In Defense of Wilson High

By Colman McCarthy

Like the rest of us, columnists have off days, slow days and lazy days. Sometimes all three, as Colbert King displayed in his Washington Post column on March 29 in titled “A Battlefield Called Wilson High.” King trades in scolding, going after District bureaucrats, papercrats and other easy marks. Little in his columns suggests that he does the kind of legwork that goes beyond making phones calls or emailing sources that will bolster his case. The Wilson High column is the latest example.

I’ve been teaching courses on nonviolence at the school since 1984. As in most years, my current class is a diverse mix of students: 13 blacks, seven whites, four Hispanics, one Nepalese and one Cameroonian--from all parts of the city, low income to high.

In recent weeks we’ve had guest speakers as varied as a torture victim from Iraq, a social worker from the Congo, a jail chaplain from Seattle and a teacher from a South Dakota Indian reservation.

Because the class is discussion based, opinions fly around the room. All viewpoints are welcomed. Unanimity is rare. But the 90 minute class period when we read aloud and analyzed the March 29 King column was different. Total agreement prevailed: this was lazy journalism, a hit job hastily dashed off.

Violent students “play war in the cafeteria,” King claimed. The school is in “a sad state.” The basis for that? He read a copy of an email sent to D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee from the mother of a boy who was assaulted in the gym Feb. 26 by a group of 9th grade students. She argued that “terror and violence” is common at Wilson, security is lax, predators are on the loose and teachers are too tired to keep discipline.

My students found the King column “blatantly one-sided,” “not only untrue [but] inflammatory and offensive,” “false” and “ridiculous.” King is a user of “loaded words.” He “did not include the facts,” and “he describes our school as if we are animals” and “clearly has no idea what is actually going on inside these walls.”

King’s column was stenography, not journalism. The source for his ire was not basic reporting--coming to the school for a few days to interview any of the 1,570 students or 95 teachers--but the lazy one of taking whole the viewpoint of one mother of one student, with not a syllable from anyone else at the school. One third of his column--42 lines out of 126--were quotes from the mother’s email.

King began his column by saying he first visited the Wilson school 52 years ago. If he did come recently, when was it? Did he sign in as a war correspondent? Or volunteer as a stretcher-bearer to carry out the wounded?

It’s true that fights have happened recently at the school. Students have been hurt. But if the alarms raised by King and his lone email source are even remotely true I’d be walking the halls at wearing a flak jacket, saying the rosary and doubling my health insurance. I’d be advising parents to abandon Wilson and take out loans to send their children to Georgetown Day, Sidwell Friends, Maret or St. Albans. I’d be apologizing to my own children for sending them to Wilson. I’d be FedExing letters to Warren Buffet--class of ’43--to send a couple of million to hire security guards for each classroom.

In our class discussion, I asked students if any feared for their safety at Wilson. None did. Many said they were grateful to be at the school. None said their parents had fears.

Despite the recent and isolated flare-ups--to be condemned and proper discipline to be taken--Wilson remains a quality school. It has a caring and energetic faculty that has a low turnover rate, which is exceptional given how demoralized many teachers around the nation have become due to the current testing mania.

I can’t speak for everyone in my class--considering how worked up they are right now by Colbert King’s column--but he’s welcomed to my Wilson class anytime. Hang out for a bit. Do some listening. Maybe some rethinking. He’d be welcomed, too, in the class of my son John--Wilson ’87--whose been teaching a nonviolence course for 15 years. And not a worried day yet.

Colman McCarthy, a former columnist for The Washington Post, directs the Center for Teaching Peace in Washington.