Taking Arms Against Doubt

Watch Good Teaching and Be Inspired

By Ronald Thorpe

In the first two weeks of September, many public-television stations will be airing a program called “The Hobart Shakespeareans” as part of the documentary series “P.O.V.” Since that title may not catch the attention of teachers and others who care deeply about education, I want to give the program the notice it deserves. I’d also like to extend a challenge to those who watch it: Take arms against doubt.

The program follows Rafe Esquith, a much-honored 5th grade teacher at the Hobart Elementary School in central Los Angeles. His students come from poor, mostly Latino and Asian families in which English is not the first language. They live in an environment suffused with violence and all the other negative social forces that undermine the sense of stability and hope all children should have. Hobart Elementary is precisely the kind of school that the No Child Left Behind Act—with its prescribed reading programs, emphasis on testing and standards, and question-at-your-own-peril belief in a school day stripped of the arts, sports, and other aspects of human engagement that can’t be tied to a test score—was created to rescue.

Rafe Esquith would appear to be in complete noncompliance with this federal regimen. He asks much of his students, who immerse themselves in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , The Catcher in the Rye , To Kill a Mockingbird , Lord of the Flies , Of Mice and Men , The Autobiography of Malcolm X , and A Separate Peace . They can’t always read these books during school hours, because they aren’t in the approved curriculum. His students also play baseball, go as a class to performances at the Hollywood Bowl, travel to the nation’s capital, devote entire days to pure silliness, and spend their free periods learning...