Last week, as I drove through the early morning, South Baltimore traffic toward St. Jerome's Head Start Center to thank contributors to the "SHARE" cooperative food program, I recalled the nearby elementary school which I had attended nearly 40 years ago.

I spent most of elementary school as an unhappy member of what then was called the "3rd Group." To this day, I remember the cold, incredulous, rejecting words of my 6^th grade school counselor. "You want to be a lawyer? Who do you think you are?"

As I thought back to that time, I did something I have done every morning of my adult life. I thanked God for the wonderful adults who gave me my head start in life: for my parents, who convinced me that I could become whatever I decided to be; and for Mr. Hollis Posey, the sixth grade teacher who listened to my dreams and believed.

The "3^rd Group" at my elementary school was a small footnote in what Yale's Dr. James P. Comer calls the myths of American achievement. Dr. Comer's recent book challenging those myths, "Waiting for a Miracle: Why Schools Can't Solve Our Problems - and How We Can," should be required reading for every parent, educator, policy-maker and American who cares about our future as a nation.

James P. Comer, M.D., is an African-American child psychiatrist who believes in hard scientific evidence, not philosophical speculation. His Yale University School Development Program has successfully raised student achievement scores in Prince Georges County, Maryland, and nationwide.

In "Waiting for a Miracle," Dr. Comer develops his thesis that cultural bias is the source of many of our social problems. His research targets two unfounded and inaccurate American myths about why individuals succeed or fail. First, most Americans erroneously believe that a person's success or failure is almost exclusively the result of genetically-determined intelligence and will. This myth is supported and aggravated, in turn, by an inaccurate but pervasive American belief that everyone has the same opportunities in life.

The Comer challenge to these myths cites current scientific evidence that test scores and college grades are not good indicators of future achievement in life. Rather, the best foundations for societal success have been shown to be community-based programs which stress creativity, commitment, social skills and good health, as well as educational policies which reward and positively reinforce individual effort.

As a consequence of our excessively individualistic national mythology, Dr. Comer reasons, America has failed to undertake the childhood development and community-building which will transform our children into adult citizens able to sustain our society and future international position. Rather than developing an effective response to that policy failure, many Americans have blamed African Americans and other social groups with high "failure" rates for the consequences of this country’s inadequate social investment.

Dr. Comer counters the myth of equal opportunity, and the scapegoating encouraged by that myth, by an analysis describing the effects of African American slavery, cultural loss and socioeconomic exclusion. He also confirms the statistical evidence that American society, in general, now is experiencing comparable levels of what once were erroneously considered exclusively "Black" social problems. Unwed teenage births, substance abuse and violent juvenile crime are everyone's problems. Our suburbs and rural areas are safe havens no longer.

James Comer acknowledges that better schools are an important part of the solution to our American problems. He also argues convincingly that, without significant cultural change, neither American schools nor our other institutions can solve our problems. "Expecting schools to do so," he declares, "is like waiting for a miracle."

I agree with the Comer analysis of our American educational dilemma. The cultural attitudes toward African Americans held by many members of other ethnic groups may not have fully incorporated the realities of modern life, but more and more Americans of all backgrounds now sail in the same boat as we do. Our children's future requires that all Americans of good will support the growing, multiracial coalition which now is at work seeking inclusive, family-involved and child-oriented solutions to our nation's social problems.

I am thankful that Baltimore already is on the way toward creating its own miracle by the kind of broad, community-based effort Dr. Comer prescribes. The "SHARE" food network fundraiser I addressed at St. Jerome's Head Start Center last week was an important step toward that goal. Good people joined forces to give children food for today and a head start for their future.

The breakfast was sponsored, in part, by the very successful programs for early childhood development and family support we collectively call "Head Start." Local volunteers from RESULTS, a nationwide citizens’ lobby dedicated to the elimination of hunger and poverty, also joined in sponsoring the event.

RESULTS volunteers like Professor Lois Roeder and Dr. Diane Fertsch played a significant national advocacy role earlier this year in our successful effort to increase federal Head Start funding by $313 Million; and their local support last week will help Head Start and "SHARE" volunteers like Deacon Alexander Smith expand essential food distribution and volunteer programs.

This is how we must rebuild our community, I thought, as I walked from the multiracial, ecumenical gathering at St. Jerome's to visit the children learning in the Head Start classroom next door. As I entered, the teacher informed her class, "Our Congressman has come for a visit."

One of her small students looked up at me from his drawing and smiled. His small hand, the same color as mine, reached out to touch me. "Can I be a Congressman, too?" he asked. "You can be a Congressman or whatever else you decide to be," I answered. "You will become whomever you believe you are."