The Joys of Motherhood

In 1966 I became part of New York City's School busing program. The challenge was that students from neighborhoods such as mind, the predominantly African-American Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn would attend schools in neighborhoods such as, at that time, the predominantly white Flatbush section of Brooklyn. This program was to solve some of the inequities and create a sense of desegregation in the inner city schools. From six to seventh grade, I would travel on the yellow school bus that would pick me up in my neighborhood and travel what felt like an eternity to my new school. The pick up would include cruising through various areas of Bed-Stuy collecting other African-American and a few Latino children to be transported to our various destinations throughout the Flatbush area. We often joked among ourselves as the bus approached the Fulton Street L, that we were crossing the tracks mimicking the Mason-Dixon line that separated the north from the south. Please do

As a retired New York City educator, every once in a while someone will ask me what is my perception of the failings of the New York City school system. Well,I believe it's a number of things. First of all, when people ask what's wrong with the school system,they often are really asking why are the inner-city kids not progressing as they should and displaying such hostile behavior.Why are these students so out of touch with education, they wonder.But what they really mean is, what's wrong with the African-American, African Caribbean and Latino students who comprise the majority of the inner-city schools. Having been an African-American student myself and then becoming a teacher, I say let's look at the history that is so very much a part of us and how that history reflects what it means for black and brown people today transitioning from being considered subhuman to enslavement, to Jim crow/segregation,lynchings and poverty.Let's look at the subliminal