Piney Woods: An Academic Oasis

This story is about the education of some inner city kids. If you think it means a familiar tale of drugs, guns and failure, you'll be surprised.

As Correspondent Morley Safer first reported back in 1992, there is a school that offers an alternative, an academic oasis in rural Mississippi that is the polar opposite of what so many inner-city public schools have become. It offers education and something else.

At the Piney Woods Country Life School, an all-black boarding school in rural Mississippi, most of the pupils are from poor, single-parent homes. Many come from the toughest neighborhoods in the country.

"Around my neighborhood, it's gunshots, and that's all you hear. I'm totally aware as soon as I get off that plane, I know, 'Yeah, this is New York. I'm home,'" says Quiahmah, who's from Brooklyn, N.Y. "It was rough. But here it's quiet, nice, settled. You know, you don't have to think about, 'Oh, gee, I'm going to school today, I hope I don't get shot.'"

Piney Woods is about as no-nonsense as education gets in this country. The school was started at the turn of the century by a black educator to provide basic education for the children of field hands. To get into Piney Woods, a student must have a C average. Almost 90 percent of them are on some kind of scholarship. No one is turned away because of money; the school raises it from charitable foundations, corporations and from individuals. The school president is Dr. Charles Beady, who took the basics, upgraded them and toughened them.

The ethic is the work ethic; the discipline, boot camp. Drugs and guns are absent. The kids, 300 boarders, are present and accounted for. These are kids whom the sociologists describe as "at risk," meaning they are likely to drop out and get pregnant.

"The programs that we put together are intended to say to the young person that you can be successful, you're just as bright as anybody else," says Beady. "That your primary purpose for being here is to get yourself a good education. And our primary purpose for being here is to make sure that happens."

And it does happen. Standards are high; grades are monitored weekly. More than 90 percent of Piney Woods graduates go on to college, to small state schools, to the Ivy League. Everybody at Piney Woods must work at least 10 hours a week in a variety of jobs on the campus. The discipline is all about enabling these kids to take control of their lives. There are rules for everything. There's a dress code, a makeup code, a hair code.

"We have a book of rules. How to become a Piney Woods student, and how to become an ex-Piney Woods student. Pregnancy and impregnation is one of them," says Beady.

"But you threw a girl out, a girl who became pregnant, just four weeks before graduation," says Safer.

"I didn't throw anybody out," says Beady. "If she had abided by the rules and regulations, she'd still be a Piney Woods student."

"That seems tough," says Safer. "I mean, why not let her graduate and at least get the benefit of having been here?"

"My philosophy has always been the greatest good for the greatest number, and I agonize often over the fact that some of our young people have to leave," says Beady. "But I can't afford to let one person stop the forward progress of the Piney Woods Country Life School and what we're all about."

It's easy for a visitor to this idyllic campus to forget the realities of the lives of so many of these children, the ones who have to steel themselves when it's time to go home.

For Monica Jackson, life with her mother was a trial. "I was the mother and she was the daughter," says Monica. "I was bad."

Before Monica arrived at Piney Woods, she was doing her best to become a statistic; she skipped school and was arrested three times.

"I got bottles broken over my head, and my best friend got stabbed three times," says Monica. "And after that, I said, 'This is just not the way I want to live my life at all. I can't handle this. I just don't want to be like this.'"

"I wanted out," adds Monica, who got out, big time. She says that Piney Woods has really become home to her. "For once in my life, I was learning something, not getting by. I was on the honor roll. And that's just, I mean, that just surprised me. Monica Jackson on honor roll?"

"When you go back out there in the world, do you think that the experience here will have shaped you," Safer asks Quiahmah.

"Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I know myself. And I'm sure if I was home, I wouldn't be as proud as I am now," says Quiahmah. "I've always been told to walk with your head up, walk straight, be proud, and that has helped me a lot."

The kids who Safer met at the Piney Woods school 12 years ago are all grown up now. Safer checked up on a couple of them to see if Piney Woods has continued to make a difference in their lives.

Quiahmah is 28 now and back home in New York. "I often think about what Dr. Beady has said. We didn't have a right to be there," says Quiahmah. "It was a privilege to be at Piney Woods. And now as an adult, I truly understand the meaning of those words."

After graduating from Piney Woods, Quiahmah went on to college, and then left to work in the fashion industry. But she's now back in school and planning to get her master's degree in business. She credits Piney Woods for the strong work ethic and the sense of pride she has today.

As for Piney Woods today, you'll see that those values haven't changed. Discipline and tough love are still the ruling principles, and still enforced by Dr. Beady. He still trolls the halls looking for any troublemaking, and is still taking a very personal interest.

He says Piney Woods continues to meet its goals: turning out responsible young men and women. He says that 98 percent of them go on to college. And few have made him prouder than Monica Jackson, the "at-risk" kid 60 Minutes met on its last visit.

Monica graduated from college with honors. She has a job at the V.A. Medical Center in Philadelphia, where she supervises clinical trials. Also, she's now Monica Williams, married with three children. She says that, in raising her kids, she uses the same principles she lived by at Piney Woods.

"Confidence, discipline, great self-esteem," says Monica. "Not a big house. Not a big car. But the actual love and discipline that I got, that taught me you can be as good as anybody else."

And had she not gone through that?

"It's so emotional for me, thinking about what would've happened to me if I hadn't gotten on the bus to go to Piney Woods," says Monica. "I'd probably either be in jail, or I don't know. I just don't think it would be good. There's no question in my mind, Piney Woods saved my life."