Principal at Barclay, Part Three: “We Did Not Want a Poor Man’s Curriculum”

Abstract

As the media kept “the crisis in education” in the forefront of public consciousness throughout the 1970s, Gertrude and the steering committee were growing increasingly concerned about the decline in the performance of Barclay students, particularly in the areas of reading and writing. Gertrude blamed the school system’s practice of imposing one educational fad after another on teachers and students rather than providing a consistent and cohesive program of instruction. As she later observed with some hyperbole: “We were a system that adopted gimmicks year after year after year to a point that our children did not get any basic skills.”¹