Ben Carson Lifetime Scholars

Ben Carson Lifetime Scholars was a nonprofit organization that trained high school students for a lifetime of scholarship. The organization was active from 1998-2005 and had one chapter, in the Detroit area. We began in October 1998 in a single classroom on a Saturday with five students and a single volunteer teacher who advocates a “coaching” style of teaching. The students wanted help boosting their SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) scores. The coach quickly recognized that the students didn’t lack SAT preparation: they lacked rigorous, classic intellectual training. One of the parents formalized their sessions, which transformed into a novel curriculum that naturally integrates standardized test preparation with basic mathematical and verbal training. This way students develop the skills that form the basis of general academic success and the intellectual life, while earning high standardized test scores. We spread our students into classrooms of small Teams. Our curricula balanced math and verbal training. Though the news media predominately exposes the severe math and science deficiencies of American secondary students, we found an even more pervasive deficiency verbal skills, specifically: reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing. We stressed to our students that the word scholarship means more than just high academic achievement. When embraced as a lifelong activity scholarship pays unending benefits. It keeps the brain youthful and healthy forever and ensures a fascinating, self-sufficient, and productive life. Within this context, we urge our students to take the toughest, core academic courses that their schools have to offer. In combination with our extracurricular training, students earned high standardized test scores and construct impressive transcripts decorated with high grades. We presented our students no motivational, career awareness, resume writing, college entrance, or any other sort of feel-good seminars. We rounded them up into their Teams and drilled them rigorously and vigorously with fundamental intellectual exercises that exhausted, strengthened, and expanded their brains. We had one discipline policy: participate fully, enthusiastically, and cheerfully, or leave. Our academic coaches and other staff members included engineers, mathematicians, writers, professors, physicians, and other professionals who volunteered their time. We invited interested Detroit-area professionals, parents, and students to join our crusade. We also invited those outside the Detroit area to utilize our resources for starting or strengthening similar programs around the country.