One of the ironies of the recently concluded IPS busing litigation was the strong desire of the townships to continue receiving minority students. Those of us who followed the original desegregation suit recall that suburban school systems were then–how shall we put it– less eager to include such students.
One of the ironies of the recently concluded IPS busing litigation was the strong desire of the townships to continue receiving minority students. Those of us who followed the original desegregation suit recall that suburban school systems were then–how shall we put it– less eager to include such students.
It is easy to attribute the change in attitude to money. Undoubtedly the substantial amount transferred to township schools along with the IPS students is one reason for the change of heart. But it would be unfair to suggest that money is the only concern; several township superintendents have talked about the educational value of diversity in the classroom. In a world where graduates will necessarily deal with a wide variety of people, it is critically important that they learn to get along with those whose skin color, religion, culture or politics are different from their own.
Robert Kegan is Chair of the Institute for the Management of Lifelong Education at Harvard. He has recently written an important book: "In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modem Life," in which he explores "ways of knowing" and stages of mental/emotional development and maturation. The book addresses the changing nature of the world with which we must all contend and describes the mental processes required to cope successfully with modernity.
"The demand that we ‘respect diversity’ is sounded, as it should be, in every quarter of public life even as a backlash against it is heard in the call to retum to traditional values’," Kegan says. "When we make and enforce the claim to respect diversity through force of law (by legislating against discrimination, sexual harassment, unequal access) we reduce it to one of behavior and seek, as we should, to inhibit and reduce the most egregious acts of misbehavior, but we do not address the real source of the capacity to ‘respect diversity."’ That capacity, according to Kegan and the other scholars cited in his book, can come only through what he calls "transformational" education. "Psychologists tell us that the single greatest
source of growth and development is the experience of difference, discrepancy, anomoly."
In other words, students whose educational experience does not include day-to-day interaction with people from a variety of backgrounds are at a significant disadvantage in the global village we are rapidly creating. Superintendents from the townships recognize that fact of educational life, as do the many parents who have chosen to keep their children in IPS despite criticisms (some justified, some not) of the system.
Of course, the ideal way to experience difference is in our neighborhoods: residential integration that leads to integration of schools, churches, scout troops and the like. The end of busing was predicated on a promise to work for integrated neighborhoods. For the sake of children confined to cul-de-sacs where everyone looks and thinks alike, we must all work to fulfill that promise.