The Burden Of Excellence

Cecil Lytle, former Provost of Thurgood Marshall College at UCSD, has written a revealing memoir of his 5-year struggle to establish the Preuss School UCSD, a college-preparatory school for disadvantaged children, modeled as an urban "Educational Field Station" to mimic the technique used by the UC system in creating the Agricultural Field Stations that made agriculture one of the chief industries in California. It was a long and contentious process, far more difficult than anyone could foresee when it began, and far more successful when finally realized fully than anyone had expected.

What would become a public firestorm had heretofore been fought within the courtly parlance of a university campus; from behind masks of civility and polysyllabic words, we had played out the ancient transcendental dance between the "haves" and the "have-nots."