My Response to POLJ’s Post on the Educational Benefits of Integration

In POLJ’s guest post on The Kvetcher, POLJ noted that, “DK is a fan of all things homogeneous.� While POLJ was hopefully joking, I must counter that this is hardly the case. Rather, I am dubious of the supposedly far superior benefits of diversity.

While POLJ disputes Mr. Furman’s notion of integration for social purposes, he did not really explain how his vision is substantially different. Instead, he noted,

“In college I got to know many folks of different colors and creeds. But for the most part my close friends were Jewish. When I started into college politics, I was forced to work with different people. By working with them for long hours, like Furman did on his basketball team, I got to know these people better. I learned about Pilipino customs (and of that particular spelling because there is no “F� sound in the Pilipino language), Latino music and food, Black American holidays and even some Christian stuff. Because I was forced into a situation that I didn’t know before, I learned more.�

That’s nice, but it is hardly worth busing a few lucky chosen middle class kids across town to a predominantly “inner city� school, as wonderful an opportunity as that might seem to them and their families. What would be better is learning about other cultures in our schools, and reinstituting geography, as well as seriously teaching foreign languages at an early age. That’s real education.

All too often, from what I have seen, we Americans place more value on socialization than education when it comes to other cultures, in part because we view race itself as the only real barrier between peoples to overcome, and in part, because we don’t see value in other civilizations. Which is really dangerous, since they own more and more of our ever-increasing national debt. But I would prefer my kid to know many languages. I have more faith that he would be able to appreciate, say, French culture and even French people, much better if he knew the French language fluently, than if he had a couple of kids in his class of French descent. I had a friend of French descent as a kid. But surprisingly, it just doesn’t help me get around Paris, nor does it help me understand the difference between French colonialism and British colonialism.

We have to ask ourselves what is important. POLJ says he prefers education to socialization. But it still looks a lot more like socialization to me. It looks like a Benetton commercial. I prefer real education about others. Curriculum, languages, tests…but hey, I’m just a reactionary.

I will say this. POLJ wrote about growing up in a mostly Jewish school. I grew up in a school with almost no Jews. It was quite…challenging. When I went to a magnet arts school, it was better, because it was more diverse. But not because it was educationally diverse, but rather, because I didn’t feel so strange. In the end, I would certainly have preferred a diverse school with more Jews than a homogenous school with almost no Jews.

But quite frankly, I don’t think this is really about education at all. I think a lot of Jews who prefer “diversity,� aren’t really concerned about either education or socialization. And we are fooling ourselves about what we claim we want, and declining to be honest about what we are actually afraid of. And we are not prodding this country towards a good place when we are really motivated not by humanitarianism, but by secret fears.

How can we craft reasonable and strategically sound communal policies if we aren’t honest about what is really motivating us?