Word: metco
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Bedford school committee members stress the benefits that Metco brings to both the students who come from Boston and those who live in Bedford. “We’re getting the benefits of the children from Boston sharing their culture with us, and we get to share some benefits they might not normally have in Boston,” says Linda Vanaria, a member of Bedford’s school committee...
While those in Metco get to learn in better schools, suburban students are exposed to a slice of the real world’s diversity. “Here we are in this very lily-white community, and our kids are very sheltered and very protected. When we have the opportunity to have our children learn from and understand and meet and befriend kids from different backgrounds and different cultures, our kids are so enriched,” says Ellen Waldron, also a member of the school committee. “Metco is the ultimate anti-racist initiative, the ultimate...
...course, programs like Metco cannot solve America’s racial issues by themselves. “Metco is no panacea,” Waldron says. The program has several problems of its own, including the tendency of students on both sides to self-segregate. But exposing students to a diverse environment at a young age can only foster education and understanding in the long run—having nine black students sitting together at a table in a sea of white bodies is better than having none at all. And in fact, Bedford’s decision to boost...
Programs like Metco may be expensive, but they must be reinforced and expanded if there is any chance to finish the noble project of desegregating America’s public schools in the foreseeable future. Race relations in America have improved immeasurably in the years since Brown v. Board of Education, but tension still remains. There is no better formula for peace and cooperation between different groups of people than integrated schooling from an early age; a quick glance at societies riven by internal strife provides ample evidence. In Northern Ireland, only 4 percent of students are educated in integrated...
Unlike Northern Ireland and Israel, America is no longer suffering from widespread violence because of the progress that has been made in equalizing and integrating education over the last 50 years. If that trend is to continue, then programs like Metco must be expanded, not stifled. As Justice William J. Brennan wrote of another recalcitrant school district 14 years after Brown, “the transition to a unitary, nonracial system of public education was and is the ultimate end to be brought about...