After-School Scholars

The well-off Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio saw no good reason last year to offer French and special science courses below the high-school level, as suggested by a band of determined parents. So the parents signed up a French teacher and two working scientists as instructors, charged pupils 50-c- a lesson, soon had a booming after-school program of their own (TIME, June 2).

As bright schoolchildren eagerly took on extra, out-of-class work, the parents (now incorporated as the nonprofit Lakewood Foundation) have expanded the program. Last week the foundation was conducting five French and three science once-a-week classes for ages six to twelve (sample project: observing the effect of radiation on hamsters), plus two Russian courses for adults and children, and a junior "Great Books," program that probes such works as Little Women and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.

So solid is the foundation, in fact, that it has a waiting list of French teachers and a constant flow of applications from Lakewood boys and girls who want more stimulus than they get in school. But the foundation's sincerest compliment has come from Lakewood's public-school system itself. Last fall, after the foundation's success with teaching French to children, the Lakewood public schools tentatively introduced Spanish, French and German to a selected group of seventh-graders. The program is working out so well that next fall these languages will be offered to all seventh-and eighth-graders. What is more, School Superintendent William B. Edwards last week acknowledged that they may eventually be taught in the elementary grades, just as the Lakewood parents requested a year ago.

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