By Robert Oliphant

Dear Dorothy:

Is there any American who doesn't have a personal interpretation of the Wizard of Oz, especially the movie? To some it's a highly moralistic Dust Bowl story of a hostile juvenile delinquent and her vicious little unleashed doggie who gets into trouble with legally established authority and then runs away, ending up in a strange, hostile place where the Wonderful Wizard of Oz (an obvious acronym for "optimistic zeal") plays a key role in helping her return to a black-and-white life of dreary chores and personal responsibility.

Humbug and socio-educational cynicism . . . . To others, however, L. Frank Baum's story makes much more sense as a confidence booster for low-achieving Americans who have trouble with Established Authority, especially when it comes to getting good grades and recommendations in school. One way or another, after all, 70% of us are always going to be excluded from the winner's circle as represented by those whose faces and names appear most frequently in our high school yearbooks.

By way of putting Established Authority into perspective, Dorothy's first important learning experience - just like learning your crabby teacher is a poor speller - is the discovery that the Wizard himself is a fraudulent humbug.

Subsequently the Wizard himself drives the humbug-cynicism theme home by giving the Scarecrow a fraudulent diploma, the Tin Woodman a fraudulent testimonial award, and the Cowardly Lion a fraudulent medal (an excellent source for interpretations like these is "The Annotated Wizard of Oz" (Norton, 2000).

But books themselves are forms of Established Authority. And so am I as an author telling you to "believe in yourself," just like Lena Horne singing that marvelous song at the end of "The Wiz."

In practical terms, then, every low-achieving Dorothy or Theodore (another "gift of God" name) must also "disbelieve" Established Authority on his or her own, especially when it produces discouraging judgments about one's potential for future academic and career success.

The Personal-Best Yellow Brick Road of Socio-Educational Cynicism . . . . It's not easy to disbelieve Established Authority. The best way is to focus something like the National Anthem Project, www.thenationalanthemproject.org , whose web site explicitly states its goal of getting Americans to learn "all the words" to the Star Spangled Banner, that is, ALL FOUR VERSES (318 words).

The Project's Established Authority sponsors, incidentally, include Laura Bush as Honorary Chairperson, along with an impressive Who's Who of American business (Jeep, Bank of America), public service (Girl Scouts, American Legion, Masons, etc.), and government, including a requested 2.9 million dollars from the U.S. Congress for next year.

Practically considered, then, any humbug-sniffing Dorothy or Theodore can easily and quickly conduct a "patriotic document" survey by making phone calls to ten overtly patriotic organization , local or national, each of which asks to speak with "anyone in the office who has actually learned all 318 words of the Star Spangled Banner by heart."

Based on my own sample, including the interesting excuses and evasions offered, I can safely predict that this quick survey will produce a 50% increase in self esteem for any low-achievement Dorothy or Theodore, especially if they have prepared by learning the complete Anthem (and why not?) in advance. Disbelieve in Established Authority and you'll believe in yourself much, much more - doesn't this make sense as the Wonderful Wizard's primary message?

The Emerald City and High Stakes External Testing . . . . Cynicism without hope or personal confidence is like vinegar on a salad without oil. So the Wizard also gives Dorothy and her friends what would today be called a confidence-building "high stakes" test by asking them to visit the Wicked Witch of the West and bring back her broomstick.

As opposed to what goes on in Established Authority schools and colleges, it's worth noting here high-stakes tests in our society today are externally administered (SAT, the Boston Marathon, etc.).

Even more important, they are REPEATABLE, which is to say they can be taken again and again and again by those who believe in themselves enough to make the effort.

By way of demonstrating the key role of American high stakes test taking today, our Wonderful Wizard would probably ask Dorothy and Theodore to make ten phone calls to local law schools asking how much yearly tuition each charges and what percentage of their graduates passed the state bar exam the first time they took it. Here again, I can safely predict some interesting shuffling and skipping about.

This tuition/ pass percentage proportion can also offer another interesting jab at Established Educational Authority. July 2005 bar exam pass rates in California , for example, show only 42% and 33% for UC Berkeley and UCLA (where out-of-state tuition is $30,000 yearly). In contrast the Ventura and Santa Barbara Colleges of Law, where tuition is roughly $12,000 yearly, have pass rates of 44% and 45%, and Concord College of Law (a very low cost correspondence school) has a pass rate of 50%, i.e., 21 successful candidates out of 40 test takers.

Simply put, the high-stakes test taking route offers low-income late bloomers far more educational opportunity in the long run than the emphasis upon precocity and affluence that characterizes Established Educational Authority today.

The Ruby Slippers of Personal Best Learning and Do It Yourself Testing . . . . Taking a high-stakes test can be a frightening ordeal. Hence the importance of making the trip in one's own ruby slippers, as Dorothy learns at the end of the story. This means making the big jump from disbelief and self esteem to brute force personal best learning that can be accurately measured in terms of time spent and results achieved.

Let's start with time. The time needed to learn to learn our national anthem can be fairly estimated at 30 words per minute, as is also the case with learning new vocabulary, including that of a foreign language. As far as reading goes, 300 words a minute is a respectable rate for both fiction and nonfiction these days.

Consequently, since memorization and reading have always worked well for personal-best learners, we can safely predict that any Dorothy or Theodore who spends the equivalent of a high school or college academic "year" (roughly 4,000 hours) on these activities will be far more successful in taking high-stakes tests than those who spend less time (and more money) sitting in conventional Established Authority classrooms.

Thus stated, what's here is bound to come across as "an offer that can't be accepted," since it omits any specific nuts and bolts help with selecting appropriate targets for out memorization and reading efforts, along with how to make sure we're actually making progress and not deceiving ourselves (self-cynicism and disbelief are always essential when we're working on our own, aren't they?).

So by way of practical help Education News offers Dorothy and Theodore almost fifty articles that deal explicitly with various kinds of personal best learning and do-it-yourself testing. These can be directly accessed via http://www.educationnews.org/writers/robert-p;oliphant-previous-columns.htm .

TO CONCLUDE. . . . Like any literary work The Wizard of Oz speaks to us indirectly, staying clear of explicit statements regarding putative rights and wrongs. Hence the desirability, I feel, of closing with an explicit a bill of rights for low-achieving students.

If statements like these get a yes-vote, can study motivation and optimistic zeal be far behind?

(1) The Right to disbelieve Established Educational Authority . . . . especially its judgments regarding any young American's potential for future achievement.

(2) The Right to assemble educational evidence . . . . especially that which will validate or invalidate factually verifiable statements made by Established Authority

(3) The Right to evade Established Education Authority . . . . especially by taking career-relevant high-stakes externally administered tests.

(4) The Right to invest one's time in personal-best learning and do-it-yourself testing.