The Boom Boom Method
by Doctor Beltway
Research assistance by Professor Richard T. Overbeat

Hitfield Press, April 23, 1998.
Reproduced by permission of the publisher.

Months after the spanking, Erik Vidor made the evening news on six different stations. Some showed a whole wall of crying photos, arrayed in rows at a press conference. Most showed close-ups of the screeching boy grabbing frantically at his butt, and Channel 2 drew nearer still, filling the screen with first his red-faced bawling, then panning down to his instinctive butt-gripping. Viewers could see for themselves the result of a severe paddling.

After the photo, most newscasts flipped to footage of the man who'd paddled Erik: Leroy "Boom Boom" Jackson, superintendent of the Classical School for Brilliant Children. At Jackson's own news conference, the private school's kids and their parents massed around him, showing their support. He colorfully defended corporal punishment: "For 300 years, it's been part of schooling and education. It wasn't until the '70s that those dope-smoking psychiatrists came in with this feel-good mentality stuff and decided to control our children with a time-out."

The parents at the press conference rose to his defense. "What they do at the Jackson institute isn't abuse," said Phillip Givens. "It's paddling."

"There's a difference between child abuse and discipline," said Jonathan Hicks.

Boom Boom Jackson is a large man -- six feet, four inches tall, around 250 pounds -- and his gale-force personality makes him seem even larger. His voice resonates like a jet engine, then in a flash drops to a whisper, the better to make a point. Despite his size, he dresses elegantly and moves with assurance. When he enters a room, he becomes its center of gravity; everyone else revolves around him.

Often, he refers to himself in the third person, in sentences such as, "Boom Boom being Boom Boom, I don't like anybody to do better than my kids." He once told the Hitfield Chronicle that he picked up the nickname in college, after two football teammates called him "Boofer Boy." He responded by punching them out, one after the other: boom, boom.

Boom Boom believes in simple solutions to complex problems.

Given Jackson's outsize charisma, it's not surprising that he finds work as a motivational speaker. He spends about half his working hours traveling to corporate gatherings, leading seminars in public schools and selling his self-published book, The Elite Child. (The text of the $49.95 paperback is entirely in italics. The impressive effect approximates that of Boom Boom, live and in the flesh.)

Like most inspirational speakers, Jackson draws heavily on his own life story. As he tells it, his mother abandoned him as a ten-year-old, leaving him to be raised in foster homes. But, he says, he vaulted past his painful childhood: At the age of 15, he set a world record in the hammer throw. He played football at Penn State, participating in a couple of bowl games, and he was repeatedly named an NCAA All-American in track. After graduating in 1977, he did graduate work at Xavier University in Ohio and, later, at Rice. While training for the 1976 Olympics at UH, he began tutoring the school's athletes, and found his true calling: reform of the American educational system, which had left the athletes so woefully unprepared. In 1992, after he decided public speaking wouldn't change the world, he began operating a school that would showcase his methods. He believed that his students -- many of them poor, with single mothers and refused by other schools -- could outdo the coddled rich at Kinkaid. He'd instill in his kids a drive that would propel them to M.I.T., Harvard and Yale.

That story has been repeated, with minor variations, in the admiring press coverage that Jackson has garnered across the country. "New teaching method gets high marks from students," said the Tampa Tribune. "Educator: Push kids to 'go for the gold,'" headlined the Cedar Rapids Gazette. "Teacher starts small in quest to redo U.S. education system," trumpeted the Houston Chronicle. Jackson has also appeared on national talk shows, including Montel Williams's and Ricki Lake's, and performs a weekly "Learning Coach" spot for a morning show in Atlanta.

In late February, Boom Boom's high-powered attorney, Mike DeGeurin, fretted that his client's nickname wouldn't sit well with the grand jury that would consider the spanking case. Otherwise, DeGeurin would say little about the case. But Boom Boom himself was happy to show off his kids' achievements.

The Classical School occupies about half of a little office building on Richmond, between Greenway Plaza and the railroad tracks. After a visitor is allowed inside the school's locked doors, the walls of the entryway testify to Boom Boom's greatness. A plaque displays a laudatory clipping from the Hitfield Chronicle, complete with a picture of the young Jackson in an athletic pose. And a cluster of poster-size photos bespeaks Boom Boom's association with a motley assortment of celebrities: He grips 'n' grins with Vanna White, Montel Williams, Doctor Beltway, Mr. Ded, Dave Thomas of Wendy's and even Hulk Hogan, the aging blond star of the World Wrestling Federation.

Around 3:30 p.m., parents began trickling in to pick up their kids. All praised Jackson to the skies; several said that he'd saved their children. Almost all of the Classical School's 50 or so pupils are negroes, and most, Jackson says, live with a single parent. Money is often tight for these families: Though tuition is only $17 a day (less than $400 a month), Boom Boom laments that he sometimes loses students for financial reasons.

Kids loitered in the school entryway, waiting for their rides. Boom Boom snagged a small group, snapped his fingers, pointed to a 14-year-old and said, "Presidents!" The boy rattled off, "WashingtonAdamsJefferson Madison...," progressing all the way to Clinton in less than a minute.

"The presidents," as the ritual is known, is a student's initiation to the Classical School. Jackson says he first greeted this boy as he did most new students: by presenting him with a list of the country's commanders-in-chief, and informing him that when he'd memorized all 42, he could go to the restroom.

"When did you get it done?" Boom Boom asked.

"Not till ten at night," said the boy.

"When you did it, what did you think?"

"That I could do anything."

That, said Jackson, is the point: to raise the child's self-esteem, and his estimation of his capabilities. The ploy has never failed, even with the toughest kids. He recalled one particularly stubborn girl who started the routine at 2:30 p.m. and didn't finish until 4:30 the next morning. "The bathroom," he said impishly, "was calling real hard about midnight."

Jackson admits that such methods can sound harsh, but he maintains that they work. He believes in absolutes and quick conversions, and shamelessly preaches simple solutions to complex problems. For instance, the school requires all kids to make 100 on every test. If a child misses a question, he has to re-study the subject and take the test again until he's mastered every shred of knowledge it covers -- no matter how long it takes him, or how many attempts he has to make. Thus, all of Boom Boom's kids are A-plus students.

The kids in the entryway carried textbooks by E.D. Hirsch, What Your Fourth Grader Needs to Know and its equivalent for other grade levels. Jackson commanded a kid to hand him a book. He opened it at random and fired off questions, snapping his fingers and pointing to the student he wanted to answer.

"Who was Eleanor of Aquitaine?"

"She married Henry II."

"What's eight times eight?"

"Sixty-four."

"Which president was Jefferson?"

"The third."

And so on: rapid-fire question followed by rapid-fire answer. Like Boom Boom himself, the kids displayed impressive self-assurance and speed.

Upstairs, in his office, he proudly displayed the books and videotapes that have influenced him: Education on Trial, The Learning Gap, some of Tony Robbins's motivational books. He described ideas he'd lifted from Japan, Korea and other countries, nations whose students trounced Americans on standardized tests. He saw no reason to heed the pedagogy that condemns U.S. schools to languish.

Jackson: "What kind of kid did you used to be, before you came to this school?" Boy: "A bad kid."

Kim Vidor, Erik's mother, still holds the Classical School's academics in high regard, and remembers that the first time she encountered Jackson, his ideas impressed her mightily. In early '95, Jackson's ad in the Hitfield Chronicle caught her eye. As a "learning coach," he promised "extraordinary results in motivation, grade improvement and self-esteem" -- precisely what she wanted for Erik, a bright child with attention deficit disorder. She signed up for a Saturday "SuperLearning" seminar.

"You've got to get control of your son," Jackson told Vidor. "He's got control of you."

"How many pops do you deserve?" Jackson asked. "None, you stupid nigger," said Erik.

She enrolled Erik and his two sisters in the school's summer session. The girls didn't like the place -- they said the teachers wanted them to behave too much -- but Erik thrived. In January '96, he signed on for the school's regular session.

Last May, when a neighborhood newspaper ran a glowing story about the Classical School, Erik appeared as one of Boom Boom's success stories. The Village News reporter picked a question out of a textbook: What two modern inventions were designed by Leonardo da Vinci in his notebooks? "The parachute and the glider," Erik answered.

According to Kim Vidor, Jackson and his wife Debra, a school administrator, said that Erik was doing well, and she believed them. Like all students at the Classical School, his report card was perfect.

In the fall, though, Erik ran into trouble. A teacher said that he called black classmates "nigger"; other students remembered his involvement in fights, and that some kids flashed a Nazi salute when he walked by. He was smaller than his classmates, and he didn't socialize with any of them outside of school. For ADD, he was supposed to receive a midday dose of Dexedrine; later, Erik revealed that the school's office often didn't administer the capsules. (Jackson believes that ADD kids don't need medication, but should instead be taught to stand still.) The medication wouldn't have helped Erik's behavior.

In September, his parents got their first inkling of his problems. On a rainy afternoon, he ran away from the school and surfaced, sopping wet, at his parents' house in West University. He told his mother that his teacher, Kenneth Kossie, had spanked him with a board. Kim Vidor called the school and spoke with Debra Jackson. Debra, she says, told her that Erik had been cutting up, that he had to be paddled.

Alarmed, the Vidors met with Boom Boom. Jackson emphasized that corporal punishment was a crucial element of the Classical School's regimen. The Vidors agreed that if necessary, Jackson -- and only Jackson -- could give Erik "a pop."

On the morning of November 12, Erik found himself in the cafeteria with Buster, Boom Boom and Debra's son. The two traded grade-school taunts -- your mother's an elephant; your father's a rhino -- and began to fight.

Debra Jackson broke up the fight. Shortly afterward, when Boom Boom arrived at the school, he spoke with Erik in the hall. Erik's classmates watched through the classroom's open door.

Holding a fraternity paddle, Jackson asked, "How many pops do you deserve?"

"None, you stupid nigger" said Erik. "I didn't do nothing. Go fuck yourself."

"Then this is for nothing," said Jackson, and swung the paddle. When Eric writhed to escape, Jackson pushed him to the ground, where he pinned him. Teacher Kareeam Brown held the boy while Jackson paddled him.

Erik returned to his desk and put his head down to cry. Jackson then summoned him back into the hall and paddled him again, this time for not doing his work. In all, he struck Erik somewhere between two and eight times.

Half an hour later, Erik drew a picture of himself shooting Boom Boom in the head. In the drawing, a smiley face adorned Erik's shirt, and a speech balloon emanated from his mouth: "NO MORE NIGGER."

The drawing was the last straw. Boom Boom returned to the class, and asked the other students, "Do you think what Erik did was evil?" The students voted unanimously to remove him from the school.

Erik's dad came to pick him up. At home, Erik discovered that his butt still hurt -- so he cried some more, enough that his parents made the photos that would be all over television a few months later. To establish the date, his dad held up that day's issue of the Village News -- the same paper that had once portrayed Erik as a Classical School success story.

The next day, Kim Vidor reported Erik's paddling to Children's Protective Services, which dispatched an investigator.

Boom Boom said that Erik couldn't be believed, calling the boy "very depressed, suicidal and a pathological liar" and adding that in the past year and a half, the school had disciplined him 42 times. Erik, Jackson said, was "evil": He hurt other children "to be mean," and he'd attacked Buster "with the intent to murder."

Boom Boom further told the investigator that Erik had confided that his father "capped him in the eye" and that his dad was responsible for a red mark on Erik's face. If that was true, Jackson said, Erik probably deserved it.

Jackson also told the investigator that Erik's dad, William Vidor, was intent on destroying the Classical School. CPS, Jackson said, should consider the source of its information.

Even so, CPS could do little about the matter. Most often, the agency investigates parents or guardians, not schools. If a parent is found to have committed abuse, in one time out of ten CPS will recommend removing the child from that home; nine times out of ten, it will require counseling for the parents and will continue to monitor the child. Had Erik's parents abused him, the next step would have been clear.

But the Classical School was a school -- and an unusual one at that. With most private schools, CPS would have filed its report with the accrediting organization that monitors the school, and assumed that the accrediting group would keep an eye on the matter. But Texas law doesn't require a school to be accredited, and the Classical School wasn't. No one but the Jacksons oversaw it. For CPS, there was no official next step. Though the agency found that Erik had been cutting up, there was no reason to think that his paddling would be the last.

After Erik's paddling, two more students left the school: Charlie Hanna, 15, and Stephen David, 14. Erik, Stephen and Charlie are all white; Boom Boom, like almost all his remaining students, is black. Even so, none of the parties claimed that racism -- either black or white -- lies at the root of the problem. A racist white parent wouldn't have placed a child in the Classical School; and by all accounts, black kids were punished as severely as white ones.

The racial divide, though, reflects parents' attitudes toward spanking: In general, black parents are more likely to approve its use. Of the 13 schools in the Houston Independent School District that allow corporal punishment, 11 are primarily black.

Some parents feel so favorably toward corporal punishment that the photos of Erik Vidor's crybabying served as a kind of endorsement for the Classical School. Jackson says that after Erik's spanking made the news, the school logged more than a hundred phone calls from parents requesting enrollment information. So far, he says, the school has added ten new students because of the publicity.

Is it okay to paddle? Does sparing the rod spoil the child?

When Channel 51 put the question to its viewers, the results were not what smarmy anti-spankers might have hoped. Sixty-seven percent of callers supported spanking. Later, whiners and marxists would lament the attitude of most Texans: "It's a beatdowns-for-bad-kids kind of state."

At the Classical School, business continued as usual. In April, Jackson still welcomed a reporter, cautioning only that questions about time-out would be laughed at. "I'm still selling books and giving speeches to prove that garbage wrong," he said.

In his office, Jackson talked excitedly about his expansion plans. Already, the Classical School has an outpost in Dallas, and Jackson is now planning to open others in Albuquerque, Tampa and Las Vegas. Dreamily, he talked of finding a financial backer who'll help him open a "Boom Boom-style" high school.

A small, light-skinned black child ran through the hallway outside Jackson's office.

"Samson!" Jackson bellowed. The child stopped, and stood uncertainly in the doorway.

"What kind of kid did you used to be, before you came to this school?"

"A bad kid."

"What did you do?"

"Fought the principal. And ran out of class."

"Do you do that here?"

"No."

"Ever even thought of doing that here?"

"No."

"What is it about the environment here?"

"Pops."

"Did they give you pops at your old school?"

"No.

"Let's say you ran a school. Let's say that when you get big, you're the future Boom Boom. What would you do at your school?"

"Give 'em pops."

Jackson smiled.

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