A Conversation with Marva Collins
Dr. Stan Hartzler
West Foundation Professor of Mathematics Education
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I first saw Marva Collins speak in 1987. The audience was mostly white and consisted entirely of parents who were fed up with the public schools that their children had attended. Marva Collins had been fed up, too, as a parent and as a teacher. She had been so fed up that she started her own private school on the west side of Chicago. A personal conversation with Marva Collins some time later revealed several things about her methods. |
Ř She started children early, as soon as they were out of diapers. She would have taken them at an earlier age, but she didn’t want to change diapers on school time.
Ř On the first day of school, she taught the child to write the letters “S”, “E”, and “M.” Then the child used these letters to write “SEE ME” and practiced. The child went home to show the family, and came back to school the next day ready for more. The child was not disappointed.
Ř She used ongoing review routines popular in Africa, Europe, Asia, and South America. When the subject was mentioned, she said, “That’s really the only thing that we have to rely on, isn’t it?”
Ř Mathematics exercises consisted in part of decision-making routines involving pencil-paper computation and crossword puzzle formats for answers.
Ř Students read neither readers nor children’s literature. They read the classics, as in The Classics.
The Marva Collins School of the late 1980’s consisted of a small, one- story warehouse crammed with desks. The classes were large in size. Marva Collins’ children and their spouses did the teaching. Parents paid $200 for annual tuition; “Anybody could come up with that,” she said, and that they would value the opportunity more. Marva supported the school with her lecture fees. For the one-hour presentation mentioned above, she earned $8,000.
Marva Collins lives on the west side of Chicago in a small home featuring Chinese décor wherever there is room for décor. The rest of the space is needed for all of the honorary doctorate degrees that have been bestowed on her by every institution of higher education that has had her speak at a graduation ceremony. The list begins with Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, and goes on for a very long time.
Marva Collins’ home is surrounded by a fence that is as attractive as it is high. The fence permits a poetic focus on her life and efforts. The fence is needed now because too many children in her neighborhood don’t get their kicks at school like Marva Collins’ students do. One dreams of a day when all children get the good chance at education that her school provides, and the fence will not be needed.
Books by Marva Collins
Marva Collins’ Way. J. P. Tarcher, Houghton, Los Angeles, 1982.
“Ordinary” Children, Extraordinary Teachers. Hampton Roads Publishing Co., 1992.
Black Education and the Inner City. Lincoln Institute for Research and Education, Washington, D.C. 1981.