The Cupertino Courier Changes ahead, changes behind This week The Courier introduces a new biweekly column. Lee Kucera brings 15 years of experience to these pages. Her work has appeared in McCall's, Savvy, the Chicago Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News. Kucera's pieces will alternate with Jon Hoornstra's. Hoornstra is taking a leave of absence and will return in March. --Editor By LEE KUCERA Writing a column is a little like being onstage. The audience can see you, the writer, but you can't see them. So, because you can see me--unless you've briskly flipped on to the next page--I might as well tell you a little bit about myself. My husband and I have lived in Cupertino long enough to remember a few remaining fruit orchards on De Anza Boulevard. We have raised three children here (our oldest is 27) and seen some dramatic changes in the past 20 years. I've watched our small neighborhood schools accelerate into academic superpowers that are cited by name in real estate ads both here and abroad. Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is required reading for 16-year-olds (never mind that the book is in the upper-division course work of most of the universities in the country). Seven-year-old children are awakened before dawn to rack up pages for a "reading for pleasure" program. (Oxymoron? You bet.) Students who bring home a 96 on a math test one week and a 94 the next are punished for the 94. Parents call a teacher and say, "I know my daughter is getting an A in your class; I just wonder if she could be doing any better." I have firsthand knowledge of each of these examples--and they bother me. Anyone who believes that this kind of obsessive grade-grubbing engenders future success in life should spend about 15 minutes at a high school reunion. Countless models from history, as well as contemporary life, illustrate a lesson we refuse to learn: the people who achieve the most are those who are simply curious to find the answer to a compelling question. We do precious little to foster intellectual curiosity when we teach kids that 94 is a failure and everything they learn in 16 weeks is measured by one-tenth of 1 percent. But the most obvious change in our community, of course, is the immigration in the past decade or so of large numbers of people from every corner of the world: the Pacific Rim, Eastern Europe, India, the Middle East. At a recent school potluck I noticed hummus, couscous, samosas, sushi and potstickers alongside McDonald's chicken sandwiches. On the streets and in the shops of Cupertino, we hear a medley of languages that I never heard when I was growing up. At Monta Vista High School, my sandy-haired daughter stands out in the crowd. As a volunteer instructor at Stanford's Bechtel International Center, I teach a weekly English class to foreign-born graduate students. One of the center's programs involves pairing community members as English in Action partners with foreign students so they can practice conversational English with native speakers. My partner is a lovely young Korean woman whose husband just finished his doctorate. Recently she invited me to come to her house for tea. We sat on the floor of her married-student apartment, exchanged pictures of our children and drank green tea accompanied by a snack of Korean sweet potatoes (they're good). We talked--slowly, a bit laboriously--about food, our in-laws, our contrasting social customs and her concerns about raising her small children in American society. What an enriching thing this cross-cultural exchange is! I realize that not everyone sees it that way. Yes, change is difficult. But my guess is that if those who feel encroached upon by our multiethnic composition were to participate in a program like English in Action, the "us versus them" mentality would evaporate. Defining the most meaningful education for our kids, assuming our collective responsibility for the well-being of our children, determining whether we will evolve into tolerant and inclusive neighborhoods or intolerant and exclusive ones--These things matter. I'll be talking about them in the coming weeks, and about anything else that's going on that challenges us to take a closer look at our values as a community. Maybe it's not a stage--it's more like I feel as if I'm standing in the middle of a football stadium without any clothes on. But here goes. [ Back to Contents Page | Cupertino Courier Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Cupertino Courier, January 13, 1999. ©1999 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.