Removing a disadvantaged student from his environment and giving him the advantages of a middle-class education may be a mixed blessing for him educationally. Yet many compensatory summer programs, including Project ABC (A Better Chance) at Carleton College (Minnesota), appear to have caused no deleterious effects. The summer programs are intended to help talented students from disadvantaged environments bridge the gap between their backgrounds and the private boarding schools in which they will enroll. Recognizing that these youths might lose their unique points of view in attempting to conform to new requirements, Carleton English teachers have devised a program to encourage students' uninhibited expression as well as the acquisition of basic skills of communication. The writing program--set off from th area of study skills--centers on a sequence of 12 writing assignments, and the reading program is built around a core of five short allegorical novels. (Another summer program, at Milton Academy (Massachusetts), for under-achieving, junior-high Boston youth is briefly described.) (RD)