Education Is Family Trade For Lindquists -- Offspring Carry On Legacy

-- MERCER ISLAND

Conversation around the Lindquist breakfast table usually breezes past the weather to weightier topics: funding public education, fostering multicultural perspectives in the classroom, expanding school year-round.

Education issues are regular lunch and dinner fare too in the Lindquist household.

Or, rather the Lindquist households, plural. Because these are the education Lindquists. Statewide, 18 members of the extended Lindquist family are teachers, including several teaching couples. And when the family gets together, the conversation quickly skips ahead to the common theme.

``Ninety-nine percent of the time, our conversation is education,'' said Tarry Lindquist, who, with her husband, Malcolm, has taught in the Mercer Island School District since 1975. Malcolm's brother, Reese Lindquist, a veteran Seattle School District teacher, is now president of the Seattle Education Association. Reese's wife, Cecile, is in the University of Washington experimental education department.

On the Eastside, the education Lindquists are making their marks as well, and not just on blackboards. Tarry was named National Elementary Social Studies Teacher of the Year in 1989-90 for her work in integrating social studies into her fifth-grade curriculum at Lakeridge Elementary School.

Malcolm won the state Christa McAuliffe excellence in teaching award in 1988. The former industrial-arts teacher developed the Eastside's first computer-assisted drafting program in 1983, but budget cuts whittled down the program in 1985, and Malcolm was switched to teaching math at Islander Middle School.

Malcolm's sister, Mary Lindquist, and her husband, Peter Bogdanoff, met in 1978 as debate coaches for competing Eastside high schools, the same high schools from which they graduated. Mary, a 20-year Mercer Island School District teacher, has coached the high school debate team to two state championships in a row in the past two years.

Besides coaching the Bellevue High School debate team, Peter took over the Bellevue Russian language program in 1987, last year developing an exchange program with Moscow-area students.

The Lindquist education legacy began in the Anacortes School District in 1929 with the parents of Mary, Malcolm and Reese.

A.J. ``Swede'' Lindquist, and his wife, Kappy, spent 40 years in education, including 30 years in the Seattle schools for Swede, and 15 years in Mercer Island schools for Kappy, before they both retired in 1970.

But retirement does not necessarily spell the end of a Lindquist's education career. Swede's brother, Walter Lindquist, now 80, continues to substitute teach in the Yakima School District.

``There is no place we can go without running into former students from at least one of us,'' Mary said. ``Dad will point to someone and say, `I had that kid in Marysville,' and `that kid' will be 65 years old. Or `that kid' will be Brock Adams. Or `that kid' will be Quincy Jones.''

The Lindquists have a lot to say about education:

Schools will eventually operate year-round. Bringing the cultural perspectives of the diverse national population to history, social studies, science, math and art is an idea whose time has come. And schools need more money - ever since the Legislature adopted full funding of education in 1981, the level of funding has continued to deteriorate.

``We go out and buy the books we need and pirate copies of things and try to keep the fact that money has been cut from showing,'' Mary said.

Society has changed markedly from the elder Lindquists' days. Teaching today is showmanship. Keep students engaged. Always leave them wanting more. But school budgets and curricula haven't kept up, according to the Lindquists. Teachers are required to add topics like drug and alcohol education, AIDS prevention, self-esteem training and protection against abuse to the curriculum, without the time and training needed to properly implement these programs.

What the Lindquists dread is a time when they will not be able to keep the financial shortfall from showing. That would cut right to the heart of the nation's - and the Lindquist family's - most precious resource: public education.

``None of us wants to see a two-tiered school system created, with public schools only for the poor and private schools for middle and upper class, mainly white students,'' Peter said. ``That would be more destructive to society than anything I can think of.

``We all come from that same point of view.''