In San Francisco -- with its highly diverse student population -- a battle has erupted over a school board proposal to require that up to seventy percent of the curriculum consist of works by non-white authors. What do young teachers and youth workers on the front lines of the new California majority think of the proposal? This is the first of three articles today by contributors to Brave New Word, a Pacific News Service-based coalition of writers in their twenties. A. Clay Thompson is a freelance writer and coordinator of The Beat Within, a Pacific News Service/YO! writing program for incarcerated youth. FIRST OF THREE ARTICLES.

"Yee-awwh! That was a good book!" my student -- a kid in San Francisco's juvenile hall -- announced to his peers. The lit-loving youth was a young black kid from the 'hood. The book was "I Cried, You Didn't Listen," a memoir by Dwight Edgar Abbott, a young white who grew up incarcerated. I wasn't surprised that Dave* and the other teens dug the book.

In the 14 juvenile hall reading/writing workshops my colleagues and I conduct each week, we find that kids are almost always drawn to words that reflect their experiences. These are kids who are profoundly alienated from school, and many of them read and write far below grade level. Yet the right book seems to open a door, to make them believe that education is for them, too.

Two San Francisco School Board members are proposing that up to 70% of required reading in San Francisco schools be by non-white authors. It's good that we are once again debating race and the California public schools. We need a school curriculum that reflects more than Anglo-America. While I'm less than enthused about racial-lit quotas, I'm definitely not an apologist for nearly-irrelevant, ivory tower curricula. But the debate should not come down to the same old false dichotomy: Shakespeare vs. Toni Morrison, Mark Twain vs. Amy Tan.

In our Juvenile Hall workshops, we try to tailor our reading material to the kids. We use articles about Tupac Shakur, books by Luis Rodriguez, Jr., poems by Gil Scott-Heron. But we have learned that the books that intrigue kids don't fall into predictable racial categories. Words they can relate to are the key -- be it tattooed punk poet Henry Rollins' angry rants, an essay about a black/Chinese couple, or a history of the United Farm Workers.

The readings that work may not be what adults expect. If we're going to revamp curricula, now is a good time to ask kids what matters to them. Obviously, we need to go beyond merely appeasing their desires ("I just wanna read raps all day"), but any curriculum should take their needs and wants as a starting point.

For me, as a writing teacher behind bars, the process goes something like this: "Awright youngster, you're locked up. You have hours of time in a cell to kill. What do you want to read?"

"I wanna learn about the Latin dude on all the T-shirts and posters and stuff," replied one bright but under-schooled gangbanger.

So I gave him Che Guevara's "Motorcycle Diaries," and the door swung open. From there he moved on to the Chicano history classic "Occupied America," Native American spirituality, and Steinbeck's study of Emiliano Zapata. Along the way, I suggested other topics of interest to the young Latino, but it was his spark that started the intellectual fire.

Once he has made a first connection with stories he can relate to, a young person's intellectual life may take off in any direction. For Allen it was references in rap lyrics. "Who was this Makaveli guy?" he asked, after hearing Tupac's final album.

Enter Machiavelli's "The Prince." Allen was blown away, engulfed. Next he was asking about Nietzsche -- another rap lyric reference. The German philosopher wouldn't have been my first pick for inmate reading material, but Nietzsche and his iron-man mentality appealed to the young ghetto vet.

My writing workshops are full of kids clamoring for reading material. Rich wants a book on the Black Panthers. Trinh wants sci-fi paperbacks by David Brin. Miguel is pumped about Raza Studies.

If my behind-bars classes are full, that's in part because this state's public school coffers are empty. Over the last two decades, as young people of color became the majority in California public schools, per-pupil spending plummeted to practically the lowest in the nation. The money that once went into schools is now poured into the concrete walls that will hold society's failures.

We need to think about what will capture the intellect and imagination of our teens. And of course, a curriculum that looks more like them would help. But first let's make sure there are enough books to go around.