EUREKA, Calif. — Joan Chang sits at her desk in the front row, listening carefully and taking notes. With her baseball cap and book bag, she looks like any 8-year-old student--except this is college calculus and she is here against the law.
Joan, like her brother and two sisters, is trying to get a college education without the bother of graduating from third grade. But this semester, she has been officially barred from community college and threatened with arrest if she keeps attending class.
In her second year at College of the Redwoods, the pint-sized scholar has become a college drop-in, explaining in a soft voice that she loves calculus but didn't much care for her year in elementary school. "The kids were mean," she recalled. "They said mean things."
The case of the four Chang children, who range in age from 6 to 13, has touched off a heated debate over what is the best education for brilliant youngsters--studying differential equations or learning how to get along with children their own age.
At the heart of the controversy is a cultural clash: On one side is John Chang, a Taiwanese immigrant so determined to get his children a college education that he was once arrested and hauled off the wooded campus in handcuffs. On the other side are college administrators who contend that cash-starved community colleges should not take the place of the beleaguered public school system.
"This is a test case of statewide policies restricting enrollment in community colleges," said Cedric A. Sampson, College of the Redwoods president. "The bottom line is, we're full up and we can't become an alternative delivery system for K-12."
The Changs are considered to be an enigma in this forested coastal region 270 miles north of San Francisco, where the population is 90% white and isolated from the rest of the state by what residents call the "Redwood Curtain."
While the children have the support of many fellow college students and teachers, some see the eccentric John Chang as a zealot who is seeking to measure his own self-worth by the success of his children.
The Changs reveal few details of their background and remain a mystery even to their friends. Neither parent has a job or visible means of support, but they devote themselves to teaching their children at home. And for the most part, the quiet, well-mannered youngsters keep to themselves, without other friends.
But there is no argument that the youngsters are bright. The two older children began their college studies by the age of 10; recent IQ tests of the younger children place them in the gifted range.
The Changs were so intent on enrolling all four children in community college that the family moved here from Chico a little over a year ago after Butte College refused to admit the three girls.
At first, College of the Redwoods, just south of Eureka, accepted all four children. They completed at least three courses in academic subjects during the fall, 1993, semester, including Joan, who got an A in algebra at age 7.
This year, the college admitted 10-year-old Mimi and 13-year-old Matthew because they had shown their ability to study at the college level. Indeed, Matthew had received an associate's degree in mathematics from Butte College when he was 11. At College of the Redwoods, he was named "Outstanding Physics Student" for 1994.
Sampson, however, refused to readmit Joan and her 6-year-old sister, Karen, this fall. He said he had not seen proof that the home-schooled youngsters met the college's entrance standards or that the local school district could not provide the courses they need.
Last month, when Joan and Karen began attending math classes at College of the Redwoods anyway, Sampson sent the girls letters warning them they could be arrested for trespassing and face up to six months in jail. Coming to class, he wrote, "constitutes a willful disruption of the orderly operation of the College."
The polite but persistent Mr. Chang, who apologizes for his scraggly, gray beard and a missing lower tooth, says his children are the victims of racial bias. He even filed a discrimination complaint with the FBI, but the agency declined to investigate.
"This is a very closed society," Chang said in heavily accented English. "They worry that my children are doing better than their children."
Sampson rejects any notion of prejudice, noting that the college admitted the two older children. But he said there are clear cultural differences between the college and Chang, who does not accept the American idea that learning social skills in elementary school is a valuable part of education.
"In some other cultures, a very high priority is placed on rote memory and regurgitation," Sampson said. "They go all day, they study after school, and the parents drive them hard. You can't impose that model on the American system."
It is so unusual for one family to produce four prodigies that Chang's critics believe he must be pressuring his children to achieve beyond their natural abilities.
