🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Nov8.172536.21977@oneworld.wa.com>, charles@oneworld.wa.com writes:
>Susan Hough (hough@seismo.gps.caltech.edu) wrote:
>: 
>: C'mon guys, you and I know why bad schools are bad.  Take the Pasadena school
>: system--it was a model of inequity until court-ordered bussing came along.
>: Suddenly, there weren't very good schools in nicer neighborhoods and lousy
>: schools in poorer neighborhoods--instead there was massive 'white flight'
>: from all of the public schools, and all the schools are lousy.  The nicer
>: schools didn't deteriorate structurally overnight; the good teachers and
>: caring principals didn't disappear; you just have a mass exodus of students
>: whose parents _cared_ about their education, and a mass influx of
>: students whose parents, for the most part, don't.  Or maybe some parents
>: do care, but are unable to battle societal pressures that devalue
>: education.  Before you all flame me for being racist, let me finish--
>
[personal attack deleted]
>
>You have implied that only those that were able to leave the cities cared
>about education.  WRONG!

I'll agree with that much. Court ordered deseg hit here exactly 15 
years ago, and ever since 'flight' from the public schools has been 
the very picture of social and ethnic diversity. Inner city parochial 
schools are jammed and can't take any more (and are running at 76-92% 
non-catholic black). "White flight" in the burbs has of course 
followed a similar pattern. Distaste for forced busing is clearly not 
a racial thing, it's a common sense thing.

>Your defense of "white flight" is pathetic.

Hmm, I didn't see any "defense"; just a statement of fact. Pretty 
irrefutable one too.

>
>One of the major problems in this country was the separation of the races.
> We live in fear of each other because we don't know one another.  By
>desegregating our school system, generations will grow up knowing at least
>some of the experiences of the other cultures they wouldn't normally get. 
>The result of all of this "forced bussing" has been mixed.  On the
>positive side, in many cities, neighborhoods are less singular in their
>ethnic mixes.  People talk to each other more than they did, friendships
>develop and even romances.  All a very positive sign.  

Perhaps. But who on earth sends their kids to school (of any type) for 
any of that? Nobody I know. Tell me about the "positive side" as it 
relates to education. You know? Academics? Learning? Scholastic 
achievment? That boring stuff.

>
>On the other hand, those who wanted to preserve their fantasy of "separate
>but equal" created the blight of suburbanization.  They move to places
>with strip mall after strip mall and megamall after megamall with
>absolutely no character to offer. The myth that the suburbs are "law
>abiding" is a crock.  There are drugs and gangs and other things in full
>force in the "burbs".  You just don't notice it.  (which to some makes it
>just fine - huh!)  
>

Do you have a point here? Or are you just blathering for the fun of 
it?

-Todd