Segregation Based on Sexuality?
“NEW YORK — The city is opening a full-fledged high school for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students — the first of its kind in the nation, The Post has learned.
Operating for two decades as a small alternative program with just two classrooms, the new Harvey Milk High School officially opens as a stand-alone public school with 100 students in September.
The school is undergoing a $3.2 million in city-funded renovations approved by the old Board of Education in June of last year. It will eventually take in 170 students by September 2004, more than tripling last year’s enrollment.”
I don’t think this is a good idea. I don’t think segregation is the answer. We shouldn’t have separate school buildings for students with a different sexual preference. Is this going to increase tolerance or will this school just create a much bigger and easier target for the intolerant in our society? I will never have any idea how hard it is for some of these students, but I think this step will be a step back.
It also raises complications. What if this school is better than others? Hypothetically speaking, can a straight student go there because the education is a better quality? How do they treat Bi students? Do they get to go half the time?
This might have sounded like a good idea in the planning room, but I think it is ridiculous.
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A woman who sits near me at work mentioned this earlier, and we agreed upon the following things:
1. This is silly.
2. I hope there’s some kid out there who’s demanding a special straight-kids-only high school be set up.
3. The scenario Craig described is going to happen. If nothing else, this school is going to have an AWESOME drama program (See, it’s funny, but you know I’m right, don’t you?). It’ll be unfair to deny a straight kid who wants to go there the ability to star in really good productions of Our Town and West Side Story.
4. Nevermind the right-wing nutbars, I don’t want my tax dollars funding a gay school the same way I don’t want them funding a Catholic school or a Jewish school or a Blacks-only college. Our government has got to be about inclusion, not exclusion. This school’s almost certainly getting a cut of federal education dollars, which gives everyone in Alabama a right to complain about it.
5. Why is everyone in this country so dead-set on being a member of some minority group in need of special protection or treatment? I’m willing to put up with the United Negro College Fund because the government discriminated against black people once, and they’re still digging themselves out of that hole the government created for them and they need help. Gay kids don’t need a special school, or a separate college fund, or federally subsidized GAP gift certificates.
6. High school can’t be about whatever subset to which you belong. It’s supposed to be about dealing with different people and learning to live with them. Does the Gay Community (one of my all-time favorite comedic phrases. Like there’s a Gay City somewhere, with a Gay Mayor and Gay City Council and Gay Community Picnics) really think that instances of discrimination and violence against gay people is going to go down if they isolate the children in their own schools? It’s just going to breed another generation of kids who only know about gay people what stereotypes they’ve seen on Will & Grace or MTV. Ignorance breeds hatred. Exposure breeds understanding. Somehow I know this and the NYC City Council doesn’t?
The statistics regarding health and safety of adolescents in these groups are fairly scary. Something like 30% of all successful teen suicides are gays or lesbians. They represent a disproportionate number of the homeless, school dropouts, the clinically depressed, victims of violence, and hard drug users. Something like a quarter to a third of public school teachers say they can’t make school safe for these kids.
So for me, the question is not whether this school is a good idea in general, but whether these risks need to be addressed and whether the school has been successful in mitigating the risks for the kids who go there and to what degree. If the risks aren’t important or the school hasn’t been successful, then you’ve got to ask why they would expand it. If the risks are important and the school’s program is effective, then you look at what it’s worth to us as a society to improve these kids’ lives.
Assuming attendance at this school is voluntary, I don’t think the “tolerance” argument is relevant yet. Get these kids safe and healthy first, then worry about whether the straight kids are being deprived of a valuable diversity experience.
I don’t see how Their Own Private Idaho solves any of the problems Chris mentioned. It just isolates them. Those of them who are trying to kill themselves, are clinically depressed or are drug abusers belong in a hospital, not a school. Maybe we can use some of my money to build them a gay hospital? Why not?
And I don’t think it’s just the straight kids who will become narrow minded if all the gay kids are isolated. The whole world isn’t full of gay people. Going to a school that doesn’t represent the outside world doesn’t prepare kids for adulthood or college. Maybe I need some experts in education to explain this to me, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.
Certainly there are schools that would be dangerous or damaging for gay students. There are a lot of narrow-minded people out there who love to make life difficult for people who aren’t like them. I know gay-bashing happens, but I find it hard to believe there’s no school in all of New York that couldn’t provide a healthy learning environment for these kids.
I don’t buy the argument that gay kids should have to deal with high school the way it is because that’s what the real world is like. In the real world and to some degree in college, you choose where you live, you choose where you work, you choose who you interact with every day. Sure there are bigots everywhere, but in the real world it’s a hell of a lot easier to avoid them. In the workplace, if someone calls you a fag, or a slut, or grabs your ass every day, you report him to his supervisor. If the supervisor doesn’t stop it, you call in the state discrimination folks and sue the company for a hostile work environment. And you win. You have none of that protection in school. High school is, for most people, the last place where people have no control over any of those things.
We don’t need to figure this out. It’s simple…look at the kids in the current Harvey Milk School program, and compare them to the gay kids who aren’t in the program. Look at all the risk factors I mentioned. If the outcomes for the kids in the school are meaningfully better, then the school must be doing something valuable. If not, then shut it down.
I tried for YEARS to get a special GEEK school built for my friend(s) and I. See, we were a minority in my school. And I don’t mean I was a smart kid, I wasn’t, I was just a geek. Couldn’t get laid, secretary of the chess club and I always wore a camouflage jacket. Yea, I bet you saw me wandering in the dark corners too.
Well, I got my ass kicked several times. Why? No reason apparently. I kept to myself as much as I could. I never made eye contact. Let me tell you I freaking hated school. I developed abmormally because of it. It was a major negative impact in my life. I fell into a deep existential depression and seriously considered taking my own life.
I want a special school too damnit! I had no protection. I didn’t have any special programs. As a scrawny white male, I had nothing going for me at the time. The class body was split 33% Black, 33% Hispanic and 33% White. 1% Geek. Yes, I am bitter. No special programs catering to just me.
Obviously my point here is that the line has to be drawn somewhere. Where is it? I agree that some programs are beneficial. I think that is swell. But I agree with Justin that everyone wants to be a minority. “PLEASE make me the victim this time!” Syndrome. And so yes I will bitch about not being helped as the Geek minority. If you are going to let us all be minorities, hell, I want to be one too. Don’t pull that “straight white male” card on me either. It won’t work. My Geek card and years of torment as I walked out of the special portable classroom where we Geeks studies Latin trump the straight white male card EVERY time in my book.
I am now with Chris on this one. If you think about all the hurdles that a kid who is gay has to overcome, then we shouldn’t be making their highschool lives any harder. Sure, being a social misfit and an outcast like Jarodius is tough, but imagine if being a geek forced you to “come out” to your parents and they considered dis-owning you. The odds are so stacked up against a kid like this that we should be able to provide a safe, accepting learning environment at school assuming something horrible doesn’t happen to him or her before they get there.
I am still of the opinion that as a long-term solution, we need to create a safe environment in all schools. This isn’t a license to stop working on those things, but it is a good idea in the near future to keep kids safe.
All the avenues you mentioned that are available if someone calls you a fag at work are also available to a student who’s called a fag in school. Happens all the time.
I don’t really mean that High School is supposed to be this little microcosm for the real world. It’s part of the real world. You deal with adversity. You deal with other people; you don’t run from them. Suggesting that you do, and enabling these kids to do just that, isn’t going to serve them well later in life.
Sorry, but I can’t think of someone’s sexual preference as a “hurdle to overcome.” It’s not like they were born with no legs. Being a teenager sucks no matter who you are. Being in high school is stressful and hard for just about every kid in the building. Teen suicides are high, not just gay teen suicides. Same goes for teen depression and drug abuse. And I don’t see how a gay school helps gay kids any more than a special school for football players or for chess club kids would help them.
And, - contrary to what Chris said - absent seeing this place or having someone explain it to me, I don’t buy that the mere existence of this special school makes all the difference. If there’s a marked difference in these kids lives - and I’d seriously doubt there is, maybe some of the people there would just like to think there is - we shouldn’t be saying to ourselves “Great! It’s working. Let’s build more gay schools!” We should be saying “What are they doing that the rest of our schools aren’t?”
My guess is they’re providing counselors and psychologists who are trained to deal with homosexual children and can offer advice other than “Well, have you tried not being gay?” My point, really, is that if this school is doing anything different - aside from having a completely gay student body - it’s nothing we couldn’t be doing in other schools for these kids.
If the answer to “what are they doing that we’re not?” is that they’re isolating kids of certain subset because their lives are less stressful when they don’t have to deal with anyone who’s different, ever, then that’s a shitty solution to the problem, and one that I think is only going to cause more problems down the road.
Jarodius-
NYC already has loads of specialized “geek” schools: Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Music and Art, Stuyvesant, High School for American Studies, Queens High School for the Sciences, and the High School for Math, Science, and Engineering. With your geek credentials I’m sure you would have gotten into one of them.
I just want to make sure I understand where you and Justin are coming from. From a public policy standpoint, we’ve got a group of children who are proven to be at significantly higher risk of death and a bunch of other unpleasantness. There’s a proven program with 24 years of success at reducing the risks for these children, and a city school system that has historically supported and encouraged all kinds of differences ready to expand its funding. I hear you saying that NYC should not leverage and expand the success of this program for at-risk children. Do you not believe the research, or do you think we should ignore it?
hey, let’s build a school for korean kids that have to attend school in south central LA. they are constantly getting the crap kicked out of them. fat kids get depressed, beaten, kill themselves. they need their own school. betcha they have a killer cafeteria. probably all you can eat. by the way, jarodius said he wasn’t smart, just a geek. those other schools probably wouldn’t have taken him(no offense jarodius). i think the real solution is to beat the shit out of the troublemakers. call someone a fag, we take your milk money for a week. beat someone because they are fat, gay, 4-toned hair color, we make you sing showtunes in front of the student body.
i completely agree w/jarodius that isolating these kids is not the solution. where would it end? separate high schools? a lot of colleges make you spend the first year in the dorms. lord forbid it be on the football team floor. what about the kids who go on to junior college. not exactly choosing what they are doing there. point is, they are going to run into problems everywhere in life until the human race realizes they can’t make themselves feel better by hurting or putting other people down. i believe by isolating people based on something they perceive as different is the real abuse. how far do you think they will go thinking that everyone will bend over backwards for them. has anyone done that for you in real life? maybe if i tell the cable guy i’m gay, he’ll actually show up between 8 to noon. better yet, maybe he will give me an exact time & meet it!!!
Aren’t most all girl schools really just a home for wayward lesbians?
Oh never mind. I was confused.
Dawn, In my mind, yes. They are all lesbian training grounds.
See what public school has done to me? Chris, despite my thick Ney York Accent and the money that just falls out of my pockets, I did not grow up in the rich part of NYC. In addition, despite my credentials as Chief Geek Level 4, I did very poorly in high school. I barely graduated. 2.6 GPA. Hell, I actually had to repeat my senior year. Seriously. One extra year of getting my ass kicked. It was freakin great - I LOVED it.
No, there were no avenues open to me. My parents, bless their hearts, were not overly interested in my education and certainly not interested enough to seek special geek schools for me. No support for this geek. No one even recognized Chronic Geek Syndrome (GCS) until, well, until just now.
Now, while I really sympathize with these young people, and I do believe the research, what will we do when I present my research about geeks getting their asses pounded? Then I add in a bit about how Dungeons and Dragons, which they play to escape the pathetic reality of their existence, corrupts thier weak minds, the Christian Right will jump on board with a lot of backing. Do we act in a reactionary way to each bit of research that comes up? Or conversly do we set a policy about how much assistance we will give to any particular group. Why do I now sound like V.I. Lenin?
We need a solution. How about tolerance education? Let’s teach young people to be tolerant. Let’s teach their stupid parents that being gay is NOT a bad thing. Big mountain to move? You had better believe it. 100 years off? Maybe. Eradication of all right wing Christian beliefs? Well, that would be contrary to the messge of tolerance now, wouldn’t it?
In the mean time, while we are educating, if we isolate these students, I believe that it will be harder to convince the sheepish masses that they [the isolated ones] are not so different. The sheep will say “Well, they got a special school, so they must be different!” and “They think they are better than me because they have a special school!” So I argue that we would hurt our cause by isolating anyone - anyone - who is different.
The only way I will concede to isolation is if it is a public school and that straight people can attend too if they want to. Call it a “Tolerance School” and have anyone who wants to attend. Special tolerance classes for everyone. Lots of counselors (unlike my 150/1 ratio) who are able to talk about serious topics. A smart public school with smart people. What a concept. Not in this America.
Sorry for the long post.
I agree that straight people should be allowed to attend Harvey Milk if they want to. I’m sure that they would be overrun with applications from straight kids in the prime of their hormonal lives just dying to be surrounded by people who either 1)they are attracted to but who aren’t attracted to them and 2)who are attracted to them but who they aren’t attracted to. It would make a hell of a reality show.
The one key point that seems to keep me a bit on Chris’ side is that nobody is being “sentenced” to this school. It is completely voluntary. No guidance counselors are going to force anyone to go to this school. I am still not convinced this is the best way to go about the solution, but I don’t have any better ideas so I think the school is acceptable at this time. If they don’t continue to attempt to create a safe environment for all people, they aren’t doing their jobs and using this school the wrong way. This should be a band-aid, not a surgery.
Ok, I agree with you. It is voluntary. That is good. So I can go too right? How do they determine gayness? What if I think I might be gay? Will I be discriminated against? What if I think I might be bi?
Dr. Dean Edell on AM radio was once asked a question about gay and straight people. He pointed out that there is a scale, not a black and “white gay or not gay”. The scale is, say, 1-10. 1 Being totally gay and 10 being totally straight. He said that there are probably very few 1’s and 10’s. That sounds reasonable to me. So, let’s say I am a 5. Can I go to school now? What if I just have an effeminate demanor and people CALL me gay? What if I am a 7 on this scale, but have had thoughts of maybe being a gay man? What if I am a 15 year old boy and have NO freaking clue what I am? What if I am a 16 year old boy who would really really wants to be a lesbian woman? Can I go to your school now? What are the criteria? Do I have to sleep with another student of the same sex as me before I get in? I am rapidly sliding down a slippery slope. Please help.
Let’s go back to my “Tolerance School”. I think that is a reasonable solution. Anyone can voluntarily attend. There will be extra tolerance training. Anyone caught being intolerant will be expelled. Come on. It is a good solution.
I think your last solution is an interesting idea. It would be like the frat from Revenge of the nerds. With gay guys, nerds, disgusting guys like booger, etc. Then they can go win the fundraiser, the drunken tricycle race and the talent show in their quest for group acceptance and control of the greek council.
ROCK ON!
I am looking forward to the possibility of a straight kid voluntarily going to this school and then suing it, claiming he has been tortured and picked on and made miserable by the gay ruffians who don’t like “his kind.”
You know, once I went into the “Gay Bar” in Missoula MT. It used to be the vetrans club. I wasn’t bothered (no comment), but some really tough lesbians started picking on a straight couple who just wanted to find an open pool table. Pissed me off good. Most people in the bar wern’t like these two girls, but they were just being mean and ugly. I didn’t say anything cause they would have kicked my ass.
So it seems like intolerance is everywhere. I am just not going to sit there and tolerate this kind of behavior!
I have worked with GLBT youth in Philadelphia and am getting certification to work as a school social worker. The youth that I worked with in Philadelphia were all runaways, thinking of running away, abused, or thrown out of their homes.
My opinion is that schools should be more like real life. You should go to school with other youth in your community. There should not be schools that exclude anyone in your community. I don’t believe that we should bus students to schools outside their community and I don’t believe that boarding school is the best way to educate our youth. But these are my opinions.
The GLBT people are discriminated against and have a very difficult time in high school in particular. But pulling them out of the real world and sheltering them is not the answer. They need to learn how to cope with the outside world now so that they make it to adulthood. There is a community center in Philadelphia called the Attic (link below) which provides GLBT youth with an outlet. It allows them to come together after school and on weekends to support each other and learn how to function and cope in a discriminating society. I think that more of these centers need to be created as opposed to GLBT schools.
http://www.angelfire.com/pa2/youthcenter/contactus.html
Well said Sally.
Since I don’t have my own ‘blog, I want to add a related article to this thread:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/07/30/bush.gay.marriage.ap/index.html
From the article for those of us too lazy to copy and paste:
“I am mindful that we’re all sinners and I caution those who may try to take a speck out of the neighbor’s eye when they got a log in their own,” the president said. “I think it is important for our society to respect each individual, to welcome those with good hearts.”
“On the other hand, that does not mean that someone like me needs to compromise on the issue of marriage,” he added.
I don’t know who “we” are, but I am looking around right now and I don’t see any sinners in my office. Let us hope, no, let us PRAY, that the spirits of the founding fathers will rise up and explain to Mr. Bush what seperation of church and state is. Next thing you know he will be outlawing special schools for gay and lesbian students! Sheesh!
I am far angrier than the above paragraph might lead you to believe. I have another paragraph in my head full of explitives and anger. It involves the spirits of the founding fathers rising up and kicking some serious ass. “I am the ghost of Ben Franklin… I am going to show you the past… with my foot in your ass.”
Feel free to start a whole new thread. This is only semi-related.
Pretty interesting thread here. Craig, I am curious about the details of this school. As a member of the “gay community” this would be causing a massive uproar. We would just be as divided on this issue as this thread is. The problem I have with this school is that I have heard nothing about it until today and I like to think that I am up on all things gay.
Can you tell me where I can find more on this school? I don’t feel as though we have all the facts. Thanks!
I guarantee that most of you people that are disagreeing with this school are not gay. So you wouldnt know what its like to be made fun of and picked on, or to have everyone stare at you. I bet you dont know what its like to have to hide it because you are scared for your life. None of us ever will either. But they know how they feel. And seeing how this school is voluntary why should you care? You dont have to go. If it is going to make these kids feel safer then why shouldnt they have that same oppurtunity that you have everyday? Catholig school, all girl schools, christian schools, what is the difference?
FUCK ALL OF U !