THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503100176
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
If you ask Maury Brickhouse what he got from playing high school football, he'll mention one minus and two plusses.
The minus is a bad knee, which was replaced with an artificial joint eight years ago. It's hanging in there very well, thank you.
The plusses are lessons in life that will be worth even more in his new challenge as chairman of the Chesapeake School Board.
Brickhouse stepped up from vice chairman of the board when chairman Jesse Lee resigned recently for personal reasons. Brickhouse, a 1967 graduate of Oscar F. Smith High School, says his football experience there was character-building. He came away with personal discipline and a sense that you live life sort of like you play football.
``When you get knocked down,'' he says, ``you gotta get back up and go again.''
He must have gotten up and gone again pretty well. A tough lineman, he was named second-team all-Tidewater in his senior year. He had a chance for a scholarship to the U.S. Naval Academy, but he wanted to be a pilot, and he flunked a flight test.
At 45, Brickhouse is a round-faced guy with brownish hair on its way to turning gray. Professionally, he's director of the enforcement and probation arm of Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. His 21 years as a juvenile probation officer give him what he calls a perspective on behavior that no else on the School Board has in such large measure. It is, he says, a fuller understanding of the processes of juvenile delinquency.
He's also quick to tell you that today's kids are growing up in a society far different from the one that nurtured him.
``In the South Norfolk of my childhood,'' he says ``there was a strong sense of community, and the community was like an extended family.
``In old South Norfolk, there wasn't a street where I didn't know a home that I could go to and feel safe. If my friends and I were up to some mischief, we'd quit because we were afraid that old Miz So-and-so might see us and tell our folks.
``People didn't move as frequently. There might be three generations of one family who had lived in the same house. The families knew each other and trusted each other. Adult authority was more strongly exercised in those days.''
After graduating from Old Dominion University, Brickhouse worked on the 1972 congressional election campaign of Del. Bobby Gibson. Gibson lost, leaving Brickhouse jobless until he heard of an opening on the court probation staff.
He started with the usual ``I'm-going-to-change-the-world'' attitude. Over two decades, he has learned the reality.
``You think you can go into the child's life and make major changes, but the best you can hope for is small changes that ripple out and magnify.''
Ask him the single most important piece of advice he would give parents and he says, ``Love your child enough to say no.'' Parental strength can balance peer pressure, he explains. The kid who doesn't want to say, ``I just don't like to drink,'' can say, ``My dad would kill me if I did.''
Brickhouse comes down hard on the point that teens are not young adults. They're adolescents, neither physically nor emotionally mature enough to be treated as adults.
Brickhouse sees a common thread among kids in trouble.
``They're not as connected with institutions,'' he says. ``Not with family or church or school.'' How important is that? ``In the five years I have been on the School Board, we have never expelled a child involved in extracurricular activities.'' He also cites a national survey showing that about 80 percent of kids facing juvenile court action were not involved in extracurricular activities.
As for the central business of schools - education - Brickhouse has some ideas about new directions. ``There's a real need for alternative education,'' he says. He's talking about the fact that not all kids learn the same way. Some respond best to what they hear, others to what they see. He's hoping that the school system will identify these individual differences and create programs to deal with them.
However, big changes in big institutions are often slow, and I wondered what Chairman Brickhouse would call for if he had the power to enforce a major change right now.
``I would institute the greatest measure of respect for parents and teachers from the students, the same respect for teachers and students from the parents and the same respect for parents and students from the teachers.''
Then Brickhouse laughs. ``I guess,'' he says, ``that it would take a magic wand, and magic wands are hard to come by.'' by CNB