Bridging Two Worlds

Bussing of schoolchildren to bring about integration is one of the most controversial issues in the civil rights debate. Nevertheless, suburban school districts in several metropolitan areas in the U.S. this fall have accepted Negro students bussed out from their core cities. The results so far add up to a remarkable bridging of the worlds of two kinds of children.

In Boston, buses are carrying 220 Negro children of all grades from the Roxbury and Dorchester sections into 27 schools in seven suburbs. Starting a two-year experiment in bussing, Hartford, Conn., is sending 265 grammar-school pupils from its Negro neighborhoods into fivesuburban schools.

Irondequoit, an affluent suburb of Rochester, N.Y., has taken 50 first-and second-graders from the city's Negro areas. In Los Angeles, 310 Negroes from first grade to high school have been transplanted daily into such upper-class neighborhoods as Bel Air. Cincinnati is bussing 100 city Negroes out of their neighborhoods, including some into its suburban perimeter.

Seeing a Cafeteria. The children, both white and black, seem to have benefited. Most of the Negroes chosen for the experiment are from good homes and have parents who are eager to enlarge their children's horizons. Initial studies suggest that the children make above-average improvement in their new schools. "The teaching here is so much better and the classes are small," says Roxbury's Lana Dabney, 16, of Brookline High School.

The older children at first marvel at such hitherto unknown educational luxuries as swimming pools, well-equipped gyms and driver-training courses. Tots find the suburban facilities wonderful but a bit scary. One third-grade boy looked into the big cafeteria in West Hartford's King Philip School and refused to walk in. "I'm not hungry," he protested. Coaxed inside by a white classmate, he ate with gusto; he had only hesitated because he had never seen a cafeteria before.

In grade school, as one suburban Cincinnati teacher puts it, "kids at this age are still just kids to each other." Friendships are quickly and easily formed, and some white children eagerly wait outside school each morning until the bus from the city arrives. In high school, white children tend to be more reserved in their welcome, and some shrug off the presence of newcomers with such noncommittal phrases as "they don't bother anybody." On all levels, there is occasional tension. A Negro girl in a Cincinnati suburb complained that white girls pulled her hair and asked: "Is that a wig?" When a Rochester Negro boy pulled off his shirt to play ball, a white classmate remarked on the fact that he was "black all over."

Risky Generalizations. Logistics and the high cost of transporting the Negro children five days a week--$25 monthly per child, for example, in Los Angeles--limit the scope of such programs. At most, says Boston's Project Director Joseph Killory, no more than 3,000 of the city's 24,000 Negro students could be shifted to suburban schools. Yet many of those involved--white and black--consider it an eye-opening experience.

"The kids who were against it at first changed their minds very quickly," says Karen Bulgar, a white Wellesley High senior. Brookline Teacher Robert McCarthy concedes that "the big misconception we had was that the Negro students would all be alike--yet it is impossible to make generalizations about them." That is precisely the gain seen by a Negro mother in Rochester, who says: "Now Irondequoit people can see that some of us are good learners, some not so good, some shy, some full of confidence--just as is true for other people."

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