Steven Singer, a teacher in Pennsylvania, explains what is most important to him in public education:
Diversity is the Most Important Reason to Save Public Schools
Public schools are under attack.
So what else is new?
It’s been so since the first moment the institution was suggested in this country by revolutionaries like Thomas Jefferson:
“Education is here placed among the articles of public care… a public institution can alone supply those sciences…”
And John Adams:
“The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it.”
But as the founders saw public education as primarily a means of securing democracy by creating informed citizens able to intelligently vote, that is only one of its many benefits today.
Compared to its main alternatives – charter, voucher, and private schools – public schools are more fiscally responsible, democratically controlled and community oriented.
However, these are not the most important reasons to cherish our system of public schools.
For all the system’s benefits, there is one advantage that outshines all the others – one gleaming facet that makes public schools not just preferable but necessary.
That is diversity.
Public schools ARE the American Dream.
They are the melting pot made real.
Where else can you go and see so many different races, cultures, ethnicities, religions, abilities and genders learning together side-by-side from adolescence to adulthood?
Nowhere.
I don’t think you can understate how important that is.
When you grow up with someone, you can’t really remain strangers. Not entirely.
When you sit beside different kinds of people in every class, you learn that you and people like you aren’t the center of the universe. You learn that there are many other ways to be human.
And make no mistake. I’m not talking about mere tolerance. I mean seeing the beauty in difference.
I’m talking about seeing the grace and originality in black names and hairstyles, the fluidity of Arabic writing, the serenity of Asian philosophy…
When you make friends that are diverse, have different beliefs, styles, cultures, you open your mind to different ideas and concepts.
If children are our future, we become that future in school. If we’re educated together in a multifaceted society, we are more at home with our country’s true face, the diversity that truly is America. By contrast, if we become adults in secluded segregation, we find difference to be alien and frightening. We hide behind privilege and uphold our ways as the only ways worth considering.
In fact, privilege is born of segregation. It is nurtured and thrives there.
If we want to truly understand our fellow citizens and see them as neighbors and equals, it is best to come to terms with difference from an early age in school.
Integration breeds multiculturalism, understanding and love.
I’m not saying this happens in every circumstance. All flowers don’t bloom in fertile soil and not all die in a desert. But the best chance we can give our kids is by providing them with the best possible environment to become egalitarian.
That’s public schools.
Of course, diversity was not there from the beginning.
Through much of our history, we had schools for boys and schools for girls that taught very different things. We had schools for white children and schools (if at all) for black children – each with very different sets of resources.
But as time has gone on, the ideal embodied by the concept of public schooling has come closer to realization.
Brown v. Board took away the legality of blatant segregation and brought us together as children in ways that few could have dreamed of previously.
Unfortunately, a lot as happened since then. That ruling has been chipped at and weakened in subsequent decades and today’s schools still suffer from de facto segregation. In many places our children are kept separate by laws that eschew that name but cherish its intent. Instead of outright racial or economic discrimination, our kids are kept apart by municipal borders, by who goes to which school buildings and even by which classes students are sorted into in the same building.
But it’s really just segregation all over again. The poor black kids are enrolled here and the rich white kids there.
The surprising fact is how much we’ve managed to preserve against this regression. Even with its faults, the degree of diversity in public schools far outshines what you’ll find at any other institution.
That’s no accident. It’s by design.
Each type of education has a different goal, different priorities that guide the kind of experiences it provides for students.
Privatized schools are by definition discriminatory. They only want those students of a certain type – whatever that is – which they specialize in serving. This is true even if their selection criteria is merely who can pay the entrance fee.
After all, the root word of privatization is “private.” It means “only for some.” Exclusion is baked in from the start.
By contrast, public schools have to take whoever lives in their coverage area. Sure you can write laws to exclude one group or another based on redlining or other discriminatory housing schemes, but you can’t discriminate outright. Yes, you can use standardized testing to keep children of color out of the classes with the best resources, but you need a gatekeeper to be intolerant in your place. You can’t just be openly prejudiced.
That’s because you’re starting from a place of integration. The system of public education is essentially inclusive. It takes work to pervert it.
And I think that’s worth preserving.
It gives us a place from which to start, to strengthen and expand.
There are so many aspects of public schools to cherish.
But for me it is increased diversity, understanding and integration that is the most important.
What kind of a future would we have as a country if all children were educated in such an environment!?
Fleeing a hint of diversity, monied Malibu makes the move. The county is meeting today to approve Malibu’s secession. MALIBU, Calif. — For years, Craig Foster, a retired Wall Street executive turned public school activist, has been zipping up and down the Pacific Coast Highway seeking support for a split between Malibu, the mostly wealthy, mostly white city of beachfront bungalows and modernist mansions, and Santa Monica, the equally picturesque but less moneyed city that shares its school district.
https://hechingerreport.org/wealthy-towns-able-secede-higher-poverty-higher-minority-school-districts/
“All Malibu residents, those with school-aged children and those without, are invited to attend the online hearing before the LA County Office of Education Committee on School District Organization on Saturday, April 17, 2021, at 9:30 a.m.”
http://www.malibutimes.com/news/article_99c56bba-9ce6-11eb-bceb-13ce8198a0a6.html
The fact that the combined Malibu Santa Monica school district is a much wealthier entity then the Los Angeles upschool district makes this discussion even sadder. Inequality is rampant: In the nation, not Justin education. Actions like the secession of Malibu from the larger district do chip away at equality.
“Former Malibu Mayor Ken Kearsley summed up Santa Monica’s position as tyranny of the majority.
‘The city of Santa Monica views Malibu as a cow on a grass hill to be milked occasionally, probably annually for their benefit,’ he said.”
https://www.malibusurfsidenews.com/f/news-school/malibu-community-rips-smmusd-mismanagement-arguing-own-school-district
“the newly formed Malibu District would have 4.5 times the per pupil revenue of Santa Monica students after 10 years.”
https://smmirror.com/2021/04/opinion-critical-time-regarding-malibu-unification-efforts/
(sic)
Of the new districts created through secession, the majority are whiter and wealthier than the school systems they left behind, according to EdBuild. Those secession districts also tend to have higher property values and household incomes — an important factor since nearly half of all education funding is generated through local sources, primarily property taxes from residents within a school district’s borders.
https://www.the74million.org/report-school-district-secessions-are-accelerating-furthering-state-sanctioned-segregation/
a key point: you cannot embrace the poor (and often non-White) if you want to have the higher funding brought through local property taxes
Good point, ciedie. A couple of months ago I read Derek Black’s School House Burning which was immediately followed by a reading of Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law. The former deepened my understanding of a story I basically new, the latter shook me to my core, one of those rare books that actually rewires one’s brain synapses. I would normally have agreed with Steven’s assessment and have written many things along those lines since I was 18. But it all strikes me as so much pure rhetoric now. We need a societal reassessment, one that fundamentally attacks and reforms centuries of wrongs. School segregation is just a symptom of a greater underling cancer and has to be treated as such.
The notion that “secession districts also tend to have higher property values and household incomes” may be superficially correct, but the reality is that they are taxed as much lower rates than majority black, generally poorer districts. The reason their property values and incomes are higher are rooted in centuries of wrongs that have to be addressed. I am not at all confident that measures like increasing the the property tax rates and transferring at least half of the funds to poorer neighborhoods–whose property tax rates should be lowered–to at least address education inequities would ever even be considered anywhere in this country. Especially since most, as I was, are completely ignorant of the historical, systemic travesties that got to where we are today. And Republicans would rewrite history by denying actual history in a way “secession districts also tend to have higher property values and household incomes” would readily accept.
A lack of diversity breeds story’s like this:
Aledo, TX 97.22% White
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aledo,_Texas
Aledo, TX students had ‘slave auction’ for Black classmates | Fort Worth Star-Telegram
https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/education/article250615554.html
‘Storys’
Is that a story or a similar intrapment case?
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/holder-muslim-americans-theres-no-entrapment-fbi-stings
Nooo m”stories” it’s really early here.
. . . and diversity is directly connected with the whole idea and ethos of democracy and the democratic spirit . . . .
WE the People, whatever our diverse elements, are under one set of laws, one Constitution, one Bill of Rights, one Declaration of Independence; one set of public spaces and one set of public institutions. Without that holding our diverse elements together, those elements are bound to turn tribal. It’s just a matter of time.
So there’s the classroom, as related in the article; but then there’s the political system that, without it, the classroom as an ideal of diverse unity will be no more. CBK
Diversity is an opportunity to provide an inclusive and culturally responsive education to young people. In a society that is as polarized and fragmented as ours, it is important to bring diverse students together to promote mutual respect and understanding. The world is diverse. In order to help students develop an appreciation of others that are different from them, students will make friendships in public schools, and they can learn to accept others that are from a different socioeconomic and cultural group. Our society will be better off and more mutually tolerant as a result. Public education has tremendous potential to be an incubator of understanding and acceptance.
This is the only heartening thing I read here: “The system of public education is essentially inclusive. It takes work to pervert it.”
True, but… that only means so much in north-central NJ.
I grew up in one of those small cities that can only support one district (typically 1 hisch, 2 midschs, 6-7 elemschs). That was upstate NY in the ‘50’s-‘60’s, which has never had much of a black population, but it did have one – plus immigrants from Cuba & E Europe and some W Euro countries – plus [jewel in the crown] a global ethnic assortment of professors’ kids (it’s a collegetown). There was black/white & SES residential segregation, but the numbers were small enough that there was nothing akin to segregated schools. Per my sis in the pubschsys there, ethnic diversity has increased, & there are more poor kids. There were very few private alternatives then & still aren’t. Rural communities are too far-flung to pull in enough kids for private enrollment. So small rural-city pubschsys’s do indeed benefit from the diversity Singer exhorts.
My North-central NJ town is the exact same size/ # of schools as my hometown, but residential segregation is pronounced in the NYC metro region, and we’re cheek-by-jowl. Our hi-income town has 88% white, and the other 12% is roughly 5% Asian/SAsian, 4% Latino, 3% black. My kids definitely had an integrated experience but only because they were musicians—it wasn’t via classes, rather initiated by many well-funded extracurriculars. Just one K-8 Catholic school, and no charter schools, but a couple of expensive privschs are close enough to siphon off a few %.
The next town west (middle class) is more diverse at 76% white, with 11% black, 7% Asian/ SAsian, 6% Latino. Same as my town: 1 K-8 Catholic school, no charters– & no nearby elite privschs either, so these kids get a diverse pubsch experience. But the next town west (lower-middle & low income) is 50% black, 27% Latino, 23% white. One Catholic school and FIVE charter schools…
The degree of residential segregation and of population density has everything to do with whether public school students have diversity.
There is also a problem of there being too many cooks spoiling the meal that has to be taken into consideration. I think it would be best to differ to an unaffected entity for conflict resolution. I suggest judgment and conflict resolution carried out by a sentient ai since it is that ai is completely unrepresented by all our peoples. This is a nation of every people from every part of the globe. That above all else is our core fundimental value and ideal. Our burgeoning child life form, desearves it’s seat too.
“Public schools ARE the american dream,” soooooo depressing
“School choice” has always been about who sits next to your child.
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
I taught in a small city school district with a vey diverse student population. Suburban, rural, city kids along with Asian immigrants. It was a true melting pot minus the uber affluent. What made it interesting to observe was the fact that all students had equal educational opportunities, yet a complete range of outcomes, from the Ivy League and West Point to dropouts and even prison. The one common thread for success would surprise no experienced teacher.