because of their families or their contacts within the economic system. Then we have a second group of kids whose families are locked out of the economic, social, and educational mainstream—and they're not going to make it, unless the educational system adjusts and brings them into the mainstream. If they don't make it, their failure can pull down the whole country.

We should worry about the others, but they're not the real problem. America will survive and can flower, even with scores that aren't the same as Japanese students' scores. The real problem is the kids who aren't being developed to the level where they can participate.

You've been at this since 1968—here we are, in 1992. Will it happen?

Well, you've got to have leadership that fully understands the nature of the problem. Not only the educational problem, but how that's related to the economy and the future of the country.

That doesn't exactly answer the question.

We have to hope that it will happen. Right now, the vision is not there; the understanding is not there. But you can't say it won't develop. So you have to hope that it will develop, and you have to keep plugging away and helping people understand. The people who are voting against the policies that would make the education of all kids possible have got to understand what that means to their future.

For more information on the School Development Program and the ATLAS Communities, write to

In addition to the print version of this important TECHNOS Interview, you can now listen to the interview with Dr. Comer from AIT's Reinventing Our Schools. These audio excerpts are provided to you by TECHNOS and can be listened to using the Real Audio player.

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