Jaime Escalante, R.I.P.
It is with great sadness, heavy heart, and moist eyes that I pass on the news to you that Jaime Escalante died today in Reno, Nevada while undergoing cancer treatment. Escalante has been one of my heroes since my days covering education in Los Angeles at the LA Daily News in the early 1990s. He was 79.
Jaime Escalante cared about kids. Not about teachers’ unions or partisan politics or educrat ass-covering or racial grievance-mongering. The Bolivian-born physics and math teacher demanded excellence and hard work, raised standards and expectations, and defied critics and naysayers by teaching algebra and calculus to East L.A. high school students whom the government school system had abandoned and written off. Escalante’s amazing results were made famous by education reporter Jay Matthews’ book, Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, and the biopic, Stand and Deliver, starring Edward James Olmos. He and his students were baselessly accused of cheating. Jealous colleagues undermined him at every step. Success always breeds such ill will. Success without apology breeds even deeper-seated destructive tendencies.
Just as minority students who excel in the inner cities are subjected to “Crab in the Bucket” syndrome, Escalante’s opponents did their best to bring him down and he endured retribution for his achievements, as Reason Magazine reported several years ago:
Death of a Dynasty
Escalante’s open admission policy, a major reason for his success, also paved the way for his departure. Calculus grew so popular at Garfield that classes grew beyond the 35-student limit set by the union contract. Some had more than 50 students. Escalante would have preferred to keep the classes below the limit had he been able to do so without either denying calculus to willing students or using teachers who were not up to his high standards. Neither was possible, and the teachers union complained about Garfield’s class sizes. Rather than compromise, Escalante moved on.
Other problems had been brewing as well. After Stand and Deliver was released, Escalante became an overnight celebrity. Teachers and other interested observers asked to sit in on his classes, and he received visits from political leaders and celebrities, including President George H.W. Bush and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. This attention aroused feelings of jealousy. In his last few years at Garfield, Escalante even received threats and hate mail. In 1990 he lost the math department chairmanship, the position that had enabled him to direct the pipeline.
A number of people at Garfield still have unkind words for the school’s most famous instructor. One administrator tells me Escalante wanted too much power. Some teachers complained that he was creating two math departments, one for his students and another for everyone else. When Escalante quit his job at Garfield, John Perez, a vice president of the teachers union, said, “Jaime didn’t get along with some of the teachers at his school. He pretty much was a loner.”
After being pushed out and moving on to another program, Escalante finally retired to Bolivia, but returned to the U.S. often to visit his children. In a recent interview with the L.A. Times from his sickbed, he summed up his philosophy:
“Determination. Plus discipline. Plus hard work. That is the path.”
Escalante’s death comes at a time when California education faddists are once again threatening a new front in the old Math Wars and clamoring to lower already degraded academic standards (see my work on the crap known as Everyday Math). We need more of the real deal Jaime Escalantes now more than ever. Instead, far too many teachers have abandoned their roles as imparters of knowledge for the lazy hackery of social justice activists.
In an age of dumbed-down schools and victimhood indoctrination, the fierce, demanding, no-excuses doctrine of Jaime Escalante will be sorely missed and never forgotten. R.I.P.
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This is sad news–I wish we had more teachers like Jaime (and I’m a teacher!).
Thanks, Michelle. I will send this to the best teacher I know, my son who is a music director in a high school.
I will also send the motto:
“Determination. Plus discipline. Plus hard work. That is the path.”
Good advice for all today.
RIP Mr.Escalante
For 10 years I volunteered as a math mentor at a local school. The school was overwhelmingly minority students in a poor district. The teacher would pick a couple of the better students and I would mentor them about one hour a week.
They were 5th graders, but by the end of the year they could solve algebra problems. We would build simple electric motors, stomper rockets (if they could explain how to calculate the height of the rocket by using a giant protractor, I would let them stomp on the bottle, which would send the rocket about 60 -70 feet in the air), we would wire simple electric circuits and burn steel wool conductors, and other “fun” science projects – but only after they had done their math “homework”.
Mr Escalante was my inspiration for volunteering. If you demonstrate how hard work can bring you rewards, anybody can find learning to be “fun”.
Too bad we don’t have an educational system that rewards teachers for real achievement and not just for continuing to show up for work.
Truer words were never spoken.
Rest well, Jaime.
The best teachers always do. RIP Mr. Escalante.
We could use another 10,000 good teachers like that.
“…raised standards and expectations, and defied critics and naysayers by teaching algebra and calculus to East L.A. high school students whom the government school system had abandoned and written off.”
There’s a concept – quality so high demand goes off the chart.
Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord,
And let Perpetual Light shine upon him.
May his Soul
And the Souls of all the faithful departed
Through the Mercy of God
Rest in Peace.
Amen.
People should be talking about one’s positive impact on others instead of some useless ‘carbon footprint’. Mr. Escalante was an inspiration and his positive impact is off the charts!
Mr. Escalante, you’re still an inspiration to anyone who knows your work. Rest in peace.
He reminds me of 2 teachers that I owe a lot to, for their influence on my life. One was “Miss Nunn” (7th grade) who introduced me to a lifelong passionate love of history. The other was “Mr. Sherrill” (11th grade) who taught me to be fascinated by science and its wonders. When I heard that Mr. Sherrill has passed away, I, too, had a tear in my eye. There are good teachers out there, but they are unsung heroes, that do their work without a spotlight. I wonder if they are a smaller and smaller minority these days. Are we to have a nation of scientists/engineers, or are we to have a nation of “useful zombies”?
Crab in a bucket = “If I can’t be excellent, you can’t either.”
That MAKES ME SICK!
“Success always breeds such ill will. Success without apology breeds even deeper-seated destructive tendencies. ”
Jealousy is a contemptible aspect of humans—Mr. Escalante was a focus of that small mindedness…
Thank you – Mr. Escalante- for your inspiration…it will be a joy to meet you -in person -in heaven…
C-CS
I hardly ever go to the movies. Not only are they hardly worth the time spent to watch them, but in many instances I don’t want to support the actor/actress/director if they’re involved in leftist causes (such as Jane Fonda, Sean Penn, etc.). I did have the privilege of seeing “Stand and Deliver”, and if my memory serves correct, everyone in the theater was standing and applauding at the end of the movie.
Likely forced to be a loner by the union thugs wasting space within that district being shown for the lazy thugs they are.
There is no reason this cannot happen in every school across the US but for the teachers unions.
Our education system would be soooo much better if we had more teachers like Mr. Escalante. May God rest his soul and comfort his loved ones.
I am saddened by the passing of this man. He proved that it isn’t circumstance that makes achievement it is what he called “Ganas” His concentration on setting specific goals for his students, his principles of Accountability, Hard Work, Demands, Love, Parental Involvement, Nutrition, Drug avoidance, Respect and Values are what children respond to. In the very little time I have to spend with children I’ve found that they respond very well to those principles and the expectations they engender. Expect success from a child and they will strive for it.
I learned this from Mr. Escalante. May he rest in peace and may we all learn his lessons well.
Sounds like a good man and a full life lived well.
My prayers to his family & his friends…
u 2 Michelle.
—–
Mr. Escalante
God Bless You sir.
The fat lady stands and delivers a powerful aria for him.
We can hope many others follow his lead with our youngsters.
If every public school teacher was like Mr. Escalante and every public school principal was like Joe Clark, kids from poorer areas really would get an equal education and there would be no need for home schooling.
RIP
I show Stand and Deliver to every class of math students I have at the end of each session.
He was a hero.
If you read the linked article you’ll see he had other teachers who worked with him, and some he brought in from other places who wanted to work with him. The Vice President of the Teacher’s Union who bad-mouthed him is probably a big fat liar.
BTW – after his first two hours of teaching in a public school, he called his old employer to see if he could have his old job back. Then decided to stick it out.
The kids who got 4s and 5s on the Advanced AP Calc test often ended up at MIT, Harvard, Yale, UCLA and USC. The man seriously changed the outcomes for hundreds of kids.
Yeah, the Teacher’s Union sucks. The lowest SATs in colleges on average.
I had a science teacher in HS, who ended up moving on to another district several years after I graduated.
A new Superintendent came in and unlike the old one, who saw the success the program the teacher taught, one of the few in the nation, and let them have the reins the new Sup insisted they not teach, but travel the district and attend conference across the nation. Because of that, and the weeks away form the class they left. As I understand the program was canceled for a year then a new Sup came in and let it start back up.
It was a shame as their were good plans in the future, but they were scrapped as it had to be rebuilt.
Educators like Jamie Escalante and others will be missed.
And now we have the coming of the further dumbing down of medicine. That should work well since students aren’t being prepared for the rigors of the old style medical education. Howard Dean just said we need more nurse practitioners. Yes, we do, because anyone with any sense is not going to medical school to become a government employee.
Maybe my brain works differently, but I fail to understand jealousy in the face of true talent and success. The only thing I may feel is a little envious. I want to figure out how I can learn from these people. What can they teach me?
Perhaps they could have replicated Jaime’s formulaic system. If I was a math teacher… I’d have been the first one to ask him to show me how he does it. Please. Pretty please.
You’d be surprised how much valuable knowledge you can learn from successful people if you just ask. For free.
I wonder what happened to those students, I understand that many went on to impressive colleges (MIT, Yale etc.) but what did they do after? Have they moved their family forward, do they volunteer and pay back?
May God bring peace to Mr. Escalante’s family and welcome him home with joy.
As much as I trash tenure and teachers unions, the problem is way beyond that. It’s the low national mind-set about self-enrichment and achievement. We will see very soon how Obama’s”free everything”/why work socialism only exacerbates this mentality. In pop TV shows teachers are idiots and funkies and even in the “science” shows on Discovery and Science channel feature whacked-up “hosts” for kids to “relate” to. Not a good inspiration to be smart. My mom was a former music teacher as well as JHS principal and she rules how classic music appreciation is on life support in this country and subsidized to the hilt. The real tragedy is there are no pop music or movie stars who advocate or embed in their music such study ethics or heroes. Unlike the pre-90′s world, today’s kids are totally saturated by electronic-accessible “entertainment” which has superseded the mind-set for achievement. We have the nation’s largest library system here in Queens and its managers love to cluck about the high computer access it has, but what they don’t tell you is over 85% plus of that are kids (mostly minority who supposedly can’t afford them) logging in wide screen laptops to download rap videos there. It’s not an accident that almost all Japanese anime and cartoons feature characters in someway linked to schools and education and passing tests. We can sure use such subtle achievement inspiration here!
James Greenidge
Queens New York
RIP Mr. Escalante. He was a hero not only for how he inspired his students, but for sticking it out. The “system” is very good at driving out innovative teachers, further impoverishing the students.
As far as standards being dumbed down: I’ve witnessed it first hand. I’ve kept the notebooks for all our kids for each year in a banker’s box in the basement. When I compared the standards my now-25 year old had to meet, compared to what is expected of the 12-year old, it is depressing.
Last summer the 12 year-old helped me clean out Grandma’s basement and she found my 7th grade work, and was stunned at the level of work I had to do to keep up, and it inspired her to work harder. Now that we’re homeschooling, she can advance at her own pace. She’s hoping to have Algebra II completed by the end of June, and by age, she would be a sixth-grader if enrolled in the public schools.
Our kids want to be challenged. If we keep the bar high, they will work and rise to meet it.
Its another example of how absolutely Crazy Big Government can get….turns out The Education System is ANTI-Education????? In the Real America you find pockets of excellence and Learn and reproduce them. In the New America you find pockets of excellence and stomp them out?..
It takes a special teacher to teach higher math, it just can’t be done memorizing a text book, you have to think independently …though it appears that our Anti-Education system can’t even teach basic math.
I had the good fortune to have a special math teacher, Mr. Morrow. Who made math “fun”…a great, grand puzzle. At least Mr. Escalante, God have mercy on his soul, was able to actually teach some math before he was chased out.
You are so right about this. And it’s going to get worse.
Because he demanded it and expected it some, many, students rose to it. Teachers, educrats and such who but make excuses for their students do them no favor.
Good bye good sir and Rest in Peace.
Why do I get the feeling the Dinosaur Media will ignore his passing; much less celebrate his contribution to the children of our country? Very sad.
RIP to a good teacher and good man. He truly did teach his students how to “Stand and Deliver”. (A little Easter egg reference for all of you who know your eighities music, more specifically Mr. Mister).
You just can’t keep some people down.
Sometimes I wonder if the challenge came today we would ever go to the moon.
Ooh its too hard, lets quit.
I remember reading about Jaime Escalante in an old issue of Reader’s Digest my grandparents had. I didn’t know about the trouble he faced with colleagues and the unions. May he rest in peace.
Yes, and unlike here in the US, those characters aren’t there to be the butt of the jocks’ jokes.
It’s no surprise that children with Asian ancestry here in the US tend to be among the highest achievers.
They’re one ‘minority’ that doesn’t get the benefit of affirmative action; on the contrary, they’re often discriminated against because of affirmative action.
There’s no power to be gained by going to the moon. There isn’t any benefit of socialism to go there either. That’s the reason for a scaled-back NASA.
Well done, Mr. Escalante, well done!
We will miss you. We already do.
The private sector rewards excellence and forces underachievers out of the system, while the public sector does just the opposite and forces overachievers out of the system.
We see this over, and over, and over again. Yesterday’s case study was the Census. Today’s case study is the public school system.
The private sector encourages people to maximize their productivity and contribution to society, while the public sector encourages people to minimize their productivity and contribution to society.
Every time the government takes over an industry, or even adds more regulation to an industry, our nation is made less productive.
Free-market Capitalism maximizes productivity and GDP.
Socialism/Communism minimizes productivity and GDP.
Compare South Korea vs. North Korea.
Compare former West Germany vs. former East Germany.
Any questions?
Compare Former USA vs. New USSA….
Sorry to depress everyone…
Just saw that we can watch Stand and Deliver as instaplay on Netflix.
Our family has never seen it. We’re going to watch it tonight in honor of this hero.
Thanks for the info.
In the movie, they compress it to a year. In real life it took a few years, but inspiring.
What a sad, sad loss. As a former teacher, I looked up to this man. He made me excited about being a teacher. I wanted to pass my excitement about history to my kids. That was what teaching used to be for me before I found out the harsh reality that public schools don’t reward or value independent thought, innovative learning (or teaching) and the invasive, corrosive influence of unions.
This man put the kids first. He challenged the establishment and the lazy teachers, schools, and administrators. He wanted better for students and that’s why they flocked to to him. He was the embodiment of the American Dream.
Now, our schools are in disarray, poorly administered, with pervasive secular/liberal culture dictating that education should take a backseat to social justice. It is just sickening. And so widely accepted. We need more people like Mr. Escalante.
RIP, Mr. Escalante.
***
STAND AND DELIVER was a very uplifting movie. Jaime Escalante’s real accomplishment for his students was in the best American tradition. An example of how a great teacher can inspire his students to reach real achievements.
***
I think the Lord must have a special place reserved for him in Heaven.
***
John Bibb
***
I am saddened by the death of Mr. Escalante, but gladdened by his accomplishments. I teach because I want to be a part of the solution (we’ll see). I am appalled at the lack of knowledge and ability I see in my HS students. I don’t teach the AP kids – I teach the ones who need reading remediation (in a suburban HS!)
I believe that politicians want an educational underclass. As long as people are ignorant, functionally illiterate and lacking of critical thinking abilities, they will vote for the pols who promise them that the govt. will give them everything. What a way to get and maintain power!
“If you rely on someone to give you everything you need, you will only get what they want you to have.” unk
I showed Stand and Deliver to my math students.
The dirt that he unearthed showed how the “union types”–teachers? at the school attempted to stop him from educating students.
Then the “racial” twist–maybe, but he and his students were successful despite all the roadblocks.
Too bad Obama et al do not follow his teaching.
I loved the backbone of this story — that he told his students that they had to work harder than everyone else, and kept their feet to the fire, sticking with them every step of the way.
Where does it say in the Constitution that the Federal Government has a monopoly on Education and Educating our kids?
Just another reminder that the politicians broke the law by creating the Department of Education.
First, you have to amend the constitution, of course the RNC probably caved in like they are going to do on the Obamacare Bill.