Robert Coles (1) (1929–2026)

Child psychiatrist Robert Coles, is (according to journalist Scott London) perhaps “best known for his explorations of children's lives and books that explore their moral, political, and spiritual sensibilities.” He was eminently qualified to write a picture book about Ruby Bridges, the first African-American child to attend, in 1960, a whites-only elementary school. Coles apparently witnessed the six-year-old enter the school accompanied by armed US marshalls, and he subsequently show more supported the girl and her family through what can only be described as an ordeal.

This is a simple but beautiful and powerful picture book. It opens with a few details about Ruby’s early life. She was born in Mississippi where her daddy worked hard to support his family by picking crops. He lost that job when the owners of the land brought in farm equipment. The family subsequently moved to New Orleans, where her father got janitorial work and her mother stayed home with Ruby and her siblings by day and scrubbed the floors of banks by night. The family was extremely poor.

In 1960 when a judge ordered that four black girls were to be allowed to attend two white elementary schools (in the fully segregated New Orleans school system), the Bridges were proud that Ruby had been selected. They prayed for strength and courage and that the little girl would be “a credit to her people.” She was the only one of the four children to attend William Frantz Elementary.

Ruby was from a deeply spiritual family. Her mother wanted the children to feel “close to God” and ensured that everyone attended church every Sunday.

Familiar as I am with Ruby’s story and others similar to it, I have to say that reading a picture book about the hate spewed at this tidy little girl with a bow in her hair was enough to make me weep. She said not a word to those who called her names and threatened her. The abuse went on for months.

Also for months, Ruby was the only child in her grade-one class. Her teacher, Mrs. Henry, was struck by how polite and relaxed the girl was. There was no anxiety, irritability, or fear on display. Ruby was calmly committed to learning to read and write.

One morning from a school window, Mrs. Henry saw Ruby speaking to the people screaming at her. The teacher was later to find out that the little girl hadn’t been talking to them at all; she had been praying for these people who hated her, asking God to forgive them as Jesus had long ago forgiven those who’d been terrible to him. Uncharacteristically, that morning, Ruby had forgotten the prayers she usually said a few blocks before she reached the school, so she pronounced them at the school’s doorstep.

In an afterword, Coles explains that Ruby did not remain the sole student in the classroom. Later that year, a couple of white boys were sent back to school because they were getting into too much trouble at home. The mob was pretty angry with them, too. In time, however, more children returned, and by Ruby’s grade-two year, the hateful crowd had given up. The author also explains that Ruby finished elementary and high school, married a contractor, had four sons, and created The Ruby Bridges Foundation.

To conclude, I want to quote from Scott London’s excellent article on Coles, which I was very glad to have found online:

“Coles feels that we learn our most lasting moral lessons through stories. Storytelling, in the form of both personal narratives and the established literary tradition, gives us a fuller understanding of ourselves and the experiences of others. ‘The whole point of stories,’ he observes, ‘is not “solutions” or “resolutions” but a broadening and even heightening of our struggles.’ They remind us of what is important in life, admonish us, point us in new directions, engage us in self-reflection, and sometimes inspire us to lead lives of moral integrity. The beauty of a story, he says, is in its openness — ‘the way you or I can take it in, and use it for ourselves.’”

This simple picture book surely inspires young readers to understand something about the courage of a very young person in the face of hate. I can see it being used with children as young as Ruby was at the time of her experience and even with young teenagers. show less

This is a compendium of essays that Robert Coles wrote while and after teaching at Harvard. He is both a child psychiatrist and a professor of Social Ethics, and in this latter role he has had many discussions with college students regarding their reading and its impact on their own ethical thought. It illustrates how reading the classics can influence people's thinking about themselves, their families, the decisions they may have to make, their opinions of others - in short, the lessons show more fiction can impart to us all. Lovely writing and thoughtfulness.

I've been reading this for quite a while, an essay here and there as I go. It is one of those books that bears rereading, as much as the classic texts it cites. show less

This is the story of Ruby Bridges, a 6-year-old black girl who was chosen to be one of the first kids to attend a non-segregated school. The story focuses on her first year in school, the mob that would come harass her every morning, and her reaction to it. It's a story of perseverance and forgiveness with a strong religious undertone. The illustrations are beautiful and the story is well written. I wish that there had been a little bit about who Ruby Bridges grew up to be, or more about show more what happened when the other students started coming back to school. show less

Child psychiatrist and author Coles strongly identifies himself with a liberal humanitarian ethic, which isn't what draws me to his work. In fact, it's part of what defeated an earlier attempt of mine to read a different book by him, The Call of Service. Even so, I held out hope that The Spiritual Life of Children would be an entertaining and/or informative read for me, since it purports to offer intimate accounts of the religious and spiritual perspectives of children aged six to thirteen, show more a range which includes my own daughter at its lower end. While the book did have some value for me, it was mostly disappointing.

In the end, it seemed like the book was really about Robert Coles: how he negotiated his condition as a secular, skeptically-conditioned intellectual vis a vis pious and spiritually curious children. I did not object to (enjoyed, actually) the first chapter on the vexed and shifting status of the psychoanalytic tradition's judgments about religion. Similarly, I appreciated the authorial reflexivity in the second chapter on method, describing his conflicts, hesitancies, and difficulties in eliciting children's real views on matters important to them. But that matter became an unceasing refrain throughout the book while recounting his interviews with children, e.g. "I began thinking of some words to speak..." (50), "I found myself wondering..." (102), "I gave myself an inward lecture..." (214), "Now I felt impelled to speak" (282). Perhaps this mode of reportage is an inevitable byproduct of Coles' psychoanalytic orientation, but I got seriously tired of it.

Also, despite Coles' evident efforts to devote attention--entire chapters, even--to Jewish, Muslim, and vaguely secular children (plus one Hopi girl), there were far too many pages dedicated to kids talking on and on about Jesus. Certainly, this is no invalidation of the book relative to its likely readership. But while I was once a Christian child myself, Christian children are something I neither have nor want, and so their clearly dominant presence in the book became another source of fatigue for me as a reader.

In his effort to focus on "spirituality not religion," Coles avoided any substantial discussion about children's experiences of religious ritual or worship, and only glancingly addressed the issue of religious instruction. At the same time, all of the accounts in the book were overtly circumscribed by the religious affiliation (or lack thereof) of the children involved. The omission of their ceremonial and catechumenal lives was a significant loss, as far as I was concerned.

I didn't regret holding on for the final chapters, one on "Secular Soul-Searching" and the last on "The Child as Pilgrim." These had some of the more interesting conversations, as well as more general applicability to my own situation. The endnotes are constructed to direct readers to a wider range of texts that engage some of the important questions that could only receive passing attention in this one, and there may be two or three books there that I will pursue. show less