Missing ingredient: hunger to learn

The late Mayor Harold Washington's birthday couldn't have comeat a better time: right in the midst of another series of officialrap sessions about public school reform.

Chicago's first black mayor would have become 67 years oldSaturday and some of us "discussants" need to understand that MayorWashington's life offers a dramatic example of what is missing intoday's over-all educative process. Specifically: a thrust forself-education.

Washington is recognized as probably one of the mostintellectual of all Chicago mayors, certainly one of the more giftedin the use of the English language. But what is not generally knownabout this well-read, articulate graduate of …