As editors of Reaching Today's Youth, Lyndal Bullock and I have the opportunity to work with many great pioneers, practitioners, and advocates for children and youth. In this issue, "Building Cultural Bridges," we are touched by the wisdom and innovative practice provided from throughout the world on healthy approaches to transcending issues of culture and race to reaffirm the dignity of all young people.

Our first issue of Reaching Today's Youth in August 1996 closed with an exclusive and inspiring interview with Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Now, on the eve of the conclusion of the historic South African Truth Commission hearings, we turn once again to Archbishop Tutu to begin this issue.

These words of hope and grace are followed by an interview with Dr. James Comer, whose School Development Program, begun in 1968 in New Haven, Connecticut, has since grown to include some 600 schools in 21 states and has been cited as one of the most successful community-based school models in America. Many of Comer's insights echo the sentiments expressed by Archbishop Tutu. Together they foreshadow many of the themes of this issue of Reaching Today's Youth.

Ours is a remarkable country. Let us celebrate our diversity, our differences. God wants us as we are. South Africa wants and needs the Afrikaner the English, the coloured, the Indian, the black. We are sisters and brothers in one family — God's family, the human family.

Having looked the beast of the past in the eye, having asked for and received forgiveness and having made amends, let us shut the door on the past — not in order to forget it, but in order not to allow it to imprison us. Let us move into the glorious future of a new kind of society where people count, not because of biological irrelevancies or other extraneous attributes, but because they are persons of infinite worth created in the image of God. Let that society be a new society — more compassionate, more caring, more gentle, more given to sharing — because we have left "the past of a deeply divided society characterized by strife, conflict untold suffering and injustice" and are moving to a future "founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence and development opportunities for all South Africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex.

Like our Constitution, the Commission has helped in laying "the secure foundation for the people of South Africa to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts, and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge."

My appeal is ultimately directed to us all, black and white together, to close the chapter on our past and to strive together for this beautiful and blessed land as the rainbow people of God. The Commission has done its share to promote national unity and reconciliation. Their achievement is up to each one of us.

      — Archbishop Desmond Tutu, October 29, 1998

A native of East Chicago, Indiana, Dr. Comer earned his M.D. at Howard University and trained in child psychiatry at Yale, where he is now a faculty member. His "Comer model" envisions a school environment where children feel valued and secure, forming positive emotional bonds that encourage learning. In elaborating the model, Comer has written six books and received 37 honorary degrees. He granted Reaching Today's Youth this exclusive interview in December 1998.

AMB: Your model encourages shared power and co-operation among stakeholders in the school. Can you explain why that's essential for academic success? As you've pointed out, in any given school district we find children and adults of many different backgrounds. How do you build a common culture?

You build an agreement on what you want and how you're going to accomplish it and the kinds of behaviors and expectations for that particular school environment. Adults and young people who are old enough serve on some kind of governance and management group that establishes the school plan in both the academic and social areas. Around those expectations the school gets built up. The agreement is to live by those rules in those ways, and that gets transmitted by the activities. The culture emerges through those interactions.

AMB: How do you create a common culture while honoring children's' and families' respective cultures?

You can build into your comprehensive school plan activities that honor the various diverse cultures in the school. You figure out how to do that. Nobody can tell you. You can have ethnic festivals, you have can have a whole variety of things. At the same time, you must give young people the academic and learning skills in order to function in society.

AMB: You focus on history to explain the deterioration of urban communities and the breaking of ties between families and schools. In what ways does understanding our history help students, teachers, and families?

Knowing about the history of the country and the larger culture helps people avoid blame and gain an understanding about how people are affected by various conditions — not to blame each other for the problems that result from past conditions, but to find ways to solve those problems within the context of the school and address them in a positive way.

AMB: So they understand that they're operating in a context that they themselves did not design, and can work together to respond to the challenges created for them by that context.

Yes. I'll give you an example from my own experience. When I went off to elementary school, my best friends did not have the kind of development that would allow them to succeed. We went to a predominantly white middle-income school, and we had a book-reading course that would teach how to use the library. We were the only four black kids in class. I read the most; the others didn't read at all. The librarian said, "If you little colored boys don't want to be like the rest of us, then you don't need to be here."
I think she was not actually a racist. She used to take me by the hand and walk down the school hallways with me. If she had understood that these were the children of sharecroppers who were intimidated by mainstream people, she would have taken them by the hand and gone to the library to help them use the library themselves. She wasn't trained, didn't understand the context in which she was operating. She responded out of her frustration and lack of preparation.

"I think she was not actually a racist. She used to take me by the hand and walk down the school hallways with me. If she had understood that these were the children of sharecroppers who were intimidated by mainstream people, she would have taken them by the hand and gone to the library to help them use the library themselves."

AMB: What obstacles have you found in creating a successful school or community environment across a variety of cultures, and how can they be overcome?

First, you have to think of children as children and that they're in the process of development. Because you have to understand where you might have blind spots as a teacher or administrator and respond to a young person in the appropriate way.
At the same time, be careful that you don't bend over backwards and have low expectations for poor or minority kids for whatever reason. Then you'd be contributing to the underdevelopment of that person. You have to have high expectations for all young people. They must be expected to learn.
At the same time, the families have to be willing to engage in the programs of these schools, and you have to create conditions in these schools that make the parents and guardians willing to participate in them. You have to be willing to make the kind of emotional attachment that encourages kids to have the motivation and discipline necessary to learn.

AMB: How can practitioners create the climate of trust necessary to build the kind of school, agency, or community that you have actualized in so many sites throughout the country?

Our model really grew out of an experience where people didn't get along with each other, felt apathy, anger, and so on. We put several benign mechanisms into play.
One, decision-making by consensus through shared governance and management teams. Two, a no-fault/no-blame approach. The consensus and no-blame approaches help prevent paralysis among those who have to make the decisions. This makes possible our third guideline, full participation without paralyzing the leader. These guidelines helped us create the conditions necessary to making a commitment.

AMB: What advice can you provide an individual reader who may not have the resources necessary to actualize the entire School Development Program?

Many schools now are filled with people who are trying to pour information into the heads of children without having created the climate that makes that possible. As an individual teacher, the best you can do is be responsible for your own behavior, interact with people in desirable ways, and call for students and others to respond accordingly. Yet this is much more difficult than when you have an entire school, system, or community all working in a collaborative way.

AMB: If a teacher or principal or residential treatment staff member is in touch with a child from another background, what are some things they can do to better understand that child?