An MIT graduate who is teaching physics and chemistry in an inner-city Chicago school is the subject of a feature article in Education Week, published by Editorial Projects in Education.
"With a 5.0 grade-point average in physics, Bennett Brown had his pick of careers," the headline reads. "So he chose to teach at Chicago's tough Du Sable High."
Du Sable has 1,400 students, all African-American and most of them residents of a nearby housing project. "I was born with quite a bit of privilege," said Mr. Brown, 24, who grew up in West Des Moines, Iowa. "I feel I have an opportunity to spread that privilege. Just by teaching you give back. But if I were to teach in a wealthy school, who would I give back to?...I wanted to come here. I wanted the toughest assignment I could get."
Mr. Brown said he became certified as a teacher through an exchange program with Wellesley College and got hooked on working with inner-city students in Cambridge and Boston. He went to Chicago, he said, because of a brother living there and a girlfriend in medical school at the University of Chicago.
The story, by Ann Bradley, notes that Mr. Brown pedals his bike to school each day and works about 60 hours a week. Last year, in addition to teaching his regular high school classes, he ran an after-school science program for gifted and talented fourth graders.
QUOTES:
"It isn't the complexity of the thing, it's managing the complexity."-Dr. Harvey M. Sapolsky, professor of public policy and organization, in a New York Times article on the intricacies of the administration's proposed Health Security Act.
[The loss of the superconducting supercollider] "certainly shows that the country has lost its will to push ahead with big adventures. I'm afraid the same loss of will is going to apply to other projects in other areas. In spite of how tough the times are, we should have one or two heroic projects like the SCC."-Dr. J. David Litster, professor of physics and vice president and dean for research, in The Scientist, following Congress' cancellation of the SCC.
A version of this article appeared in the February 2, 1994 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 38, Number 21).
