I will concede it probably is costing us some financial price, but there is a moral cost as well. I know that Arlington was very brave in the late ’60s, when it was one of the original communities that voted to receive Metco students. This was during the Civil Rights era. While we may not have been the “South,” the North had its own type of segregation.
Growing up in Arlington, I saw that there was barely a person of color — they stopped at the Cambridge and West Medford lines. Yes, Arlington had red-lining, and it took many years of courageous work of a small group of people to stop that. It took much longer to change curriculum to include black history and even longer, as it continues today, to make inroads to change cultural bias
Without our Metco students, our own students’ education would be deficient in preparing them for their adult years.
Furthermore, our state, let alone our country, depends upon all of us finally overcoming race issues and cultural bias.
Please add your voice to the public discussion and to your elected school officials.
This viewpoint was published Thursday, March 14, 2014.
Your comments are welcome at the link below.
