"Seated at a solitary desk in the hall outside a classroom, the slender 13-year-old boy with a smile like a sunrise earnestly does remedial algebra, assisted by a paid tutor. She, too, is 13.

Both wear the uniform — white polo shirt, khaki slacks — of a school that has not yet admitted the boy. It will, because he refuses to go away.

The son of Indian immigrants from Mexico, the boy decided he is going to be a doctor, heard about the American Indian Public Charter School here and started showing up. Ben Chavis, AIPCS’ benevolent dictator, told the boy that although he was doing well at school, he was not up to the rigors of AIPCS.

So the boy asked, what must I do?

Telling young people what they must do is what Chavis does. With close-cropped hair and a short beard flecked with gray, he looks somewhat like Lenin, but is less democratic. A Lumbee Indian from North Carolina, he ran track, earned a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, got rich in real estate (“I wanted to buy back America and lease it to the whites”) and decided to fix the world, beginning with AIPCS."

Get the Story:
George Will: Paternalism for all, except for children (The Mitchell Daily Republic 8/2)
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