Children in the Balance Author:I. Schlesinger, M. D'Amore As many large and medium-sized cities throughout the United States, de facto racial segregation existed in the public schools of White Plains, New York. In 1964 the Board of Education took remedial action and implemented a plan requiring the busing of poor, inner-city black children to white, neighborhood elementary schools. What hap... more »pened when boys and girls with disparate backgrounds, aspirations, values, and educational skills interacted together in the classroom is graphically reported by two perceptive white teachers who are personally and professionally committed to making integration work.
Anecdotes, conversations, and personal observations record how school personnel and parents responded to white and black students and how the students responded to the school, the teachers, and to each other. Frustration, mutual distrust, and deep-seated prejudice characterized many of the attitudes and actions of both blacks and whites, but a measure of understanding and acceptance has been achieved with patience, informal teaching techniques, honest discussion, and free give-and-take, particularly among the children themselves.
Any teacher ,supervisor, school board member, parent, or citizen concerned about busing , equal educational opportunity, or the polarization of the poor and middle classes will gain insight into the problems and potentials of integration from the White Plains experience.« less