🚀 go-pugleaf

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--

Too late, lets call a racist a racist.

You have implied that only those that were able to leave the cities cared
about education.  WRONG!  Your defense of "white flight" is pathetic.

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.  

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!)