METROPOLITAN DESK

ON EDUCATION; A Vital Touchstone For High Schools

By Michael Winerip (NYT) 1112 words

On one level, he succeeded brilliantly. In 17 years, he has published 627 student papers in 57 issues of the quarterly, tackling some of history's most challenging questions. In a 6,235-word paper, Rachel Hines of Montgomery High in Rockville, Md., asked: Did Chaim Rumkowski, the Jewish leader of Poland's Lodz ghetto, do more good or harm by cooperating with the Nazis? Aaron Einbond of Hunter High in New York City explored to what extent John Maynard Keynes's economic ideas were truly revolutionary, and to what extent they were borrowed from others.

Jessica Leight of Cambridge Rindge and Latin in Massachusetts wanted to know why Anne Hutchinson suffered so much more at the hands of the Puritans than her brother-in-law, the Rev. John Wheelwright, when both attacked the leadership. Jennifer Shingleton of Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., questioned whether Abigail Adams really was a feminist, or was being taken out of 18th-century context by contemporary feminist historians.

Britta Waller of Roosevelt High in Kent, Ohio, wrote about the Ferris wheel. ''Fascinating,'' Mr. Fitzhugh says. ''The guy who invented it died brokenhearted. I tell people, the topic doesn't matter, it's the quality that matters, so a kid learns the joy of scholarship. If you learn what it means to go in depth, you also realize when you're being superficial.''

Some of America's best-known historians -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., David McCullough, Shelby Foote -- have praised the Review. And the published students -- who often include their Review papers with their college applications -- have prospered. Seventy-four went on to Harvard, 57 to Yale, 30 to Princeton.

And yet for much of the time, Mr. Fitzhugh has felt like a boatman on the Lewis and Clark expedition, paddling upstream on the Mississippi and making little headway. He fears the high school research paper is on the verge of extinction, shoved aside as students prepare for the five-paragraph essays now demanded on state tests, the SAT II and soon, the SAT. ''I'm convinced the majority of high school students graduate without reading a nonfiction book cover to cover,'' he says. Mr. Fitzhugh is offended that the National Endowment for the Humanities sponsors a $5,000 history essay contest with a 1,200-word limit. ''I have kids writing brilliant 5,000-word papers, and they're not eligible,'' he says. He is saddened by a letter from the chairman of the history department at Boston Latin, that city's premier high school. ''Over the past 10 years, history teachers have largely stopped assigning the traditional term papers,'' Walter Lambert, the chairman, wrote.

While much of the education establishment crows about how standardized testing and the SAT writing sample are raising standards, Mr. Fitzhugh is not alone in seeing a dumbing down. Ken Fox, a college counselor at Ladue Horton Watkins High in St. Louis says that in test preparation courses, his students learn to write a generic five-paragraph essay that can be modified when they take the SAT. ''They're trained to write to formula,'' he says.

He has urged students to submit papers to the Review, and Robert Levin did -- on the emancipation proclamation that John Fremont, a Union Army commander, issued in Missouri in 1861, two years before Lincoln's took effect. ''The big thing,'' says Robert, who wrote the paper on his own time, ''is I've been living here my whole life, interested in the Civil War, and never knew there was this whole huge deal of an emancipation proclamation in Missouri.''

''I loved breaking free from the writing formula they teach us,'' he says. ''I think that hampers your writing.''

Mr. Fitzhugh has been called elitist, but Bruce Gans, a professor in the Chicago community college system who teaches a course on writing research papers, says students need to begin in high school. Mr. Gans says English 101 -- which requires an eight-page paper with eight sources -- is taught at Chicago's seven community colleges and has the highest class dropout rate in the system. ''Kids are terrified of that paper,'' Mr. Gans says. ''Will Fitzhugh is fighting by himself on this. I don't know how he does it.''

BARELY. After graduating from Harvard in 1962, Mr. Fitzhugh held several jobs, including teaching high school history nearby for 10 years. That was when he came to believe that if you asked more of students, they would respond. He started the Review with his ''last $100,000,'' a family inheritance, plus the cashed-in value of his teaching pension. ''I'm stupid,'' he says, ''I thought people would subscribe.'' After 17 years, he has 1,100 subscribers and requires a $40 fee when a paper is submitted.

Twice he has stopped publishing when he ran out of money. Most foundations -- 145 at last count -- have turned him down. His savior has been John Abele, co-founder of Boston Scientific, a medical equipment company that has provided $185,000 a year, enabling Mr. Fitzhugh to move the Review out of his house and to hire an assistant. They have started a National History Club in hopes of broadening its constituency.

Each year, Mr. Fitzhugh offers four $3,000 awards, the Emerson prizes, for the best Review pieces. His dream is that the Emersons will do for high school history what the Intel research awards have done for science. But he never knows if he will be financed from year to year. ''John Abele has been wonderful,'' he says, ''but he had a stroke a few years ago. Thank God he recovered, but if something happens to him, we're history, so to speak.''

Mr. Fitzhugh lives with his wife, Sophia, a retired teacher, in the same house they bought for $43,000 in 1971. His Review salary is $36,000 -- compared with $38,000 he made his last year teaching, 1988. ''I'll be 68 in August,'' he says. ''I'd like to retire after the 70th issue. What I need is to bring someone in before I fall over, but I don't have the money. The problem is, it's not a very prestigious job.''

CAPTIONS: Drawing (Drawing by David Suter)