Could you please what this has to do with the harassment and violence? We’re not talking about a place that makes queer students feel beautiful sexy. We’re talking about making sure they don’t feel like taking their lives in their hands by going to school. We’re talking about preventing conditions that would make it impossible – not hard, but impossible – for a person to concentrate on their studies.
My point was, where do we draw the line? If group A gets their own school and groups B and C are also picked on, shouldn’t they get their own school too? Seems to me this is more of a slippery slope.
Your point is well taken but segregation is never the answer (which I don’t think you were implying). Let’s face it, for the most part, hardly anyone goes without getting picked on or feeling left out when they are in high school.
I’m wondering that if because there’s only 100 slots, would students have to demonstrate a history of harrassment in order to get in? Would students who are living on their own be given more priority over students who have “support” networks? I think both should be the case if the school is about protection.
I don’t see why segregating people on an interest that, in principle, should be popularly accepted is considered a solution.
It seems to me that this will exacerbate the problem, unless we assume or otherwise know that after a certain age people will integrate themselves more or less harmlessly (that is, that homophobia is largely a teen phenomenon – not a claim I would take very far). Otherwise it only breeds contempt at the least.
Four miles from here is a grave. I go by it every time I go to the library or the grocery store. It’s part of a small country graveyard. It isn’t prepossessing, just a small stone, and IIRC a few flowers planted by it.
The body buried in it is that of a boy who would be 14 if he were alive. Two years ago he was 12, small, bookish, not good at sports. That described me at age 12. From another, quite emotional thread I know it describes KellyM at that age. I’ll bet there are 100 Dopers who will identify with that description.
He was severely harrassed by the kids at Zebulon Middle School. There are rumors he was gay – nothing I can confirm. AFAIK his death never made the pages of the News and Observer but it was reported in the Zebulon Record.
He hung himself in despair. He left a suicide note, which I don’t know the contents of, but the family said that he said he just couldn’t take any more.
The story was very much downplayed around here. But it sticks in my memory.
That kind of stuff has got to stop. No 12-year-old should have to suffer with the kind of ostracism that drives him to dspair and kill himself.
Oh, and one other thing, for those of you saying he ought to have been able to suck it up and tough it out: His father worked for GlaxoSmithKline, at the research facility here. He reportedly wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. Forty years from now, when you’re dying of hepatochondrylosis or some such, remember that your insistence on letting kids bully each other around eliminated the man who might have developed the cure, before he reached high school.
Hamish,
I was simply pointing out that bigotry rears it’s ugly head in places other than homosexuality. AND I was pointing out human nature makes some people react negatively towards others. I chose to give common examples where most people have biased reactions to others who are perceived as “different”. The fact that the examples centered around the want for people to feel sexually appealing, comes from the theme of the rest of the paragraphs which stemmed from the initial quote about “relationships, dating, and sex.”
While I didn’t go into the violence angle, if you don’t think that overweight, crippled, or kids with bad skin get bullied as much (if not more than) homosexuals, you need to open your eyes. Gay people have the added option of living a lie (albeit a bad one). These other groups do not.
But my point remains. Dealing with the reality that life is unfair is better dealt with sooner rather than later.
Nice strawman there Poly. Please point to a single person around here who has advocated bullying kids. Just one. The kid might have grown up to develop a super bug that destroyed civilization too. What is your point? Lots of people suffer; it isn’t unique to the gay (or any other) community. Your sanctimonious post is an insult to all of us who have lost someone to suicide. [Obscenities deleted for this forum, if you care to continue to spew this type of invective, I’ll be happy to see you in the pit]
As to the OP, if the only way to get in is to be gay, then I am opposed to this school just as I am to any public school that discriminates based on inherent characteristics. I see the comparisons to fine art/science schools as being totally inapposite. Would anyone support a school for just white kids, so long as the white kids volunteer to go there? I hope not. This is the same thing. I recognize that the gay kids may face extra challenges in school, but the solution is to protect them, and all children, in the normal schools, not shuttle them off to gay school.
Ok, time to add a bit of what I know about the Harvey Milk School, largely culled from several articles that have run about its prior, smaller incarnation, plus some familiarity with it from personal contacts there. (A particularly lengthy one ran in the New York Times magazine a few years ago.)
First, the program was not designed for the average gay kid who can function, albeit with variants of the usual adolescent discomfort, at a regular high school. The kids in Harvey Milk were the kids who really were under threat - gender-atypical (butch girls, femme boys), those who were kicked out from their homes, that sort of thing. The kids were in this school because there was no other place for them to go within the New York City public school system. Quite a number of the kids had been picked up from the Port Authority or other places known for prostitution. And in many cases, that really was their other option.
The school is operated by the Hetrick-Martin Institute (www.hmi.org), which states that “Youth services are provided in a non-judgmental manner and are designed to build on a young person’s capacity so they can return to the community of their choice.” That’s the key - to the extent a kid can return to his or her community, HMI encourages it. I’m hopeful that this expansion will turn out not to be needed in a few years; but given the population they’re serving, I’m also not surprised that they need to grow.
- About discrimination. I follow education issues as the editor of a specialty journal on education law. One thing that folks are discovering is that separate is sometimes quite a bit better than equal - depending on the kid. In a place with huge numbers of educational options, like New York with its one million public school children, I think targeted schools like Harvey Milk are a great idea. I wouldn’t want such specialty schools to be the only choice, but in a community large enough to support diverse options as many options as possible should be available. And should get public support so all can attend the kind of schools that are the best fit.
We are learning that boys and girls learn rather differently - and certainly at some ages separating them appears to be not a bad thought. I’m not persuaded by the idea that separation doesn’t adequately prepare a kid for life - this is sort of thing that’s commonly asserted without much research to support it (I’m willing to be corrected if there is).
And, given what we know about the actual dynamics of many current schools (in which students recreate a segregation as rigid as a Klansman’s dream), I’m not sure we’re really losing that much, anyway.
Such a minor amount of tax dollars are spent on schools for gay kids that I don’t think it should be an issue, at all. Besides, these kids are going to have to go to school somewhere. Tax dollars will be spent no matter where they go, why do people care if they choose to be in a safe environment with people of the same sexual orientation?
Private schools are a hassle because what if a kid wants to go to a school like that and can’t afford it? Scholarships and vouchers aren’t going to fix problems.
The argument about it being a safe haven isn’t foolish. At all. What’s foolish is to say that it doesn’t matter if gay kids don’t feel safe in their own school. What then?
Until homosexuals would be able to go to school in the open and not suffer through any sort of torment or homophobia, I don’t think it’s all too crazy if they want to go to different schools. Yeah, I don’t like the idea. But it’s their choice, not mine.
And of course rich kids go to schools because their parents have more money and ESL kids go to school for special help and gifted kids go to school for harder programs, but it’s still segregation. Do you guys think segregation is always wrong?
I don’t see posts here speaking out against all-boys schools. Or all girls-schools. I don’t see the issue here?
I also agree that more energy needs to be focused on the kids who are giving them a hard time, but it’s also not so easy. It isn’t as if only a select group of people make gay jokes or pick on gay kids; in my town which is actually really progressive, it’s nearly everybody. Things aren’t going to change overnight, and for the time being, why not let them segregate themselves if they do it by their own will for reasons that they think will help them?
Obviously they’ll still go out into the world and encounter homophobia; but they could also learn to deal with it better when it happens. For instance, they could develop a support system of friends and also learn that there are millions of others like them and gain confidence and all that jazz.
I don’t consider segregation a long term solution for anything, ever. But until conditions improve for them, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong if they make the choice for themselves with their own best interest at heart. Forgive my double post.
Gee the Hetrick-Martin Institute sounds like a fine idea for a PRIVATE school. Especially one built by charity and run on donations made in a glorious pathos appeal to the masses. But it’s not a good idea for PUBLIC funds. Lots of kids fall through the cracks due to irresponsible parenting. Using taxpayer funds for a special school that only helps the gay abandoned children is discrimination (reverse discrimination, but discrimination none-the-less). Now, if private (charitable) institutions were to fund these schools and cover the kids tuition then that is a different story.
So, I still say as a PRIVATE School - okay. As a PUBLIC school - not with my tax dollars! I want to spend MY HARD EARNED INCOME on MY CHILDREN, not on someone else’s kids.
Jeepers kids make fun of each other for lots of reasons, their names, their weight, speech impediments, physical deformities, their favorite sport’s team. If you want to send your child to a special school for any of the above - fine, but pay for it yourself.
By the way not just rich kids go to private schools. Many religious families make great sacrifices to send their kids to private schools. It’s called taking responsibility for what they believe in. Instead of expecting the neighbors to pick up the tab.
Am I the only one wondering what the hell this means? Diversity = melting pot. Same damn thing. A school with students of many backgrounds and orientations is diverse, and it is a melting pot. You’ve got your buzzwords or something confused.
Diversity is a wonderful thing. But it appears that saying this is segregation in the sense that African-American students were segregated 50 years ago is misleading, so perhaps we shouldn’t deal with the issue in such (aww crap, this isn’t a pun) black and white terms.
I don’t like in NYC - I live in the suburbs - but at my high school, resources were provided for this sort of thing. I think that sort of stuff - you know, videos, talks about tolerance - are even more common now. If my experience is a guide, they do jack squat. Well-intentioned stuff, to be sure, but watching a video doesn’t make you more tolerant. What kind of resource allocating are we talking about here? I’m not opposed to that in principle, I’m just asking what you do, and how you make it work.
By the way, I went to a public high school, and you’ll find fewer diverse places on Earth. I could’ve counted the black kids on one hand, and there were maybe two dozen Asians (the whole contintent). Everybody else was white, and virtually all the white kids were either Jewish or Catholic. Not New York City, I know. But my point is that segregation still exists anyway, and it’s not this school that’s causing it. Taken as a whole, NYC is certainly the world’s largest hodgepodge of cultures and such, but it’s divided up into a lot of smaller, more homogenous sections.
Gee. Being gay in high school left me a target by everyone which made me leave and get my diploma through alternate means.
Things haven’t changed too much.
Here in Corvallis, the openly gay teen who was the co-president of the gay straight alliance was jumped and had teeth beaten out in 1997.
Diversity is celebrated, as long as it isn’t a diversity of gender identity or sexuality difference.
Your “hard earned income” is always paying for other people’s kids.
It strikes me it is the kids who are getting it that are your real issue.
What your username says: ummm… yeahh…
:rolleyes:
If you don’t want your tax dollars going to anyone else’s kids, either petition the government to stop spending everyone’s tax dollars (including those of families whose children, if they have any, do not to do public school) on public school or, alternately, move to a different country. You are ALREADY paying for everyone else’s kids to be educated by the public school system in whatever city/state you live in.
This thread is turning into another “if we could save one child it will be worth it” discussion.
I, and every other person on the planet have been hassled and picked on at school. It is one of life’s lessons to DEAL with it. The more you are portrayed as an outsider the more you will be picked on. I suffered through a number of bullies in HS, not because I wouldn’t defend myself, but because others wouldn’t. I don’t regret a few fat lips in the pursuit of justice but I would have preferred the “victim” learned to deal with people better.
By segregating someone, for any reason, you are highlighting that person as being different. That mindset is bad, both for the person, and society at large. The school system is creating a victim mentality for the student. This is in a society which is, IMO, becoming more tolerant of everything human.
NYC is going to flush millions of dollars down the drain in an effort to single out gay’s as victims. I predict that they will succeed in making them victims above and beyond any prejudice that already exists.
This is like using lynching to argue against Brown v. Board of Education.
Regards,
Shodan
I am in favor of the school. I am not opposed to separate but equal when it has a rational logical basis (as opposed to bigotry) as in the examples many have brought up involving single-gender schools.
And I don’t see where is this great expenditure of money people talk about - these same kids have to be educated somewhere anyway. I guess you could argue that it is less cost efficient to educate them in a smaller school, but that would be a small difference. Certainly if you compare it to the alternative cost of making the entire school system safe for gay kids (possibly an impossible task in any event) you are likely talking about an astronomically more expensive project.
This is absurd and impossible. The only thing I can think of that you might be getting confused with was the long struggle by an all-Chasidic village to establish their own school district, so as to establish a special-ed program for handicapped children. (USSC decision here).
Looking at the arguments against this school in this thread, it’s hard not to conclude that some posters are unaware of the severity of the problem.
The problem isn’t “kids being picked on.” This is not the Beaver coming home to Ward and June because some bully stole his lunch money. We’re talking assault, possibly resulting in death.
I’m reading the aforementioned Survival Guide now. It tells you what to do if you get hit – how to hit back, how to protect yourself. It warns you what to do if the principal or the police refuse to act, or tell you “to stop being gay.” It tells you how to survive if your parents toss you out for being gay. It has information and advice from people who’ve been through these things, teachers who’ve had to deal with them, and lawyers who’ve had to take the cases.
Let’s be clear about this: New York is a city of millions, and there are 100 places in this school. It isn’t going to go to some gay kid with loving parents who wants to study culinary arts. It’s going to go to those whose only options are “drop out or die.” Is anyone really against giving these kids a chance?