HEAF: Not Just Another Program

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Summer/Fall 1999]

In the Winter 1993 edition of Issues & Views, we described the work of the Harlem Educational Activities Fund (HEAF), whose founders set out to enhance and expand what they call the "life chances" of academically promising young people. The partnership between HEAF and its students begins in elementary school and continues through college. More than a mentoring project or a tutorial program, HEAF offers its unique educational assistance to high school graduates throughout their college careers. Thanks to a teacher training program, a parental involvement initiative and an after-school reading program, HEAF helped to remove P.S. 76, a Harlem elementary school, from New York State's list of failing schools. Following is a sketch of HEAF's framework and philosophy by its president Daniel Rose.

In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a thoughtful study citing the debilitating influence of the single parent family on the disadvantaged, inner-city child. Ferocious attacks on him as a "racist" for "blaming the victim" ended for decades any serious efforts by academics or social scientists to discuss publicly their views on this immensely important question.

Even today, in our present climate of "political correctness," it is difficult to conduct a dispassionate discussion of similar topics crying out for rigorous analysis of "what has worked," "what has not worked," and "what has been actually counter-productive," without becoming involved in distasteful intellectual mudslinging.

The answer, it seemed to me, was to stay out of the debates and to put into practice programs that by their obvious and demonstrable success would prove the soundness of the underlying premises on which they were based. That was the genesis of HEAF, the Harlem Educational Activities Fund.

Beginning informally in the late 1980s and incorporated by my wife and me in 1990, HEAF was designated a "public charity" by the IRS in 1995. Today, with the help of a distinguished "outside" board, a full-time staff of 12 educators and social workers, over 40 part-time assistants, and over 40 volunteers, HEAF supports programs that take students from middle school to high school and then through college.

By September 1999, HEAF had 78 of its Central Harlem students enrolled in a range of colleges such as Harvard and Haverford, Bryn Mawr and Barnard, Columbia and Cornell. (Many of these students, nurtured and mentored for years by HEAF, are the first members of their families to finish high school.) Over 100 students in the HEAF pipeline are enrolled in New York's fiercely competitive and most selective public high schools such as Bronx Science, Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech.

The HEAF-sponsored elementary school chess team, The Dark Knights, from Harlem's Mott Hall School, ranked Number One in the United States in the national school chess competitions last spring, and the HEAF-sponsored Dark Knights junior high school chess team again ranked Number One in the United States this year, as it has for several years. The director of HEAF's chess programs, Maurice Ashley, has become the first African-American player in the history of chess to be designated an International Grand Master.

Not one of HEAF's college or high school students has ever dropped out of school, and all are proceeding through the educational continuum. Of HEAF's first three college graduates, one (a Yale alumnus) is now attending medical school and two plan to return to graduate school after first getting appropriate work experience.

Although HEAF gives no sex education lectures and distributes no contraceptives (in a social climate in which in 1999 teenage pregnancy is a national nightmare), only one of HEAF's female students has had a baby and only one of HEAF's male students has fathered a child. (Each of these students is still pursuing college and each is determined to proceed to graduation.)

The results of HEAF's efforts speak for themselves; and the premises on which they are based are straightforward. While conventional wisdom focuses on "teaching," which is what takes place at the blackboard, or on the "mechanics" of education, such as computers, curriculum, class size, etc., HEAF (while acknowledging those) focuses on "learning," which is what takes place in the head of the student.

If, for whatever reason, a child does not really want to learn, or thinks he or she cannot learn; if a child does not understand the importance of learning, or the joy and satisfaction of learning; if a child is tired or angry or hungry; or if a child cannot see or hear properly, HEAF believes that you can have Albert Einstein at the blackboard and Bill Gates at the computer, to no avail. So HEAF creates an atmosphere in which a child is convinced that he or she can learn and feels proud of learning, an atmosphere of high aspiration and positive peer pressure, and above all, an atmosphere in which a child focuses on long-term goals and long-term rewards that more than repay short-term effort and sacrifice.

HEAF creates an atmosphere of personal responsibility in which parent, school and HEAF work together to be supportive and helpful, but in which the child accepts responsibility for doing the homework, taking the test, writing the book reviews or lab report, etc. HEAF operates in an atmosphere in which excuses are irrelevant and performance is judged objectively by the highest standards, because our youngsters are being prepared to compete vigorously and successfully in a meritocratic world. This is a world in which their competitors may have started to prepare earlier, and may be working harder than they, or perhaps have had advantages they haven't.

Our youngsters know that we understand that everyone has occasional defeats and failures, and that, in the long run, success depends on how one reacts to setbacks. Our students understand that we know and respect them as individuals, that HEAF is with them for the long haul, and that we pledge personal and continuing attention and involvement throughout their respective careers. Our students agree, as an important part of their relationship with HEAF, that HEAF gets copies of their report cards, so that we can monitor their academic and social progress. They know that HEAF is "on their team," but that in order to do our job, we have to be fully informed of their activities.

Our students understand that their high achievement should be a source of pride, not embarrassment, and that their success will make it easier for those around them and those following them to succeed. They understand HEAF's underlying philosophy: that we want to engage them not only in "schooling" but in "learning" (which includes reading, travel, music, art, the theater, and all other things which bring knowledge and delight); learning which will help them not only in "getting a job" but in pursuing a career, learning which, in turn, will help them not only in making a living but also in leading a life that is satisfying, productive and fulfilling.

For more information, contact: Daniel Rose, HEAF, 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016; (212) 210-6620; http://www.heaf.org.

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