Gay Students
Gay school in Dallas halts operations. This from The Advocate:
A Dallas private school for gay and lesbian students won't be holding classes this fall. Instead, officials at the Walt Whitman Community School say they'll spend the next 10 months seeking accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. The association is the standard accrediting authority for colleges and universities in 11 Southern states. The struggling school had been the subject of a documentary on MTV earlier this year, which spurred a surge of student applications. But the lack of accreditation has meant a Whitman diploma was meaningless.
Karen McCrocklin, a member of the school's board of directors, says the school has issued general equivalency diplomas--or GEDs--good only for getting students into junior colleges. She says school officials will focus on meeting the Southern Association's requirements. Walt Whitman is one of the nation's few schools established specifically to educate gay and lesbian teens. This fall New York City will open the nation's first public high school for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered students.
It is sad that the Walt Whitman school is closing in a way. I understand the need for it's existence, but I am also keenly aware that it is of utmost importance that the education one receives be one of quality. The Walt Whitman school was not accredited. It was unable to issue a high school diploma. Therefore, it's students only qualified for a GED that would get them admitted to a junior college. That's not good enough in my book.
Let's talk a bit about this new "gay high school" that is opening in New York City. It's called the Harvey Milk High school (picture left), named after slain gay San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk. The school is an outgrowth of a longstanding program for gay students. The school will only enroll 100 students in the initial class and they will study a traditional curriculum.
The school has drawn large criticisms from many. The biggest argument is one of segregation. I can't argue that. It is segregation. Most people stop at that and say that segregation is just plain wrong. I agree with that for the most part. In a perfect world, I would agree with it whole heartedly. But, as any gay person will tell you, this world is not only far from perfect, it can be down right dangerous at times. I think many people who immediately label this school as "wrong" on the basis of segregation aren't looking at the full picture. This is not a black and white issue.
Simply put, it is school teachers and administrators who are totally at fault here. If they wouldn't have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to harassment and intimidation, the need for the Harvey Milk High School would not exist. What is more important, to force gay kids to attend a high school where they are scared for their lives or go to a school where they can actually not worry about that and learn something? It's an easy argument for me.
On the other hand, author Joe Miksch makes a compelling argument in his article entitled "Two Steps Forward, One Step Back", where he claims that allowing the Harvey Milk High School to exist is the same as saying the bigots have won. Perhaps so, but my first interest is the safety of the students. I do agree he has some compelling arguments, however:
Think those black kids who eventually got into school in Little Rock, thanks to the intervention of Dwight Eisenhower and federal troops, didn't have to put up with unimaginably vile hate speech and regular violence? Of course not. Think they would have served themselves, their community and society at large by backing down? Likewise, of course not.
No one deserves that kind of treatment regardless of race, sexuality, religion, appearance or any other factor a bigot or a bully may fix upon. But it seems that by withdrawing, the abused cement their status as outsiders, as freaks worthy of contempt, as the feared and loathed "other." This is a lesson that once learned is not easily forgotten. The teen who sees the "fags" enrolling in another school especially for "them" is the adult who judges all gays as weak, coddled and wholly unlike him, as victims in the waiting.
The students of Harvey Milk High School may be more comfortable in that milieu just as the dweeb or the chubby kid may be with his cohort, but comfort really isn't the issue. Equal access to equal education is. Separating gay kids from straight peers does no service in this regard or in terms of allowing each group to see firsthand that there are other ways to live. It just divides and narrows one's outlook. That's no achievement.
A better, and certainly more difficult solution to the problem of abuse in public schools, is for administrators, teachers and students to vigilantly monitor student conduct. Undoubtedly a reading of just about any high school's student handbook would reveal that it's a punishable offense to abuse, physically or verbally, another student. A reading of local, state and federal statutes would reveal the same. Homophobes and racists, then, should not be given a free ride or slapped ever so gently on the wrist when they act on their hateful and harmful impulses. They should be expelled or imprisoned. Not for beating up or harassing a "homo" or a "nigger," but for beating up or harassing a person.
And the victims of these crimes should not be advised to "suck it up." They should be allowed unfettered access to the education that they are guaranteed and if that means kicking a lunkhead or a thousand lunkheads out of school, so be it.
What should not happen, however, is the creation of public schools for any other reason than the pursuit of education. As shameful as it is that there's enough hate in the world to make the founding of Harvey Milk High School seem like a necessity to some, it's an ever greater shame that the school's existence can be seen as testament to the fact that the bigots have won.
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I hope very much that this is not the case in the uk. I think our schooling system has a lot of problems but bullying of all kinds is taken seriously over here. When i was at school(I'm 39) gay issues were never spoken about and I never knew anyone who identified themselves as gay or lesbian. I think times have changed for the better now however. I have two teenage girls in senior school who talk openly about thier gay and lesbain peers. Not in a cruel, nasty way but with love and acceptance.My kids are not perfect by any means but I see they have turned into accepting loving kind human beings it makes me very proud. I hope that parents in general in USA are of the same opinion as most UK mums and dads and find the idea of bullying a child because of race, wieght, iq level, sexuality,etc etc compleatly unacceptable. If we can teach our kids to get it right we are well on the way to a better future for everyone.
I think that this school is a great thing and I wish I would have had this as an opption. I rember kids calling me obseen names and doing unmenchinable things to me and NOT ONE Teacher helped me or stopped it. Keep It up I wish you the best of luck. R.N.