John Thompson: Why School Integration Matters
John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, reviews an important recent book. It is ironic that the evidence for the value of integration grows at the same pace as resegregation.
Surely we can agree with Malcolm Forbes on one thing: schools should nurture “the art of thinking individually together.” Can we agree that the path to such a goal requires school integration?
Children of the Dream: Why School Integration Works, by Rucker Johnson and Alexander Nazaryan, cites Forbes’ statement when presenting a powerful case for a new era of desegregation. Johnson and Nazaryan refute the widely held belief that integration and the War on Poverty failed. They offer a compelling, evidence-based vision of equality in education and the economy where diversity is a driving force.
Misconceptions about school desegregation contributed to the contemporary school “reform” movement, which was based on the false premise and glib assertion that our children can’t wait for a victory over racism and poverty, so we must seek individual levers for immediately transforming schools. This simplistic hypothesis morphed into corporate school reform which used the stress of test-driven competition to overcome the stress of poverty, and segregation by choice to overcome the legacies of Jim Crow and de facto segregation.
Reformers have thus imposed a series of disconnected CONTINUE READING: John Thompson: Why School Integration Matters | Diane Ravitch's blog
