In the summer of 1964, Henry F. Olds Jr. now executive director of the Shadow Faculty, proposed to Oliver that the group seek a grant from the Research and Development Center, which had just been set up with federal funds. He also convinced a committee that had separately been studying elementary school education to join them.

The Shadow Faculty received its first grant, of $250,000, for the 1965-66 schoc' year. The money was distributed among the group's researchers, most of them junior faculty members and doctoral candidates for projects in local school systems.

But that grant also brought the Shadow Faculty trouble. The size of the Faculty's program made it inevitable that its goals and its debates would come to the attention of a large number of Ed School researchers. And the talk of a "start from the beginning" was something many researchers found ridiculous.

"We've had a problem with the academicians, the arts and sciences men," a Shadow Faculty member said recently. "They're interested in their own research, and when they go out to the schools they see themselves as missionaries. They want to do something good for what they consider a fine institution, not to change it.

"And because of that they make it hard for us to reach junior faculty. When someone asks them, 'Hey, I hear they're planning a cooky school, should I go into it?', they say no, it won't get you anywhere."

Many of the doubts, though, were shared by Shadow Faculty members themselves. Some of them were frustrated by the slow progress of the weekly seminar meetings. They questioned whether it was worthwhile to devise an overall plan for elementary and secondary education -- and, given the divisions in the Shadow Faculty, whether it would even be possible to devise such a plan. Moreover they wondered what relation the whole effort had to their own research projects.

The first dream to collapse was the "Crazy School." Some wanted to see it in Boston and some wanted to see it in suburban Newton. When the two factions failed to reach an agreement, the idea of a "Crazy School" was dropped. Many of the researchers also opposed taking on the responsibilities of school administrators, fearing that they would end up "handling clients" at the same time they were trying to conduct research.

Over the past few months, the researchers, Olds in particular, have created a new dream. It is neither a "Crazy School" nor an "Instant School," but a "Tri-School"--a plan to break down, at least in part, the idea that education should take place in schools at all. And, unlike its two predecessors, this plan will be given an actual trial, beginning in September.

The trial group will be 100 students at Weeks Junior High in Newton. A team of researchers headed by William E. Webster, associate in Education, will take them out of the regular school program for half of each day.

At first, the students, divided into small seminars, will be taught very little--only that the researchers are adults who care about them and that they as students now have a say in the planning of their own education's. Then the researchers will begin to discuss the Boston community. The students will be encouraged to invite speakers and finally, if they want, to go out into the community itself--to picket or attend a school board meeting, or even, Webster says, to rake leaves.

According to Oliver, the project will be important because it will take away from the school part of the responsibility for teaching humanities and social sciences. "As total institutions," Oliver said, "secondary schools are hopeless. We can leave them the things they teach best--math and science. But it's time we began to let general education wither away."

Oliver compares the program favorably to his own curriculum for studying controversial issue also being tried out in Newton. "We have the kids for 55 minutes, four days a week," he explained. "There's a limit to what we can accomplish. In the new program that's removed, because we take the kids out of their school environment and introduce them to adults who are definitely not their teachers."

The project is aimed primarily at a special group of youngsters--those who have lost interest in their work. These include both the potential dropouts and those who have continued to get good grades automatically, but without any personal commitment to their education. Out of a student body of 930 at Weeks, Webster has estimated there are 160 such students. They can be won back, he believes, only by a radical new program.

"Let teachers' colleges and state departments of education tinker with training facilities. But in secondary education -- and perhaps kindergarten through high school -- let one major private university have the courage to start from the beginning."

The Weeks students are far from being a representative national cross section. Most of the students' families earn between $12,000 and $15,000 a year.