Leonie is right. The fact that someone wrote that sentence should be a wakeup call.

On the other hand, I followed the link this morniing to an article about the change away from teaching as a middle class career. I expected another “reform” article of why that’s good. But guess what? The article did NOT praise the destruction of good teaching jobs.

This is not new. The sacredness of neighborhood schools emerged about the time efforts to deseg became serious (ie, became focused on integration). Many folks are perfectly content if the actual/de jure barriers to segregation are removed, so long as other, “race-neutral” policies protect their children’s schools from integration. The value of integrating schools, especially if social classes are involved or tipping-level numbers, is remote and long term at best. The responses from those whose schools/kids are impacted are the familiar NIMBY arguments.

I don’t see that many middle class and up folks who are very concerned about developing Other People’s Children if they believe there is a cost to their own – and for so many people, social class/race mixing in schools is either a barrier to their children’s education or an unfair burden to their kids that other similarly-situated kids don’t have to bear (eg, kids in private schools). Thus, they believe that deseg makes the contest among the middle and up kids unfair to those who must bear the extra weight.

It is also a belief of many in majority-minority communities that the costs to their children of compelled integration are simply too high, and their kids are best served in context, especially if minority dominant schools can be mostly middle class as well. The mix of class and race issues is utterly complex, seemingly intractable. After decades of viewing these efforts, I think the major shift in beliefs occurring in my life time is that educated/affluent white folks see minority children from similar families are safe, even desirable to have in the local schools – within limits (and I guess the limits have stretched some as well). Same as in housing. Thus semi-integrated suburbs are relatively acceptable so long as whites still clearly dominate in numbers in homes & schools, again much as in private schools.