Making Math & Science Soar

How can a high school get its brain-busting math and science courses off the ground and make them soar through the students' minds? The Atlanta public schools have blue-skied a wingding answer: they are teaching the kids to fly airplanes. Last week the most advanced of 45 boys and seven girls in the courses offered by three Atlanta high schools began flying a new Piper Cherokee 140 lent to the schools by the manufacturer.

The course was inspired by a former Navy pilot, Frank Hazelwood, 35, who moved to Atlanta three years ago and simply decided he wanted to do something for the schools his two daughters attend. He volunteered to teach a non-credit experimental flying course twice weekly after school hours. School officials were surprised when 70 kids tried to enroll even though Hazelwood could handle only eleven. One was a dropout who begged to be readmitted when he heard about the course, soon began carrying his slide-rule flight computer around school, proudly solving math problems for friends. He got his high school diploma at the age of 22.

Hazelwood leased a plane at his own expense, took his students aloft. Then he taught a second class two nights a week to 18 teachers so they could qualify to teach ground-school courses. He also found three other flying instructors in the school system and two already qualified ground teachers. The pilot-instructors include two Negro teachers (a third of the students are Negro) plus Mrs. Georgia Eidson, an energetic history teacher and former Women's Air Force pilot. With that nucleus, school officials made the course a regular part of the curriculum this year. It includes instruction in aerodynamics, meteorology, flight computers, navigation, radio navigation and FAA regulations. Students get in ten flying hours toward the 40 needed for a license, pay only $35.

Atlanta's Assistant Superintendent John Martin contends that kids in the course develop a new "pride in their scholarship," notes that math and science finally "begin to make sense to them." Roger Derthick, principal of Henry Grady High, calls it "a great motivating course." The FAA is so enthusiastic that it is permitting one of its field men to help Atlanta teachers qualify as flying instructors. Mervin Strickler Jr., director of the FAA education program, contends that "this type of course changes the attitude of youngsters toward excellence, precision and high standards--no kid is satisfied with 70% success when landing an airplane."

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