Public Schools = Divided Nation

It’s 1950. The public schools imagined by Horace Mann have evolved. Now everyone can go to school and everyone can graduate from high school. But, everyone must go to school only with people of the same color.

That’s right, in 1950 it was not only standard practice, it was flat-out illegal in 17 states for children of color to go to school with white kids. The promise of an American public education was laid out on different paths. Parents had complained over the years. Some filed suit, but the U.S. Supreme Court determined it was OK to have separate schools as long as they were equal.

Of course, you didn’t have far to look to find evidence that in most every community, the standard was separate and unequal. Eventually, with a case known as Brown vs. Board of Education, the Supreme court was persuaded that children should no longer be separated by color in public school.

I was a child at the time with no idea what was going on. I grew up in the country attending the neighborhood elementary school. My first classmates of color appeared when we all rode the bus into town to the large junior high about 1964. Some of Lake Forest’s teachers still recall attending their segregated schools and the trauma of integration here in the late 60s. In Delaware, the Indian population had a separate school as well.

The battle to integrate the schools was not easy. Many would point out that their objective was not for their kids to go to school with white kids. They just wanted their kids to have the same opportunities. Some who fought the battle faced unimaginable violence. Students integrated schools in some towns only under the watchful protection of the police or the National Guard.

There were separations in gender in those days as well. There were no teams in athletics, nor were there athletic scholarships for college. Many prestigious universities were not open for women. Women were to stay home and care for the babies. Maybe they could be nurses, or secretaries or teachers.

It’s hard for our children today to imagine such a world. Thank goodness those days are in our past. Our constitution and our culture saw to the evolution of our public schools. Now our schools look nothing like the public schools of other nations.

Last week a gentleman told me this story. He has five adult children: #1 is a neurosurgeon, #2 a school teacher, #3 is looking for work after 6 colleges in 7 years, #4 was born with a number of physical disabilities, brain damage and severe seizures, and #5 was hit by a car at age 11. The accident left the youngest brain damaged, crippled and blind.

All five of his kids were educated in the public schools and even his youngest eventually completed college. He points out that the odds of getting 4 college grads out of his brood would be slim in most any other country but the good old U.S.A. He also says that #4, with the severe disabilities, would have had her medication withheld by law in some countries, sentencing her to a sure death at an early age. Instead, the public schools of his community gave her the best care and training available anywhere.

America’s schools have improved continuously over time. Yes, it’s true, while we were improving; other countries have been zooming ahead with their own version of public school. Many resemble the United States of the 1950s, supporting only the dominant culture, sorting and selecting and providing limited opportunities for immigrants.

We want to compete globally, but we don’t want to go back to the 1950s. Ever.