Can I Copy Your Homework -- and Represent You in Court?

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Some used their profits to start up other ventures: a postal system, a comic book, a loan agency. Disputes eventually led to the creation of laws, police, courts and a constitutional convention (democracy triumphed over a police state by a single vote). As they began to discover the relevance of reading and arithmetic through managing their miniature society, Richmond's students also discovered in themselves an enthusiasm for education -- and a hunger for more.

Richmond wrote a book about his experience and eventually helped launch the first school based entirely on his Microsociety model. After much sniffing and sneering from the local newspaper, which dismissed the idea as "futuristic," "dubious" and "a gimmick," City Magnet School opened in 1981 in a empty library in Lowell, Massachusetts. By 1987 the school's students were testing two years above the national norm in both reading and math. Then in 1990, 13 eighth-graders passed first-year college-level exams, again in reading and math. School attendance hovers around 96%, and during the past six years only five children have dropped out. Those numbers were impressive enough to inspire the New York school districts of Yonkers and Newburgh and the Massachusetts district of Pepperell to create their own versions of Microsociety, and two weeks ago the doors of Manhattan's first Micro school opened -- just 10 blocks from the slums where Richmond grew up.

Even more compelling than test scores are the changes that cannot be quantified. In 1981 Lowell's school system was so racially segregated that a federal judge ordered the city to correct the imbalance. When C.M.S. first opened, the student body was mostly black; this September more than half the students are from white and Hispanic families who requested to take part in the program. Until the practice was dropped several years ago, parents used to register their children for C.M.S. in the hospital the day they were born. A mother of six, Margaret Pollard sent her three youngest children there, and marvels at the difference it made. Compared with the older children from more traditional schools, says Pollard, who now works as a secretary at C.M.S., her young ones "are more open, more apt to take chances and much more comfortable with stating opinions than the older ones." It leaves a lasting impression on a child, says Lowell curriculum coordinator Tom Malone, to be able to make an impression on their surroundings: "Because they are empowered to create their own society, they see themselves as capable people."

Under the Microsociety model, the school day is split in two. The morning is / devoted to traditional classes in history, science, English, math. In the afternoon students put the lessons to work. They memorize multiplication tables not only to score well on problem sets but also so they can keep double-entry books, write checks, bill customers and complete financial audits. Says Gladys Pack, Yonkers' assistant superintendent: "We're making learning real because kids in Micro believe they're living in a real world."