Download Lorraine Monroe: The Monroe doctrine

Lorraine Monroe: The Monroe doctrine
Ebony , Dec, 1996 by Lisa Jones Townsel
SHE wanted to be a physician in order to help and to heal. Instead, Dr. Lorraine Monroe chose
education as her profession and found that she could touch far more lives through the power of
teaching.
In her estimation, all children are reachable, teachable and capable of achieving success-regardless of their station in life.
"My philosophy is that school is set to transform children's lives," says the no-nonsense educator,
who has devoted more than 30 years to the profession. "And really good school is working at
that every single day."
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Since September 1991, Dr. Monroe has been building such a school, such a program, at Harlem's
Frederick Douglass Academy, where she and a team of administrators have created a public prep
school that rivals some of New York City's costliest private institutions.
At a time when many of the nation's public school systems are in a dismal state, Dr. Monroe is
hopeful. And, by insisting on order, respect and genuine effort in her classrooms, she has
convinced the Academy's 900 mostly Black and Hispanic students, grades 7 through 12, that
they can and will achieve. This is in spite of the fact that about 65 percent of them come from
single-parent homes, live below the poverty level and reside in areas where drugs and crime are
ways of life.
Way too long, she says, teachers have written off inner-city youths as underachievers. In order
for students to feel confident in their abilities, she says, teachers must first expect--and require-more of them. "One thing that makes good education difficult for some people is that they keep
trying to figure out what to do for disadvantaged kids and kids of color," Dr. Monroe says. "But
once you start making the assumption that what you do for White kids or privileged kids is very
different than what you should be doing for others, you start running what I call `strange school.'
When in fact, good school is good school. It really doesn't matter who the kids are."
And a student's background, no matter how dysfunctional, should not be an excuse for failing to
get a decent education, the seasoned educator says. "I just expect kids to come in here and give
us the opportunity to make them smart," she says, wrinkling her brow. "I tell them: `This is going
to save your life, so we don't have time for nonsense. We've got to save you.'"
The problem, she says, is that much too often educators think salvation lies in reinventing the
wheel. "We spend a lot of money reforming [school] in strange ways, and people throw out a lot
of the stuff that works," she says. "But I never move off of what I call the core, which is learning
to read, write, compute, think, speak, appreciate art and behave in socially acceptable ways"
For Dr. Monroe, education has been more than a career for the past few decades; it's been a
calling. She readily admits that she bases a lot of her teaching and administrative techniques on
what she observed as a public school student right here in central Harlem. "I remember as a kid
that there was order, that there were some tough teachers, and that it worked," she says.
Thus, the Monroe Doctrine was born: "Teach hard, tutor kids to be excellent and keep after
them," Dr. Monroe says, summing up her daily creed.
That is why it's no surprise to those who know her that supreme order reigns at Frederick
Douglass Academy, which shares a city block with boarded-up buildings, vacant lots and crack
houses. Inside the school, there are no metal detectors in the entrance way. There is no graffiti on
the walls. And students wear uniforms to school daily, save two days a year. "When they leave
the building, 98 percent of the time people assume this is a private school," Dr. Monroe says,
beaming with pride. "So [the students] have this sense of being very, very special, dressing like
people dress who are going off to work.
It's all a part of conditioning children for success, Dr. Monroe says. The only difference between
the Academy's students and the countless others who populate the nation's public schools, she
says, is the level of expectation. "We push them and convince them that they're smart, and then
they live up to the expectation," she says. "These kids in another situation would be just like kids
who run crazy. But kids need control and predictability, and school offers that."
On any given day, Dr. Monroe patrols the halls, making sure students tuck in their uniforms
correctly and move rapidly and quietly from one class to the next. On first glance, she may
appear to be a hard taskmaster, but she's no rattan-wielding tyrant. The tough-love administrator
with gray-streaked hair randomly stops students in the halls throughout the school day--often
calling them by name--just to check on their grades, graduation dates or their home lives.
The enormous pride Dr. Monroe has in the Academy and in its students radiates from her very
being, and indeed, it should. For her start in life wasn't much different from that of many of the
children she teaches today. She grew up in the neighborhood, and her parents were high school
dropouts. Her father was a steel refinery worker, and her mother worked in "a sweatshop,
making shoulder pads." Nevertheless, she says, her parents always told her end her sister that
education was their key to a better life. It was the support of her parents, grandparents and
"incredible" teachers, she says, that lead her to a career