The Philadelphia Experiment

Abstract

Peter Countryman The Philadelphia Tutorial Project was conceived and sponsored by the Northern Student Movement (NSM), a coordinating body for some thirtyfive campus civil rights groups in New England and New York state. NSM had been searching all last year for a way to apply the resources of students to the extremely complex social syndrome which inhibits Negro communities in the North. A large conference in April studied racial conflict in terms of housing, education, employment and politics, but left us still faced with the dilemma of bringing an inexperienced, socially uneducated and predominantly white student body into a significant relationship with the urban Negro community and its problems. In the early spring we decided to have a group of the campus leaders live in a Negro community for the summer; Philadelphia was chosen because of close contacts with a number of Negro educators and clergy there. In talking with these community leaders, the idea of a tutorial program was presented and immediately received an enthusiastic response. The reason for this became clear later— the greater part of the Negro population in Philadelphia faces an educational system parallel to those in other urban centers: Crowded schools, poor teachers (the better ones refuse to be placed in these schools), inadequate equipment and facilities, and what is probably most harmful, downshifted curriculum requirements. Together with the environment of the community itself, the educational system produces an atmosphere almost