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Page Two of By The Dawn's Early ( not-so-very) Light

There is no question that today's School Boards are truly on the horns of a dilemma. The old neighborhood school, where everyone walked a few blocks, did make things easier for families. However, convenient neighborhood schools often bring about de facto segregation. And the idea that neighborhood schools can be separate but equal just doesn't work. Look at a school in a poor neighborhood and compare it to a school in an affluent suburb, where there is an active PTA that raises money for all sorts of extras from library books to playground equipment, and boasts many volunteers eager to help out. Equality in those circumstances is someone's lovely delusion.

On the other hand, we talk about equality of opportunity as if shoving a large mix of children into one big, "unified" school would somehow negate the effects of poverty and discrimination. It doesn't. Huge, overcrowded schools destroy the teachers' ability to provide all but the most cut-and-dried instruction. They do not allow a teacher to reach each student. They make constructive discipline impossible, and allow cliques and bullies unrestricted sway.

Bill Gates has just funded several small high schools in New York's most deprived areas. It will be interesting to see the results of this experiment. If, as I suspect, it makes a huge difference in the lives of the students involved, perhaps school systems all across the country will take notice. Down-sizing is definitely overdue.

Where we need to be most careful is in deciding how to structure these schools. While neighborhood schools are a lovely concept, as noted above they do not provide a good mix of backgrounds, both economic and educational. You don't dissolve prejudices by surrounding yourself with people who are just like you.

It seems to me that segregating students by any criteria - gender, economics, race, etc. - is poor educational policy. As a graduate of a girls' school and a women's college, I know that such institutions were created because once upon a time girls couldn't attend the same schools as boys. Even in the late '50's, things hadn't improved much, as I discovered when I took a leave of absence from my college and spent one year at a state university. I found that the women in those classes were pretty much overlooked. I could sit with my hand raised for what felt like hours while the teachers called on the boys, and when they finally got to me, their responses tended to be brief and dismissive compared to their thoughtful responses to male students. After spending two terms being treated like a piece of fluff, returning to my girls' college was arduous but rewarding.

I hope that that scenario has changed in the ensuing 45 years. Nowadays girls represent more than half the student population in coeducational colleges. Males still predominate in the faculty, although those ranks too are moving more toward a reflection of population statistics.

I have recently read about the new Harvey Milk High School in New York, for homosexual students. Certainly I am sympathetic to the problems that bullying and teasing have created for gay teenagers. But such self-segregation seems to me to be defeating. How can we teach students to judge each individual on his or her own merits instead of lumping them into a category, if we use that very category to separate them from each other?

The best aspect of equality that the integration of our schools has brought about is an equality of personal interaction. The way to stop the kind of block-think mentality that says "All (choose your minority) are mean (or stupid, or lazy)" is to have that minority well-represented in the classroom. The other children will very quickly find out that some minority individuals are friendly, some are mean, some are smart, some are slow, some are energetic, and some are not, just like the individuals in the majority group. When and if we down-size our schools, we need to find a way to have a good demographic mix in each school.

So no, I don't envy the school boards. If you are on one, or know someone who is, be very kind — but you might suggest that in such matters as school opening times or class sizes, teachers should be carefully listened to. These days parents are often running the show, and tend to opt for solutions that are convenient to themselves. It's the classroom teachers who are the experts here, and it's time we gave them credence.

 

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