Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión
Room 222: “Richie’s Story”
Five minutes into the episode and we were being introduced to spunky young student teacher Alice Johnson (played by Karen Valentine) who had just been assigned to work with high school history teacher Pete Dixon (played by Lloyd Haynes) at Walt Whitman High School. Six minutes into the episode and Ms. Johnson casually mentioned the fact that she once went to a segregated school whereupon Mr. Dixon replied that he went to one too.
And so we were off with our first reminder that this show, which aspired to be so modern judging from the multiracial crowd of students in the opening credits, was really made a long time ago. Granted, that is not something I am eager to acknowledge about a show that first aired when I was still in elementary school but then when you’re old enough to remember when the idea of a black teacher teaching a predominantly white class seemed like a new concept -- instead of the normal thing it would be nowadays -- it seems silly to pretend otherwise.
Anyway, Ms. Johnson was white and Mr. Dixon was black. Contrary to what you might expect from a liberal show, not much was made of the fact that a black teacher was teaching at a predominantly white high school. Nor of the irony of a black teacher being presented as the more experienced of two teachers at a time when most white schools in my native Detroit would have considered such a teacher a novelty. Indeed, one of the more refreshing things about this show was how much racial issues were dealt with in a subtle manner. On one hand, the show was hip enough to take racial integration for granted. On the other, it was also wise enough to acknowledge that integration was still a recent thing to most of its viewers in the late 1960s without overemphasizing this point.
That said, the show moved on to the issue of the week: an eager young black student named Richie Lane was discovered by school counselor Liz McIntyre (played by Denise Nicholas) to have used a phony address in order to gain admittance to the school. Apparently his old school -- a predominantly black school on the wrong side of the tracks, it was implied -- was not what Ritchie considered an ideal learning environment. And since Dixon once attended the same school, he had no trouble coming to the same conclusion.
Unfortunately, the school’s principal Seymour Kaufman (played by Michael Constantine) was not convinced that Richie did not deserve to be transferred back to his original school. A controversy developed and the principal finally agreed to accept Richie at Whitman High only if he agreed to take a course not offered by his old alma mater. His two choices were calculus (which he does not qualify for) and... Hebrew.
Did I mention the principal’s last name was Kaufman?
As you might guess, the episode ended on a happy note but unfortunately, the question it raised -- what exactly can we do to help students trapped in a bad public school? -- was not one that is easily answered. And it does not help to realize that this same question could have been asked today. For all the progress we have made on racial matters, there are still bad schools in this country, there are still bad schools with predominantly black student bodies and despite the many suggestions that have been floated during the last forty years, there is no clear solution to the problems raised by these facts.
It would be nice to think that someday the questions raised by this episode will be obsolete and that the Richies of the world will not have to worry about changing school systems. However, as of this writing, that has not happened yet.
Room 222: “Richie’s Story”
Five minutes into the episode and we were being introduced to spunky young student teacher Alice Johnson (played by Karen Valentine) who had just been assigned to work with high school history teacher Pete Dixon (played by Lloyd Haynes) at Walt Whitman High School. Six minutes into the episode and Ms. Johnson casually mentioned the fact that she once went to a segregated school whereupon Mr. Dixon replied that he went to one too.
And so we were off with our first reminder that this show, which aspired to be so modern judging from the multiracial crowd of students in the opening credits, was really made a long time ago. Granted, that is not something I am eager to acknowledge about a show that first aired when I was still in elementary school but then when you’re old enough to remember when the idea of a black teacher teaching a predominantly white class seemed like a new concept -- instead of the normal thing it would be nowadays -- it seems silly to pretend otherwise.
Anyway, Ms. Johnson was white and Mr. Dixon was black. Contrary to what you might expect from a liberal show, not much was made of the fact that a black teacher was teaching at a predominantly white high school. Nor of the irony of a black teacher being presented as the more experienced of two teachers at a time when most white schools in my native Detroit would have considered such a teacher a novelty. Indeed, one of the more refreshing things about this show was how much racial issues were dealt with in a subtle manner. On one hand, the show was hip enough to take racial integration for granted. On the other, it was also wise enough to acknowledge that integration was still a recent thing to most of its viewers in the late 1960s without overemphasizing this point.
That said, the show moved on to the issue of the week: an eager young black student named Richie Lane was discovered by school counselor Liz McIntyre (played by Denise Nicholas) to have used a phony address in order to gain admittance to the school. Apparently his old school -- a predominantly black school on the wrong side of the tracks, it was implied -- was not what Ritchie considered an ideal learning environment. And since Dixon once attended the same school, he had no trouble coming to the same conclusion.
Unfortunately, the school’s principal Seymour Kaufman (played by Michael Constantine) was not convinced that Richie did not deserve to be transferred back to his original school. A controversy developed and the principal finally agreed to accept Richie at Whitman High only if he agreed to take a course not offered by his old alma mater. His two choices were calculus (which he does not qualify for) and... Hebrew.
Did I mention the principal’s last name was Kaufman?
As you might guess, the episode ended on a happy note but unfortunately, the question it raised -- what exactly can we do to help students trapped in a bad public school? -- was not one that is easily answered. And it does not help to realize that this same question could have been asked today. For all the progress we have made on racial matters, there are still bad schools in this country, there are still bad schools with predominantly black student bodies and despite the many suggestions that have been floated during the last forty years, there is no clear solution to the problems raised by these facts.
It would be nice to think that someday the questions raised by this episode will be obsolete and that the Richies of the world will not have to worry about changing school systems. However, as of this writing, that has not happened yet.
Labels: Denise Nicholas, Karen Valentine, Lloyd Haynes, Michael Constantine, Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión VI, Raza, Room 222
posted by Tonio Kruger at 11:45 AM
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