Busing Taught Me Valuable Lessons
Eric Montgomery is a lawyer in Charlotte, N.C.
UPDATED MAY 21, 2012, 11:25 AM
My father taught in Charlotte's public schools, first during segregation, then through the migration of integration until his retirement. We were a middle-class African-American family, both parents were college-educated and had professional jobs. That said, my father always said he preferred teaching in the segregated system because he felt there was a better support system in place for minority kids.
I attended school in Charlotte during the 1970s and 80s -- what I consider the golden era. Growing up amid the backdrop of the seminal school busing decision in 1971, I, along with many students across the city, were bused to schools to achieve integration. To me, busing was a success -- all my classrooms were fully integrated.
Our communities will not achieve greatness if we do not work together again to make our schools a true reflection of society.
From the first grade through my senior year of high school, my classmates reflected a rich diversity of people across racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. I could not have imagined going to a school in a homogenous environment. It was this richness of differences that taught me many valuable life lessons beyond the classroom instruction.
I left the area to attend college and law school and returned in 2001 to find my community now dominated by private schools, and a rapidly resegregating public education system, in need of new solutions to achieve harmony and success. I would have never have made friends “across the tracks” of life if it hadn't been for integrated schools in Charlotte. Our communities will not achieve greatness if we do not work together again to make our schools a true reflection of society.
Will busing work today in Charlotte? Perhaps. But the sprawling school system has grown too big to manage all of its areas. Perhaps it should break apart into different systems, so that each one is organized better, allowing for integration techniques like busing to work. That said, public schools also must invest in quality programming and teachers to appeal to all of the upper middle-class families who have sent their children to private schools.
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10 Comments
Why are white parents continuing to choose to segregate? Why are we focusing on segregated schools in an educational system in NYC where 87% of the children are black and hispanic? Because black and hispanic parents are not looking to improve the quality of education for their children as much as they care about 'perceived' white privilege. In fact, those children do not do better because they are white and the politicians care more about them. They do better because they are not bullied for wanting to learn, for speaking properly, because they come from families that support them, from two-parent homes, from more affluent backgrounds, and have good role models. Hoping on a bus and seeing the neighborhood isn't a substitute for those things.