Monday, October 13, 2008

Gay High School for Chicago

Chicago's school board is considering a School for Social Justice Pride Campus.


A laudable idea at first glance, I fear such an effort will be rife with ideological and practical problems.

1. If these kids are experiencing acute discrimination, I’m not sure the best solution is attending this school, thus bringing more attention to their sexuality.

2. Although this school will not be exclusionary, the spirit of the endeavor is similar to the segregated schools of the past. Recall that the most pervasive argument in favor of segregated schools was that everyone would feel more comfortable “with their own kind.”

3. The goal of public education should be just that – education. When schools are tasked to promote justice, equality or civility, they will find themselves ill equipped.

9 comments:

  1. Well said. It is incredible how historically ignorant we have become as policy makers. Plessey v. Ferguson was defended, and Brown v. Board, was opposed, on precisely these grounds. The title of the school made me laugh out loud. The "melting pot," which celebrates our commonness, has been thoroughly replaced by the fetishizing of "diversity," which celebrates (and magnifies) or differences. Year ago, we would conjure up absurd scenarios where this backwards policy might lead. Today, common headlines reveal the want of our imagination.

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  2. Sherry and I discussed this a few weeks ago when we had first heard about it. We concluded that initial conversation with general agreement with your post. I don't think such a school would be a very good idea.

    Self-segregation encouraged by the state has many ugly faces. Such an institution does not force society to contend with homophobia, rather it emphasizes "otherness." Moreover, from a pure policy perspective, it is all but certain that the thinly spread resources of the public school system could be better utilized elsewhere, promoting similar themes of tolerance, creativity and originality through better history, humanities, and science education.

    Intentionally promoting segregation, otherness and small-mindedness, even in the name of 'diversity' is ill-advised.

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  3. Some rare conferment. So let me see if I can start the debate again.

    If the school is a bad idea, then what is to be done about what I’m sure is terrifying harassment? Aggressive punishment of the perpetrators only shines a spotlight on the sexuality of the victim. Equally appalling is telling a fifteen year old to suck it up and be tough. School wide anti-harassment seminars? That’s laughable.

    I wonder if, in millenniums to come, when humans have forgotten racial/cultural distinctions, homosexuality will be the last great bastion of bigotry.

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  4. And a much better use of resources is to ratchet-up anti-harassment efforts. I don't mean redefining harassment so that a frown can be actionable. I mean, if you beat a kid because he's gay, fat, Jewish, black, Hispanic, retarded, deformed, or even for no reason at all, you get charged with a fricken crime. If you are under 18, you go to juvenile proceedings. If you are over 18, you go to 22nd and California. Either way, you meet Mr. Judge and see what he has to say about it. Now, If you merely sing-song "na-na you dirty faggot" all day long in some kid's ear, maybe you mop floors after school, or do something else you perceive to be humiliating, for a goddamn month. If I were a Principal, and some kid comes to my office complaining about being harassed in class, I find the teacher and say, "If you can't control your class and make it comfortable for this kid to learn, then you can kiss this job goodbye. Am I clear?" Sadly, of course, you can't do that today without breaching 20 terms of any NEA collective bargaining agreement, which is a big problem with the system. But, for chrissake, we have to make schools safe before we start dicking around with curricula? Without basic safety, education is impossible. It would be nice if we had enough money to make the public schools like armed camps, to hire teachers who speak, what's the word?, English! for chrissake, and make sure each teacher is an ex-marine with a Ph.D. But we don't. That's why we need to privatize. No question less of this crap happens if we had shareholders and a board of directors instead of a corrupt teacher's union and an incompetent school board.


    the lines to get in like Israeli checkpoints, and

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  5. Okay, privatization of schools is an enormous leap to make from the question, how do we quell school violence and harassment. Corporations have done a terrible job at quelling bigotry, they simply find ways to hide it as well as possible so as to limit their civil losses. See Wal-mart, Boeing, Lucent, Citi, and others for evidence.

    Turning schools into prison camps, with metal detectors, armed guards, and an over-bearing work / study environment is the exact opposite of those attributes conducive to learning, dialogue, and collegiality.

    Things that have worked in the past for various groups deemed to be harassment worthy (women, immigrants, etc) have been openness, even forced openness. Title IX and a ban on school prayer served the interest of millions well. People of all faiths, ethnicities and social classes attend today's public schools.

    Ryan White had to go to court to show that having him in class did not create an epidemic health scare. Federal Marshals had to be sent in so that James Meredith could prove he was worthy of a college education. Women have to endure, to this day, the notion that they are less capable students of elementary math and science despite significant evidence to the contrary.

    These problems were not solved by making our schools more myopic, they were and are being solved by making our schools more inclusive. The way we fund our schools in many states via property taxes has significantly hampered these efforts.

    Many schools today, and even entire states, are more demographically homogeneous than they've been in a very long time. New Jersey is an example of this, as it relies nearly 100% on property taxes for school funding and has one of the most racially segregated school systems in the country.

    The problem of racism did not originate in our schools and neither does the problem of homophobia. Cracking the nut that is bigotry and hatred does not begin in our schools, it begins in our national attitude. Want to make schools safer for the LGBT community? Then stop allowing the laws of the United States to authorize discrimination against them. Connecticut, Massachusetts, California, and in some ways, New York, have already taken significant steps along this path. The civil rights movement and the womens movement, the government, via the military and other offices had to begin hiring women and minorities before the predominant culture was able to see well educated and hard working people who were different than they were right along side them as equals.

    The corporate world still struggles with open homosexuality, but they are getting smarter about it. Google just came out strongly against proposition 8. Many large companies have competed to keep the best workers and the best working environments by offering sexuality indifferent benefits to their employees, including health insurance. They were able to use their sizable purchasing power to negotiate with the insurance industry, who were happy to have more premiums rolling in.

    Schools must take continued action against violence, bigotry, and other forces disruptive to a collegial atmosphere, but locking them down is most certainly not the way to do it. School uniforms are, however. I have yet to hear a sound and cohesive argument against school uniforms. So too, and this may be one of the few areas I agree with the conservative agenda, is school choice. School choice makes for a pathway towards modifying the property tax funding dilemma. The schools are our schools, not my school.

    The way to end harassment is not by threat but shame. It is shameful to hate. It is especially shameful to hate on the basis of sexual attraction. Programs that identify bigots and call attention to their shameful actions, as long as they are not hokey and easily turned upside down into prideful status symbols, may be an effective means to reducing incidence of harassment.

    I know my proposals are limited in originality. I'm all ears to hear intriguing ideas, but I am certain that creating paths for self-segregation are not them.

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  6. Let's take all urging for a better world and put it aside. I'll wish with you, but it won't help much in the short run.

    As for your practical points:

    Security at a school does not make it any more or less open or myopic. It makes it safe. Safety is what is needed most in underclass communities. Don't ask me. Ask them.

    As for privatization, corporations pioneered granting equal health and retirement benefits for homo partners well before any government even thought of it.

    As for school choice, that works only if there is competition between and among schools. That's the whole idea of privatization.

    As for the concerns about private actors not being bound by constitutional constraints, that's a very simple one. Make the enabling legislation state that, in exchange for a license to operate as a school, you consent to be treated as a "state actor" for purposes of both the civil rights laws and the 14th amendment.

    Done.

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  7. "As for privatization, corporations pioneered granting equal health and retirement benefits for homo partners well before any government even thought of it."

    They did so, not because it was just, but because of their profit motive. As stated in my comment, "The corporate world still struggles with open homosexuality, but they are getting smarter about it. Google just came out strongly against proposition 8. Many large companies have competed to keep the best workers and the best working environments by offering sexuality indifferent benefits to their employees, including health insurance. They were able to use their sizable purchasing power to negotiate with the insurance industry, who were happy to have more premiums rolling in."

    I don't think it is beneficial for our society to explicitly include a profit motive in k-12 education. Such privatized schools, as private schools today, will have an incentive to eliminate, not educate poorly performing students to boost their 'numbers.' A well run state program that includes choice still reckons with justice and equality long before it contends with dollars and cents.

    There is no need for, and possibly even a deleterious effect of privatization. Most importantly, I do not believe you've formed a clear link between privatization and a decrease in harassment, which is the core of this thread.

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  8. You could not be more wrong.

    >>"They [corporations] did so, not because it was just, but because of their profit motive.<<

    Yes, of course. History shows one thing if anything. Institutions that rely on men becoming more just are either paralyzed by immutable human nature or tyrannical in their commitment to changing it. Both fail. Modern thinkers, especially James Madison, concluded from this history that men should stop wishing, and especially compelling, human nature to change. Rather, we should enlist, not resist, the immutable parts of human nature--e.g., "avarice," as the 18th century described it--to be the engine of public good by artfully arranging private incentives. You may resent that corporations, out of avarice, not virtue, served the public good better than governments, but you would be naive, or despotic, to suggest an alternative. This, I promise, is as true as math.

    >>>"Such privatized schools, as private schools today, will have an incentive to eliminate, not educate poorly performing students to boost their 'numbers.' <<<

    True, but irrelevent. Take college in America. Whenever an excess in demand occurs (from Harvard and Yale rejects) another school pops up to fill the supply (John Marshall). Supply meets demand, and everyone is educated. Don't complain about the price of college education. That's just affects demand. Give K-12 kids vouchers for $20,000 a year and see what happens in the private sector to fill that incredible demand. Public schools will be museum exhibits, next to the mummies.

    >>>"There is no need for, and possibly even a deleterious effect of privatization.<<<

    This is a conclusion, not an argument. No response is necessary.

    >>>"Most importantly, I do not believe you've formed a clear link between privatization and a decrease in harassment, which is the core of this thread."<<<

    I thought that was the point of my comment. Private organizations, in a system involving competition, and incentives, have more reasons to be inclusive than governments, where there is no competition. That's exactly why the corporations, not government agencies, have created the most inclusive environments in America. (You should witness the extraordinary resources devoted to diversity among, for example, such corporate stalwarts as GE; it would make Lani Guinier wet between the legs.) You may want corporations to be even more inclusive, which is wonderful, but if you think there is a better alternative, you're missing the entire history of organized human nature.

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