Description
Two Roads is a collection of school tales that has been taken from my own personal experience in teaching high school students in a school composed of primarily minority students--Negro, Mexican-American, Samoan, Filipino, Japanese-American, Chinese, and Indian. The characters are basically composites of those who I taught and, in general, present types characterized by the particular problems they must resolve. The main purpose of Two Roads is to provide reading material with familiar settings and problems for low-ability readers who live in the inner city and know the problems of that living. Sentences are limited in length and complexity, and the vocabulary is regulated to facilitate reading for these students. The stories are intended to provide discussion material in Personal Values, a topic that is of urgent concern if there is a desire to bring two cultures--the Culture of Affluence and the Culture of Poverty--into some accord. Each story will provide a common experience for the members of the class so that there may be some single springboard for class discussion centering around decision-making in accordance with one's values. Each story deals with some problem that a student of the Poverty Culture might face. Vincent Minelli must decide whether to join his father's tuna fleet or continue his education. Danny must determine his future life with a foster family. Shiori must resolve for herself the conflicts between her Japanese and American backgrounds. Kally must decide whether to face public censure in the face of her dating a white boy, one not of her own kind. Archangel must adjust to an alien environment and language or return to the Philippines. Lou Anne and Betty struggle with parental supervision. William must decide whether to respect the teacher or salvage his own ego. Tom and Jim wrestle with their convictions against giving information to the police. Each story ends at the point of decision, and each decision is one that might decide the whole course of a character's life or the whole direction of his personal development. It is intended that there will be enough clues in the development of the characters that students will be able to determine what choice he will make. But if they are unable to do this, the two options, at least, will be clear, and the story itself will present the means for discussing which of the "two roads'' would be, in the long run, the most rewarding. It is expected that the "one less traveled by" would be encouraged, and that the students would be able in the end to have formed some acceptance, no matter how small, of that "less traveled," less accepted road.
