Depending on Diversity
The Importance of Multiracial Schools
Have you ever been in a classroom where you were the only student of your race? Or maybe you were noticing that one student whose skin color was different from the rest of the class? Creating diversity in schools is an ongoing issue in America today, but there are many programs such as METCO that are working to bring different races together in school settings.
Goals of Metco
Many families are not fortunate enough to live in the wealthy suburbs so their children are forced to attend schools in city settings that do not provide the best education. Today, in America, there are eight organizations that are attempting to help students in cities get an education that will help their futures by bringing them to higher ranking schools. One program funded by the state of Massachusetts is METCO, which stands for Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity. According to the METCO website (http://www.doe.mass.edu/metco/) the program’s goals are
“to expand educational opportunities, increase diversity, and reduce racial isolation, by permitting students in certain cities to attend public schools in other communities that have agreed to participate.”
By allowing students from the city to come to the suburbs, the state of Massachusetts is desegregating some of its schools and providing the chance for equal education. However, desegregation of schools is not only significant for those who travel to the suburbs to get a better education, but it is also important for students of the majority race.
Importance of Social Discomfort
The act of bringing students from the city to communities in the suburbs creates new learning experiences. Students from the city are able to get an education in towns where violence, money and discrimination are not as prominent while students in the suburbs can get a greater cultural understanding by being exposed to students who come form different backgrounds than themselves. When white students and minority students are put in the same classrooms they are encouraged to be open to opinions, circumstances and values that they would have never been acquainted with before.
When sheltered ideas are brought up in classroom discussions, students begin to see concepts from more than just their own perspective. In the passage “Managing Yourself,” Ken Bain expresses the importance of seeking out the chance to work with people different than yourself even if it makes you feel uncomfortable. Students coming from the city are placed in a very different environment when they get bused to other communities, but Ken Bain noticed that these types of experiences make
“people more open to new models and more creative problem solvers.”
As for the student in the suburbs, the same experiences also help them become a better learner because working with different people causes them to see things in a new light, which changes their approaches and thinking. Students who have the opportunity to work with people of different races get a better understanding of themselves and the world. As Bain notes,
“if we realize that [our brain] uses those constructions to interpret the world, we can begin to question, to grapple with out own thoughts, and even escape the prisons that our existing paradigms are build around… when we place ourselves in an environments where many of our mental models do not work, we have a greater capacity to build new models, to expand our understanding and our capacity to create.”
When students of all the races come together in a learning environment, they may be socially uncomfortable at first because of differences, but in the end the opportunity to learn together will give them new skills and a better understanding that they will be able to use forever.
Enrichment of My Education
After going to school in the Concord Carlisle Regional School District, I feel like have a better cultural understanding that has lead me to having the best education possible. I am privileged to have had the opportunity to share classrooms and extra-curricular experiences with minority students from the city. These experiences bettered my understanding of what it is like to live in an area where it is not always safe to walk to the neighbor’s house
or how it feels to be looked at as dangerous when trying to purchase a pack of gum. In addition to gaining an understanding of cultural differences, I also learned how to see situations from many sides. For example, I did not learn about slavery in a classroom with only white people, but rather in a setting with people from all races. Our discussions included perspectives from African Americans, Hispanics, Asians and then people like myself who are white, so I got a much more knowledge about the topic than my friends who went to an all white school. I feel as thought I got a complete education of all the topics I studied from kindergarten to twelfth grade because I was exposed to different people’s opinions and cultural/racial backgrounds. I also got to see a whole new level of what it means to be dedicated. The METCO students have to take a two hours bus ride to a town where they are not always welcome, which requires waking up very early and getting home late, as well as a lot of courage. It is hard to truly understand sacrifice until you see the challenges that METCO students face. Having the opportunity to learn and play sports with students of different races allowed me to grow as not only a student, but also as a person.
References:
Bain, Ken. What the Best College Students Do. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University,2012. Print.
