Project B.E.A.M.: An Experiment in Intervention

Abstract

In the Fall of 1970 a project began in the ghettos of San Francisco designed to initiate a series of interventions in the lives of predelinquent and delinquent minority group children in the hope of improving both their academic and social functioning, and to provide them with alternatives to the behaviors which had, until that time, resulted in continuous difficulties with school authorities and the law. The project, initiated by Mr. Yori Wada, Director of the Buchanan Street Y.M.C.A., in cooperation with the San Francisco Unified School District, was funded by the California Council for Criminal Justice. The title, B.E.A.M., though a typical acronym, in reality summarized the intent of the project, Behavioral Evolvement Through Achievement Management. By focusing on some of the severe academic deficits and school problems which these young people evidenced, hopefully their behavior would be modified in school as well as in the outside world where far too frequently contacts with the law were a common occurrence. Several basic assumptions were inherent in the development of this project. First, it was felt that many of the social behaviors of the children selected for the project were not simply a product of home and community environment, as is often suggested, but in fact, resulted from education's failure to provide them with the necessary skills to function adequately within the social environment of the classroom. Secondly, it was assumed that for a young, adolescent minority population such as this, the most appropriate tutors and counselors would be young black minority group students who could not only provide the necessary instruction and counseling, but would serve better as role models than does the typical teacher, who is more frequently white and from a middle-class socioeconomic background.