41 pages • 1 hour read
Among School Children
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Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Pages 229-258 Summary: “Isla del Encanto”
Mrs. Zajac’s church holds Mass in English and Spanish. The English Mass is always quieter without children, and people spread out in the pews. The Spanish Mass includes children and lots of talking, and they tend to sit together in the front pews. Father Joyce, the parish priest, initiated bilingual services to try to bring the communities together. Mrs. Zajac’s student, Judith, teaches Sunday school at her family’s Pentecostal church where her father is a pastor. Judith teaches her lessons using things she learns from Mrs. Zajac, such as disciplining difficult students and having a commanding presence. Judith’s father left Puerto Rico looking for better opportunities, as wages and work in Puerto Rico lagged behind the mainland United States. He sustained an injury after moving and welfare partially supports him, which is a stereotype of Puerto Ricans who move to the mainland.
Mrs. Zajac sees racism often as a teacher. She hears white parents and other teachers complain about Puerto Rican students or their children learning Spanish. She feels angry when people are rude to her students, even when they are behaving well. She notices how classes of white students do not receive the same rudeness. Many Puerto Rican families were encouraged to leave for the mainland after World War II, and the people who left were usually those who were poorer and least capable of handling the transition. Many people return to Puerto Rico during periods of high unemployment on the mainland, creating a back and forth emigration that likely only adds to feelings of having no homeland or connection to their culture.
Filipe, another student, has a father who moved to the mainland when was a teenager, and he moved back to Puerto Rico after losing his job once. Each time he has visited Puerto Rico, he has noticed both the old farming culture he remembered as a child and increased Americanization. His old town in Puerto Rico has two Burger Kings, whereas Holyoke only has one (249).
Mrs. Zajac takes a trip to Puerto Rico. She is interested in going there because she has so many students from there and some who return there. She wants to see what it is like in schools in Puerto Rico. During the trip, she notices that Puerto Ricans on the island look at Puerto Ricans who move to the mainland similarly to white Americans: that they go there for welfare (253). She constantly compares differences between Puerto Rico and Holyoke. There are differences in the food and approach to time, but there are similarities in the way politicians talk and how the children are rowdy before a lesson starts. Just like in Holyoke, Mrs. Zajac is able to quiet the children down with a single question.
Pages 259-295 Summary: “The Science Fair”
In this section, the students visit Old Sturbridge Village, a town set up to teach people about life in 1830. Mrs. Zajac gets to spend time with the girls on the bus, listening to them sing and teaching them songs from her youth. She leads Claude around the village and listens to them ask questions and be genuinely interested in learning about life in 1830. She notes that the village lacks some of harsh realities of life in 1830. Compared to current day Holyoke, the village seems more serene and tidy. Many people comment that the Flats was nicer before the Puerto Ricans came. However, a writer from 1875 noted that Holyoke had poor sanitation and living conditions even then.
Mrs. Zajac is seeing real progress in students, including Claude, who manages to complete some assignments and do well on a social studies test. One final major project for the students is the Science Fair. The students can work alone or as a group, and they must write a report on their chosen topic and then create a demonstration for the Science Fair itself. Parents are encouraged to help with the projects and attend the Fair to see the final products. The initial projects do not encourage Mrs. Zajac. One group wants to bring food and tell people what the items are. The reports themselves aren’t much better, but she is delighted that Felipe and Claude write excellent reports.
The day of the Science Fair, Mrs. Zajac notices that the students with help at home and involved parents have great projects and know a lot about their topics, but the students without parents who could help have poorly designed projects and have not learned a lot. She is pleased with Claude’s ability to explain things and his diagram of a river, but she feels that students notice who has good projects and who does not and that it causes hurt feelings.
Robert does not show up at the Fair at first. He is in their regular classroom and refuses to go down to the Fair. He has his project with him, and it is clear he did not have help at home. He tried to make an electrical circuit, but without guidance, he failed miserably. Mrs. Zajac realizes that, for once, he really tried to do well and actually failed, but because she didn’t realize what was happening at first, she accentuated his failure. Over the weekend, she decides that she will complete the paperwork to get Robert counseling and try to help his situation.
Mrs. Zajac discusses slavery and racism with her students. She reads to them from a book that describes many of the horror stories of slavery. Judith sees racism in her life often because she is very intelligent and does well in school. Many people assume she is not Puerto Rican and does not live in the “Hispanic ghetto,” as she calls it. She makes sure they understand that they are wrong, but it clearly affects her that people assume no one from her area of town could be intelligent. She is friends with Alice, a White girl from the upper-class Highlands. Even though they have played at Alice’s house, Judith does not invite Alice to her house, and they do not eat lunch together because the students still separate by race for lunch.
Pages 297-331 Summary: “June”
At end of the school year, the author reflects on the history of education in America. He comments that many early scholars saw education as important to having an informed electorate and as key to a functional society. Education was supposed to be the savior and hope of society. It is unclear if society asked too much of education, or if we’d have even less had we asked for less. However, education has generally not lived up to the hopes of American society. The history of education is one of constant reform. In the 1980s, the decade of this book, the focus is on the high dropout rates, but each decade has its own focus for what is wrong with schools. The literature about American schools at the time is one of anger, with books such as Death at an Early Age, which describes an extremely racist environment in schools where children receive beatings.
Mrs. Zajac begins discussing Reconstruction with her students and is side-tracked into discussing segregation. They discuss why the system made sure that most funding went to all-white schools and did not fairly divide resources among schools. They discuss what the students want to be when they grow up and how having an education is the only way to reach those dreams. She has a difficult time getting the class back on track because it’s so hot now, and the students are already thinking about summer and what teacher they will have the following year. The students can request a teacher, and as Mrs. Zajac is going to teach 6th grade, they can request her again.
Mrs. Zajac reflects on the year and feels that she helped many students make progress. It may not have been everything she had hoped to accomplish, but many students learned, and many students are going into their next year with a better perspective on learning and school. Students’ approach to school often needs work before they can really learn, as many students don’t come into 5th grade thinking it matters if they put in effort or get good grades.
On Field Day, Mrs. Zajac’s students do not win a single event until the tug of war, when they are crowned champions. The heat of June and knowledge that the school year is almost over means that Mrs. Zajac allows her students to tell more stories in class and get away with behaviors she would have punished earlier. Mrs. Zajac receives the disappointing news that Judith’s father is going to move them back to Puerto Rico. She worries about Judith’s future moving back to the island and hopes that she continues to excel. The principal has all teachers move classrooms for the following year, and Mrs. Zajac begins cleaning out her files, keeping things like some of Clarence’s essays and reminders of her favorite students.
The end of the year makes Mrs. Zajac reflect on the good teachers she had as a child. Mrs. Harty, who had died that Spring, was the teacher that made Mrs. Zajac want to be a teacher. Mrs. Harty had the ability to inspire her students. Mrs. Zajac herself inspires students, like one girl Suzanne, who remembers everything Mrs. Zajac did that made her feel smart and capable.
On the last day, Clarence makes a surprise visit on his bicycle, and Mrs. Zajac invites him inside to say hello. He decides not to stay, and Mrs. Zajac is amazed he is still small. She had made him larger in her mind. She hands out the report cards, which include the students’ teachers for next year. Many of the students who have her are happy, and the students who do not have her are mostly disappointed. She says goodbye as they line up for buses or to walk home, and Mrs. Zajac already misses them, “Now that she was about to lose responsibility for them, they turned back into children, and she started missing them” (326).
Part 3 Analysis
Part 3 of this book deals the most with the theme of race and nationality. This theme appears throughout the book, but Part 3 addresses it directly by discussing the racism Mrs. Zajac’s students experience and the history of racial and national tensions in Holyoke. Puerto Ricans may be the newest group, and therefore the main source of racial tensions currently; every time period has its groups who distrusts one another. The Irish were the poorer and newer group in the generation before. Similar to the current situation, there is the feeling that the new group simply showed up to take from the prosperity of the group who had been there for a long time. There is immediate distrust because the new group usually does things differently and has different cultural practices. Puerto Ricans are particularly noticeable because they speak a different language and are a different race besides being a different nationality.
The history of bias against out-groups is a long one, but Mrs. Zajac is troubled when it affects her students. They are young and moldable and can learn to view others positively, treat everyone kindly, and thrive in modern society. By exposing them to racist actions and thoughts, adults simply pass down the distrust and bias from generation to generation. Children are the way to change racism, and instead, her Puerto Rican children face unfair judgement before even arriving, and her white children are taught to behave similarly to any Puerto Ricans they meet.
Part 3 also deals most directly with issues of social class that appear in the book. While race and nationality are the main dividers in the town, social class also divides the students. Typically, social class appears in the quality of schoolwork and parental involvement. The Science Fair highlights that children in homes with parents who are involved do better. These children are usually part of wealthier families who did things like set up tours of the waterpower plant to help their children learn. Social class tends to be related to race and nationality, with Puerto Rican families more likely to also be poor, creating two obstacles to overcome for those children.
Social class can be difficult to solve in school, and wealthier families will always have the ability to go above and beyond with their children in ways poorer families likely can’t access. Even with something as simple as homework, wealthier families are more likely to be able to hire tutors or have one parent who stays at home and help with homework. Social class comes through more subtly than race and nationality without as much overt bias, but it is a driver of differences in achievement and the student’s perspective on school. Poorer children regularly see how wealthier children bring in better projects and have more opportunities, such that over time, they feel the system is rigged against them and lose motivation. Putting in less effort also creates the illusion that they don’t really fail. That’s the lesson Mrs. Zajac learned when Robert failed after putting in real effort. There wasn’t much she could do for him, as he had less of a chance from the start.
Robert’s failure at the Science Fair likely had a significant and negative impact on him, and given his other difficulties, could very well have set him back for several years. Robert is a real person, and children like Robert experience similar things every day in school. The magnitude of these experiences can be very large, with Mrs. Zajac herself still feeling the effects of bullying in her youth. These experiences are common for many schoolchildren in America.
Throughout the book, Kidder writes as though telling a story. Regardless of the book’s novel-like feel, these events really happened, this town is real, and this school is real. The children are really out there these many years later (with different names), and the effects of things like racism and social class are real. The title, Among Schoolchildren, indicates that this book could be told about almost any school in the country. It is a real story of what it is like to live among schoolchildren.
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