Word: monro
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Monro returned to Miles the summer after the riots to work with a faculty committee on the freshman program that has occupied every day of his last five and one-half years. "By the end of that summer, I knew there was something very special going on here, and I knew I would have to get closer to really do anything about it," Monro said. "Then they asked me, 'Will you throw in with us?' and that was the decision. We all understood that it was going to be slow...
...social structure. Seventyfive per cent of Miles' 1200 students receive Federal poverty assistance, and the average Miles freshman--like his counterpart in most black colleges--has only ninth-grade level reading skills. "They can't dig up the money or the SAT scores to draw attention to themselves," Monro says, "and for a place like Harvard, they're totally out of reach." Furthermore, most Miles freshmen have spent 18 years in the black neighborhoods of Birmingham; their contact with the white community is highly circumscribed. "The problem of living in the black community and coping with the white community...
...Monro sees Miles as a theater where Birmingham blacks can forge the skills and self-consciousness which 12 years in the Birmingham schools and black neighborhoods have stifled. "The question is," Monro says, "'Can you--in a year or two--repair what has happened after 12 years in a poorly funded, inefficient school system?' The answer is 'yes.' You can. You can do a helluva...
...director of Freshman Studies, Monro is at the forefront of Miles' two-pronged educational task. "The freshman year is where these kids hit the college. If we can make it supportive and informative, the problem is half solved." Over five years ago, Monro began to develop a core Freshman curriculum, based entirely on his daily contacts as an English teacher. "You learn something by the contact with students and that's the only way to improve," he says. "The curriculum has to account for the black student's interest--where he comes from." The contacts forced Monro to redefine...
When his students' basic reading and writing deficiencies became apparent, Monro scrapped traditional ideas and defined several fundamental skills needed for college level work-- "I want them to think critically; to distinguish between the idea and the supporting detail." For example, he tested his students' vocabulary skills on those words used most frequently in the English language. Almost all the students lacked vocabulary control at the frequency group containing "a word like 'anxiety.' Now how can you deal with the idea, which is so central to the black experience, if you don't know the word?" Monro began immediately with...