Anita Tijerina Revilla

Learning Through Experience: What Graduates Gained by Attending Desegregated High Schools

In this article, we discuss one of the central findings from our study of the long-term impact of school desegregation on adult graduates of racially mixed high schools: what graduates said about the impact of their schooling experiences on their current understandings about race, and on their lives in a racially diverse society. Of the 242 graduates we interviewed, nearly all said that their high school experiences left them more prepared for life in a racially diverse society than they otherwise would be. In addition, every one of the graduates interviewed said that their high school experiences left them with a deeper understanding of people of other backgrounds and an increased sense of comfort in interracial settings. Many of these graduates stressed the importance of their daily experiences of negotiating race in high school as one of the most challenging yet rewarding aspects of their education. These lessons, they observed, could not be gained through multicultural curricula or student exchange programs; rather, such insights, they believed, could only be learned by the daily experience of attending racially diverse schools. In this way, the experiences of these graduates speak to the need to reconsider our national retreat from policies designed to foster diversity in public schools.

Chapter 3: How Society Failed School Desegregation Policy: Looking Past the Schools to Understand Them:

It is a noteworthy coincidence that the year of publication of this volume, 2005, sits chronologically between the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education in 2004 and the 40th anniversary of Equality of Educational Opportunity (also known as the “Coleman report”) in 2006. This juxtaposition is symbolic given that, while both the Supreme Court ruling and the congressionally mandated Coleman study ultimately supported school desegregation policies, they differed relatively dramatically in terms of why, and these distinctions related to different views of the role of schools in society. It is fitting, then, that this chapter, which argues that we cannot understand the success or failure of school desegregation until we consider the complex relationship between desegregated public schools and the larger society, is wedged between these two important anniversaries. The strongly worded Brown ruling discussed at length the importance of public education in preparing students for their adult lives as workers and citizens. For instance, Chief Justice Warren wrote: “Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education in our democratic society” (p. 7). In contrast, the Coleman report muted the Brown decision’s interpretation of public education as a paramount institution and argued instead that the variation in school curriculum and facilities and, to a lesser extent, teacher quality accounted for

Against the Tide: Desegregated High Schools and Their 1980 Graduates

Illustration: Based on photo from EyeWire Images I N THE LATE 1970s, a Jewish teenager named Bernard Rose attended a racially diverse high school in New Jersey. He took the top-level classes, played two varsity sports, starred in the school play, and went on to a respected public university. In an interview shortly after his 40th birthday in 2002, Bernard looked back fondly on his high school experience, contrasting it to his years in an all-white grammar school where he was ostracized socially and “tormented” emotionally. In high school, he said, “I was popular with black people, I was popular with white people, I was popular.” He added, “It was so much better than being a loser.” Against the Tide: Desegregated High Schools and Their 1980 Graduates