I understand it must be very hard to face the cultural hostility that many of these kids face every day at school. But that’s part of the culture war. And it’s part of being a kid in school
Collateral damage! I thought the culture war was about a lack of Grand Narratives and thoughts about Power/Knowledge, not whether or not a kid who likes D&D gets shoved into a locker every other day.
As for part of being a kid, not to engage the culture wars, but I'm not willing to take the existence and daily life of US high schools as an a priori fact, one we can't improve on.
2009-01-28 19:55:58
Chicago school board plan to build a “gay-friendly” public school...seems to be advocating a sort of gay segregation, a purposeful seperation of gays and straights (or at least “outed” gays) from one another. This is a legal appraoch to a cultural problem that will no doubt backfire.
Chicago did a terrible job selling this program, but essentially what they want to do is create an arts high school. A perfect place for nerds, miscreants, prodigies and gays. The freaks-and-geeks. These things exist all over the country, especially in the private market, though they aren't sold as such. The people who go to them are quite happy with them, for the most part. (Wesley Yang wrote about them when discussing the Virigina Tech killer.)
If you are a working-class single mom in the Humboldt Park area of Chicago, and your nerdy and/or gay son is beaten up at school to the point where he doesn't want to go, isn't having a segregated school pareto-optimal? (Indeed, the kids at the school there don't want him there either, and would be happier with him gone.) You could argue, and I think you do, that this student should take a civil-rights approach, and ...... what? Work to be assimilated in? Hold sit-ins at the cool table? That seems to be working away from what we want.
These things often self-segregate on their own optimally. At Illinois, public, I lived in the freak dorm, which was filled with artists, nerds and gays. Word got around that this is what this dorm was, and students self-selected where to live, and that was that. I was a lot happier than living in the frat dorms, where gays and nerds were ostracized at best, beaten at worst. Chicago school kids can't self-select that way.
How long did civil rights activists have to work to end black/white segregation of schools?
I may be wrong on this, but black/white school segregation right now is more or less at the same level as it was in 1955. At least it is not much better. (Especially in Chicago!)
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I understand it must be very hard to face the cultural hostility that many of these kids face every day at school. But that’s part of the culture war. And it’s part of being a kid in school
Collateral damage! I thought the culture war was about a lack of Grand Narratives and thoughts about Power/Knowledge, not whether or not a kid who likes D&D gets shoved into a locker every other day.
As for part of being a kid, not to engage the culture wars, but I'm not willing to take the existence and daily life of US high schools as an a priori fact, one we can't improve on.
Chicago school board plan to build a “gay-friendly” public school...seems to be advocating a sort of gay segregation, a purposeful seperation of gays and straights (or at least “outed” gays) from one another. This is a legal appraoch to a cultural problem that will no doubt backfire.
Chicago did a terrible job selling this program, but essentially what they want to do is create an arts high school. A perfect place for nerds, miscreants, prodigies and gays. The freaks-and-geeks. These things exist all over the country, especially in the private market, though they aren't sold as such. The people who go to them are quite happy with them, for the most part. (Wesley Yang wrote about them when discussing the Virigina Tech killer.)
If you are a working-class single mom in the Humboldt Park area of Chicago, and your nerdy and/or gay son is beaten up at school to the point where he doesn't want to go, isn't having a segregated school pareto-optimal? (Indeed, the kids at the school there don't want him there either, and would be happier with him gone.) You could argue, and I think you do, that this student should take a civil-rights approach, and ...... what? Work to be assimilated in? Hold sit-ins at the cool table? That seems to be working away from what we want.
These things often self-segregate on their own optimally. At Illinois, public, I lived in the freak dorm, which was filled with artists, nerds and gays. Word got around that this is what this dorm was, and students self-selected where to live, and that was that. I was a lot happier than living in the frat dorms, where gays and nerds were ostracized at best, beaten at worst. Chicago school kids can't self-select that way.
How long did civil rights activists have to work to end black/white segregation of schools?
I may be wrong on this, but black/white school segregation right now is more or less at the same level as it was in 1955. At least it is not much better. (Especially in Chicago!)