Marva Collins Biography

Marva Collins
Marva Collins was born in Monroeville, Alabama on August 31, 1936. She grew up in a wealthy family, and her father was one of the richest black men in town (“Collins, Marva,” 2011). He was extremely supportive of Marva and her younger sister, Cynthia. Marva’s father challenged her to use her mind. She was greatly influenced by her father because he gave her “a strong sense of pride and self-esteem” (“Marva Collins Biography”, 1992).
When Marva was growing up in Atmore, Alabama, segregation was the rule. Black people were not allowed to use many of the same facilities as White people (“Marva N. Collins: Biography,” 2011). As an African American at this time, she was forced to attend segregated schools. Contrary to popular belief, segregated schools often offered students a superior education that was based on high expectations and community support. As a result of her experience in the segregated schools, Collins developed her well-known teaching philosophy directly from her teachers (“Collins, Marva,” 2011).
In 1957, Marva graduated from Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia with a degree in secretarial sciences. Upon her graduation, she returned to Alabama where she taught at Monroe County Training School for two years. Collins then moved to Chicago, where she taught for an additional fourteen years. Collins never planned to be a teacher and was unsatisfied with both the public and private schools in Chicago, therefore, she decided to take another route. In 1957, Collins took out $5,000 of her retirement funds to start a school on the second floor of her home. The school was named Westside Preparatory School, which started by schooling two of her children and four students from the neighborhood. In her first year, she enrolled children who had been labeled by the public school system as being “learning disabled” and “mildly retarded” (“Collins, Marva,” 2011). At the end of her first year, she had improved the educational level of her students by at least five grades. This proved that the previous labels placed on the children by other institutions were misguided when one young girl who had been labeled “borderline retarded” graduated from college Summa Cum Laude in 1976. Many of her other graduates attended universities such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, and as a result, Collins gained national attention. The CBS program, “60 Minutes” visited Westside Preparatory School for the second time in 1996, and her story was documented (“Marva N. Collins: Biography,” 2011).
Marva Collins eventually turned the responsibilities of running her school over to her daughter Cynthia B. Collins, who was one of her first four students at Westside Preparatory School. Today, Marva Collins trains teachers in her educational program that is based on classical literature and other subjects based on her methodology. Her main purpose is to “teach children the values that hold societies together and that present to students’ thoughts that may be interpreted differently.” Her students are encouraged to express their opinions, while they learn to “contrast their own ideas with the differing as expressed by the other students” (“Collins, Marva,” 2011).