New York High Schools

[dick_nyc]

ArcaMax Weird News for Richard

Tuesday July 29, 2003 HOMOSEXUAL HIGH SCHOOL IN NEW YORK CITY

New York City is planning to open a high school for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students, the New York Post reports. Operating for two decades as a small alternative program with just two classrooms, the new Harvey Milk High School officially is scheduled to open in September as a public school with 100 students. The school is undergoing a $3.2 million in city-funded renovation approved by the 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. It will emphasize English, math programs, computer technology, arts and a culinary program.

[TotallyOz]

This got lots of attention yesterday on CNN. I am thrilled at the new school. That center has been doing great work in the city of NY for years. I am happy the city finally jumped on board.

[Rick Munroe]

Wouldn't it be better to use the money to teach tolerance (for lack of a better word) toward gay, lesbian, bi and transgender students (and toward anyone who is "different")? If we stop the hate and bigotry, there's no need to segregate.

[TotallyOz]

http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/07/28/gay.school.ap/index.html

 

Above is the CNN article.

 

Rick, I agree with you on that. However, I am glad that this is an alternative. If I were 15 and had a choice, I think I would want to give the school a try. In a perfect world, it would not be needed. But, I still remember my school days of being called sissy, faggot, etc. So, I would definitely be one of those enrolled.

 

And, for those of you that ask, I do pay taxes and am glad my tax dollar is supporting this.

[dick_nyc]

While I mainly agree with you, my sympathies lie with those students who do not fit in. These students deserve a chance to get a good education while the schools try to socially engineer tolerance and diversity. No child deserves to be an experiment which could endanger the live and safety of that child.

[Rick Munroe]

>I still remember my school days of

>being called sissy, faggot, etc. So, I would definitely be

>one of those enrolled.

 

You're right; so do I and so would I. I remember my grades slipping one year (10th grade) when I was getting picked on by some seniors, and no teacher wanted to get involved. I guess I was just hoping things would have changed by now (you know, 5 years later ), but change is coming very slowly. Yes, the gay school is a good thing.

[TotallyOz]

Quick Story:

 

Picture this: The Deep South. Bible Belt. A young 7th Grader in school with a bunch of red necks. 7th - 12th in one building. Walking down the halls a sissy 7th grader's books are knocked out of his hands. Tears whelp up in his eyes. The 9th grader who did it said words like sissy and faggot. Everyone laughs.

 

Then, high school 11th Grade Quarterback steps in. Takes the 9th Grader up and beats the shit out of him. 9th Graders friends see this. 11th Grader says "if anyone ever lays a hand on him again, I'll kill you." Word spread fast. 11th Grader was not suspended as he was quarterback of the football team and it was football season. Word had it that the little 7th Grader's sister was Quarterback's sister's best friend. Therefore, for 2 years, no one ever touched or laid a hand on 7th Grader.

 

And now the rest of the story: The summer before, Quarterback and 7th Grader were swimming in pool one day and one thing led to another and 7th Grader was given an 8 inch gift. They remained lovers for 4 years until Quarterback left to join the Air Force. Today, Quarterback is married with 3 kids. 7th Grader is thinking back to his junior high savior and saying, "I am so glad they are offering an alternative for gays and lesbians in NYC." That is my story and I'm sticking with it.

 

And to all a good night.

[Will]

Like Rick Munroe, I'm of two minds about this. After a lot of hassle and start-up problelms, several years ago a gay friend of mine succeeded in forming a Gay/Straight Alliance in the local high school. It was very succesful, despite the fact that many of the teachers were unfriendly, to say nothing of some of the students. Despite the fact that this is a small town (ca. 10,000), the local high school has an extremely diverse population. There are three large groups. One is composed of rural white kids who live on farms and would probably qualify as "rednecks." Another group of students, both African American and white, live in town in middle-class, educated, professional families. The third, also racially mixed, are poor and working-class kids who are on the margins in every way.

 

Whatever their background, all these kids know that there are gay men and lesbians in the world. They see them on television, in the movies, and everywhere else they look. Even so, they may not like them, and they may not know how to talk with and about them.

 

Thus the Gay/Straight Alliance had the effect of meliorating bigotry and promoting a lot of understanding among teenage peers. It did not eliminate intolerance, nor did it prevent hurtful incidents. It was a great idea, and I think that public school districts should initiate similar programs in tolerance, mutual understanding, and acceptance. We live in an increasingly diverse nation, but acceptance and understanding don't always come along, hand in glove, with perceptions of difference.

 

For that very reason, it is naive to think that you can "buy" homophobia out of business. Thus, there are -- and may always be -- kids who get very, very damaged at school as well as at home. If big school systems like New York can offer a safe haven for these kids, where their intellectual development won't be hampered by steady-state psychological terror, as it was for so many of us (including me), I think it's great.

 

Frankly, I'm less concerned about eliminating prejudice than I am about preventing gay people of all ages from killing themselves. A gay high school, I suspect, would be very life-enhancing for its students. So I'm all for it.

[Guest fukamarine]

>Wouldn't it be better to use the money to teach tolerance

>(for lack of a better word) toward gay, lesbian, bi and

>transgender students (and toward anyone who is "different")?

>If we stop the hate and bigotry, there's no need to

>segregate.

 

I agree with Rick that I would rather see tolerance taught - why not as a seperate subject - than try to circumvent the issue by opening a gay high school. Such a school screams out loud that we have failed miserably as a society.

 

One of the biggest problems I see with a seperate school is that many gays have their biggest hurdle in coming out to their parents. So how will they deal with telling their parents they want to enroll in a separate school?

 

Could be dicey!

 

 

fukamarine

[Flower]

> I remember my grades

>slipping one year (10th grade) when I was getting picked on by

>some seniors, and no teacher wanted to get involved.

 

x( Well if Flower had been there, he'd have sued the bastards (seniors and the school) for ya--we'd have kicked butt, pumpkin :o

[Flower]

Very nice story despite the trademark infringement to Paul Harvey and Flower :7 ;-) :+

[Flower]

I see benifits to the school but agree with FAM about social engineering and not benifiting the kids that can't come out that early. Also agree with Rick that education and tolerance training the ultimate solution, but that takes a long time--the school is now.

 

The Supreme Court found that in the segregation era, so called "separate but equal" schools were anything but equal. I agree and wonder how this new gay school will fare in comparison to the rest?

 

As an aside, and certainly not a pivitol question, is what about sports and other competitions? If they have a team(s), will the other teams be out to get the fags? --or be so afraid of losing to the fags that they go way beyond fair sportsmanship in their efforts to win? Not sure that isolation is the best solution nor will it produce the best adjustment to a society that is essentially straight.

 

Lots of questions and not a lot of answers that I can see at this point.

 

The one thing it iseems to be doing, however, is creating conversation about the problem and possibly raising the awareness of people in general, which gets us back to tolerance training" :+

[Guest DevonSFescort]

It's not a panacea and is definitely not a substitute for gay/straight alliances and for continuing to press the schools to promote tolerance (starting first and foremost with getting the faculty and administration on board) and to provide a safe learning environment for all their stutents. What's more, there's no way it can possibly benefit more than a fraction of the students who might need it.

 

But if schools can experiment with single-sex classrooms surely they can experiment with this. And maybe just knowing that it's there will give hope and a certain amount of strength to gay kids who are having a tough time in other schools, just as knowing San Francisco's there has given hope to many gay men and lesbians who don't live here and may never even visit. Sometimes knowing that there's "a place for us" can give you the courage to start carving out a place for yourself.

 

I came out while I was still in high school back in Houston and remember a discussion about this school when it was a two-room classroom at the youth group I went to. (This was not a group at my school; kids from all over Houston went, though not very many, and it was hosted by the Unitarian Church, which was afraid to let us do any promotion for fear of gay-bashings and of legal persecution for "promoting" sodomy, which was, of course, illegal.) Interestingly, most of us, while we thought the school was a good thing, only gave it two cheers and didn't necessarily want to go there ourselves, and many spoke of not wanting to be ghettoized away from their straight peers, despite whatever they'd been through at their own schools. But the very idea that a school system was even capable of being that supportive seemed refreshing. It still does, though I am truly amazed at how much progress there's been in the schools over the last decade, though only on a regional and case-by-case basis.

[Guest DevonSFescort]

>I came out while I was still in high school back in Houston

>and remember a discussion about this school when it was a

>two-room classroom at the youth group I went to.

 

Just so we're clear, since that wasn't: we had a discussion at the youth group I went to about this school when it was a two-room classroom. The school was NOT a two-room classroom at the youth group I went to. :7