Riding the School Bus

3003 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The importance of multicultural education in today's society

Riding the School Bus

In the United States, millions upon millions of children attend public schooling. These millions of children come from every background; African American, Caucasian, Asian, Latin, etc. All of these ethnicities go to our public schools. Not only are children categorized into different ethnic groups, but also economic groups. Children from low, middle, and high-income families all attend public schooling. Because of all these societal groups going to school together, public schooling can truly be characterized as an engine for multicultural education. However, due to barriers within society (e.g. racial discrimination and economic barriers and stereotypes), some students are not being taught in a multicultural environment. Due to this problem and the importance that most of society places upon multicultural education, school busing takes place. Busing is a very important and controversial method that is practiced to improve multicultural education to those who have had very little, if any, experience with it. Busing is also an engine used to end segregation within our schools. Equality was the reason for the start of busing in the first place. We will discuss the definition of busing and whom it affects. We will discuss the important events that occurred before and after the landmark court case of Brown Vs. The Board of Education, which touched upon the issue of equality. Lastly, we will discuss the pros and cons of school busing.

DEFINITION OF SCHOOL BUSING

When most people think of the word school busing, they get the mental picture of a big yellow school bus. This big, yellow school bus goes out to the towns’ neighborhoods and picks up all the towns’ kids and brings them to school to receive their educations’. On most occasions, they are brought to the nearest school that is usually within their own neighborhood. Technically, this picture is correct, but it is not the same type of busing we will be discussing. The school busing we will be discussing is when a child from one neighborhood is picked up by a bus to attend a school in a totally different (sometimes far away) neighborhood. This is done even when a student lives close to the school within their neighborhood. So the question is, why is there a need for this type of busing and whom does it affect? In order to answer these questions, we must discuss the revolutio...

... middle of paper ...

... are around them. School busing in this country can ease the cultural tensions, but can also flare the tensions. In my opinion, busing is very important. Like we have discussed, busing helps promote multiculturalism. And I believe multiculturalism, at least to me, is very important. I want to be a well-rounded and cultured student. I would like to see more students like that.

WORKS CITED

1. Banks, J. (1999). Goals and Misconceptions. Allyn and Bacon Inc.

Brown V. Board of Education. November 17, 2001. Http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/early-civilrights/brown.html

3.Bruce Allen Murphy. Brown V. Board of Education of Topeka. World Book Online Americas Edition. Http://www.aolsvc.worldbook.aol.com/wbpage/na/ar/co/079300. November 17, 2001.

4. Study: School Segregation Increased During 1990’s. November 30, 2001. Http://fyi.cnn.com/2001/fyi/teachers.ednews/07/18/segregationstudy.ap/

5. Kozol, J. (1991). Savage Inequalities. New York: Crown Publishing Corp.

6. Edward W. Knappman, ed., Great American Trials (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1994) 467.

7. Benjamin Munn Ziegler, ed., Desegregation and the Supreme Court (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1958)

Show More
Related

  • Equal Protection And Public Education

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    In conclusion, the balancing of schools is an ongoing issue of discussion. There are now cases where blacks and Hispanics outnumber whites in school districts such as Detroit. Pasadena also had a similar issue and decided to bus white kids to urban areas until white families began moving out of the district as a counter measure (Green, 2007). Clearly, this issue is still seeking a solution.

    Read More

  • Mendez V Westminster Case Study

    1093 Words  | 3 Pages

    Board of Education was a United States Supreme Court case in 1954 that the court declared state laws to establish separate public schools for black segregated public schools to be unconstitutional. Brown v. Board of Education was filed against the Topeka, Kansas school board by plaintiff Oliver Brown, parent of one of the children that access was denied to Topeka’s none colored schools. Brown claimed that Topeka 's racial segregation violated the Constitution 's Equal Protection Clause because, the city 's black and white schools were not equal to each other. However, the court dismissed and claimed and clarified that segregated public schools were "substantially" equal enough to be constitutional under the Plessy doctrine. After hearing what the court had said to Brown he decided to appeal the Supreme Court. When Chief Justice Earl Warren stepped in the court spoke in an unanimous decision written by Warren himself stating that, racial segregation of children in public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that "no state shall make or enforce any law which shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Also congress noticed that the Amendment did not prohibit integration and that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees equal education to both black and white students. Since the supreme court noticed this issue they had to focus on racial equality and galvanized and developed civil

    Read More

  • Judicial Review of the Warren Court

    1556 Words  | 4 Pages

    The famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka can be used to illustrate when judicial review should be implemented to aid one or a faction in actions that are unconstitutional. In the town of Topeka, Kansas a black third-grader was forced to walk one mile through a switchyard in order to get to her black elementary school, although a white elementary school was only a few blocks away. Her parents attempted to enroll her into the white school but were repeatedly denied. The Brown v. Board of Education case was tried on behalf of the black minority that was the target of racial segregation in public schools.

    Read More

  • The Impacts Of Thurgood Marshall's Contributions To Criminal Rights

    1380 Words  | 3 Pages

    Based on the pronouncements of the court on May 17, 1954, everyone in the courtroom was shocked after it became clear that Marshall was right in his claim about the unconstitutionality of legal segregation in American public schools. Essentially, this court’s decision became a most important turning point in U.S. history because the desegregation case had been won by an African American attorney. Additionally, this became a landmark decision in the sense that it played a big role in the crumbling of the discriminatory laws against African Americans and people of color in major socioeconomic areas, such as employment, education, and housing (Stinson, 2008). Ultimately, Marshall’s legal achievements contributed significantly to the criminal justice field.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Brown V. Board Of Education

    704 Words  | 2 Pages

    Brown v. Board of Education, which was the 1954 Supreme Court decision ordering America’s public schools to be desegregated, has become one of the most time-honored decisions in American constitutional law, and in American history as a whole. Brown has redefined the meaning of equality of opportunity, it established a principle that all children have a constitutional right to attend school without discrimination. With time, the principles of equality that were established, because of the Brown trial, extended beyond desegregation to disability, sexuality, bilingual education, gender, the children of undocumented immigrants, and related issues of civil equality.

    Read More

  • The Little Rock Nine

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    Weisbrot, Robert. Freedom Bound: A History Of America’s Civil Rights Movement. New York: Plume, 1991

    Read More

  • Modernizing Locke’s Natural Rights

    2272 Words  | 5 Pages

    Marshall, Thurgood. “An African American’s Perspective on the Constitution” in Shafritz, [edited by] Jay M., and Lee S. Weinberg. Classics in American Government. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 2006.

    Read More

  • Brown v Board of Education

    2329 Words  | 5 Pages

    The National Center For Public Research. “Brown v Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) (USSC+).” Supreme Court of The United States. 1982 .

    Read More

  • March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom of 1963

    1253 Words  | 3 Pages

    ... Brown v. Board of Education. n.d. 8 May 2014 http://www.pbs.org/jefferson/enlight/brown.htm>. History:

    Read More

  • The Long Struggle for Civil Rights

    2179 Words  | 5 Pages

    Brannen, Daniel, Clay Hanes, and Rebecca Valentine. "Segregation and Desegregation." Supreme Court Drama: Cases That Changed America. (2011): 873-879.

    Read More

  • John Marshall's Effect on the American Judicial System

    1672 Words  | 4 Pages

    Shnayerson, Robert. The Illustrated History of The Supreme Court Of The United States. New York: Abrams, 1986.

    Read More

  • Prejudice and Racial Segregation on Campus

    2292 Words  | 5 Pages

    * Orfield, Gary. Dismantling desegregation : the quit reversal of Brown vs. Board of Education. New York: W.W. norton & Company, 1996.

    Read More

  • Desegregating The Obsolete Busing System at Rio Bueno High School

    1088 Words  | 3 Pages

    Here I sit, in this chronically divided school board meeting, listening to the heated debate about the busing in our troubled school district—particularly in regards to Rio Bueno High School (RBHS). Busing may seem like not such a big issue when you first hear its topic; however, it is much like a melting ice burg exposing its web of issues as its perpetual underbelly reaches the surface. As a guidance counselor here at RBHS, I can tell you that, this busing, desegregation bussing to be more specific, has been a way of integrating other races into school since the Supreme Court Decision in Brown v. Board of Education 40 years ago. Since the 1980’s, segregation levels have increased such that urban schools are now more racially imbalanced than they were prior to the Supreme Court’s 1971 Swann v. Charlotte-Meckelburg Board of Education decision, which legitimated the use of bussing to integrate city school districts with significant residential segregation. Moreover, the gap between Black and White achievement levels, which narrowed from the early 1970s until the late 1980s, has increased during the early 1990s (Douglas, 1996) So, with this evidence, it may seem that even with the implementation of the desegregation busing system, the achievement gap is still growing between races, particularly between Black and Whites and the financial situation and the performance of the schools in this district as a whole are declining.

    Read More

  • Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1)

    2066 Words  | 5 Pages

    Hall, Kermit L, eds. The Oxford guide to United States Supreme Court decisions New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

    Read More

  • The Role of the Supreme Court in the Civil Rights Movement

    1964 Words  | 4 Pages

    John A. Kirk, History Toady volume 52 issue 2, The Long Road to Equality for African-Americans

    Read More

More about Riding the School Bus

Open Document