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The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line |
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You Are Here: Home > History Books > History Massachusetts > Item 93
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The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line
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by Susan E. Eaton
Sales Rank: 872578
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List Price: $17.00
$17.00
At Amazon
on 6-18-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 293 pages
Published by: Yale University Press April 1, 2001
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0300087659
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0300087659
Book Dimensions:
8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 1.1 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
In 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity in Boston bused 220 inner-city Boston black children to schools in seven largely white suburban areas. By 2000, METCO was busing 3,100 kids to 32 suburbs. The program's endurance and expansion over thirty turbulent years of race politics is reason enough to make it the focus of detailed analysis. Eaton, a civil rights researcher at Harvard and coauthor of Dismantling Desegregation, picked to study METCO by interviewing former students whose firsthand memories break up Eaton's sometimes tedious sociological prose and give more depth to the analysis. One former student, Sandra, wonders aloud if she'd really gotten a better education in the suburbs, concluding, "other people think I did and that matters." We hear Marie's amazement that white suburbanites thought of her as a "poor little black girl" when her family was actually quite wealthy. Just because you're black, Marie says, "you are assumed to be poor and deprived and low-class and so sort of backward." While there were dissenters, METCO parents generally found busing to be a practical way to get their kids a good education and learn how to cross racial borders. In the end, METCO remains one of the few viable models for voluntary school desegregation. By detailing everything from her method of selecting participants to how she recorded interviews even including a copy of the interview protocol Eaton is bidding for serious attention from the social science community. Still, general readers who are seriously interested in race relations or education reform will want to read this book. (Apr.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Many people know the story of Boston's school busing order that went into effect in 1975 and of the violence that it spawned. Few, however, know about the "other" Boston busing story the one about Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), founded in 1966 by black parents and activists as a voluntary school desegregation program. In its first year, METCO bused 220 black children to suburban communities. Approximately 4300 students have now completed the program. Eaton (Dismantling Desegregation), a consulting researcher for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, interviewed 65 adult former METCO students, asking what they felt they'd gained and what they'd lost from being in this program. While the majority of those interviewed had both positive and negative experiences, nearly all of them think the program was beneficial overall. METCO is a unique program that would not work everywhere, but it has survived for over thirty years without a lot of fanfare and without the violence often found in desegregation plans. Eaton's focus is on the former students' experiences. She doesn't propose radical changes in the way busing or integration is structured. Yet her research, she feels, may help in the designing of future programs to ease racial tensions in education. A good choice for most public libraries. Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Reader Reviews
The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or METCO, is a program that buses students from inner-city neighborhoods of Boston to various suburban districts for part or all of their schooling. Although the stated goal of the program is to provide equal educational opportunities to students living in districts where the schools are regarded as being lower in quality than in the suburbs, it serves another important purpose in promoting racial desegregation. Most of the students that participate in METCO are African-American, and most of the districts that they are bused to are mostly, if not entirely, white. "The Other Boston Busing Story" is not a statistical study of the costs and benefits of METCO and other such programs. Neither is it a single narrative story. Rather, Susan Eaton has interviewed 65 adults who participated in METCO when they were students. Their memories of the experience vary, but there are several common threads running through each person's story. The awkwardness felt by black students in predominantly white settings - as well as the corresponding discomfort that came from losing a sense of belonging to the predominantly black neighborhoods in which they grew up - is explored through personal recountings and reminiscences. The interviewees also, for the most part, credited their years in suburbia with making them better prepared to venture out as adults into a society where they will always be a minority, and will always face some degree of racism and bigotry. The advantages and disadvantages of programs such as METCO are explored in depth and with great sensitivity. I have just completed my first year of teaching in one of the suburban districts that participates in the METCO program. I had four METCO students in my class, and often wondered what they were feeling or thinking, how their formative adolescent years (a difficult time for anyone) were being impacted by this experience. Reading many of the interviewees' comments about the lack of understanding shown by some of their teachers, I had to admit to myself that I have been guilty of similar misunderstandings, and gained some important insights on how I can better relate to my METCO students in future classes. This book should be a requirement for any teacher or counselor who works in a school that participates in METCO (or similar programs in other cities).
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The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line
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