NYC's Gay High School

This has been a great conversation to follow. It is always a neat thing to "see" people with open minds, sharing information and forming opinions.

I would like to throw in: Mr Gruby had the luxury of disclosing his sexuality. Many students don't. By appearance or manner or clothing choices, or dating (or not dating), some students are 'outed'.

Additionally, Columbine scenarios figure in. The boys who perpetrated Columbine were routinely hounded--and referred to as gay. These spectres, added to sozobe's assertions, make Milk appealing to me.

I would also say that re: suicide rates of homosexual teens. Many of them will never have their sexual identity crisis as any part of statistics--because the very reason they committed suicide was they couldn't admit to themselves--much less anyone else--that they were gay.

My favorite nephew (15 yrs old)--a big, strapping boy--plays football, looks very masculine... Has never had a gf. Loves to read--is a sensitive boy. One of the best people I know. Family is making noise because they think he may be gay... My daughter says girls at school question her if her cousin is gay, because of no girlfriends... Football coaches have told his parents He's not motivated on the football field... What would he think if he knew what was being said? What if he is having gender issues? The pressure on kids this age is horrific enough without such crap.

Excellent points, Sofia.

Excellent points indeed. While I really never had the inclination to go Columbine on anyone, I did get the "you're gay" thing a fair bit in high school, and even in university (one man tried to convince a lass I wanted to date that I was gay, used the whole 'my gaydar is going off' argument). I was always shy and over-sensitive growing up, despite a boisterous exterior, especially when it came to dating. I think I agree with soz on this one, in that I am not jumping up and down declaring a new revolution for gay youth with the school, but just thinking, what the heck, it couldn't hurt.

Maybe I lead a sheltered life or maybe times were different and if you were 'Gay' you did not go around advertising it. I did have one friend who had effeminate mannerisms. However, he always had a girl friend, in fact many of the girls were after him. He eventually did a stint in the marine corp., got married and had children. We lost track of him and many years later someone met him in San Francisco and found out That he had left his wife and children and come out of the closet.

Deaf children have very real, very measurably different educational needs, from learning a completely different language to learning how to deal with being deaf in a world where sound is often used to convey information (the conventional school being part of that world). Sexual orientation has nothing to do with one's ability to learn or one's educational needs. As with the black school analogy, this one doesn't work for me. Deaf students are not being sheltered from the hostility of others, they are being placed in schools that recognize their special educational needs and teach them the special skills they need to learn as deaf persons.

au, that's exactly why I think it's so important that gays and lesbians feel able to come out of the closet early on -- well, one of several reasons, anyway. Those who try to deny it to the point of getting married and having kids will just hurt that many more people.

Scrat, lesse if I can break this down:

1.) Black charter school analogy. I brought that up to address one specific point -- whether HMS would be the thin edge of the wedge, and while it was fine by itself, it would set a dangerous precedent. Black charter schools have been around for a good long while, and have not started (that I know of) any national trend toward black children refusing to put up with the conditions in mainstream (unsegregated) schools.

2.) Deaf schools analogy. I brought that up to address one specific point -- whether HMS would do its students a disservice by making it more difficult to function in an unsegregated world once they graduated. Deaf children have the choice between going to an all-Deaf school, or a mainstream school with hearing children. Their specific educational needs are met in the mainstream schools, as per the ADA -- they are provided with interpreters, etc.

There ARE social issues with many parallels to the gay experience, as has been noted by many gay and deaf activists. A larger percentage of deaf people are gay or lesbian than the general population, and there has been a lot of speculation (I'm not sure of studies) that shows that the parallels and understanding of each others' experience is part of that. I can find a NYT Magazine article that goes into those parallels further.

Some of the parallels include that your family is generally of a different culture than you are (as opposed to black people, for example); your "condition" has historically been considered something negative, to be fixed, while you see it as something positive, to be celebrated; your culture is made up of your peers and older and more experienced non-relations, rather than your relatives, etc.

You say, "Deaf students are being sheltered from the hostility of others," which in context I assume is a typo, but is very true. Deaf kids in mainstream environments get harrassed plenty, in active and passive ways. Primarily, they have a difficult time communicating with their hearing peers, and so are relegated to outcast status -- they may follow along in class just fine, but they're left out at the lunch table, at recess, at after-school events and parties. They feel isolated and often have serious self-esteem issues.

That is a language and culture thing, not just a disability thing.

The people who went through those isolating and humiliating mainstream experiences often grow up to be adults with low self-esteem and negligible social skills. They often blame hearing people for their plight, and turn to the all-deaf environment whenever they can. (These were the ones who sneered at me when I first started learning sign and becoming part of Deaf culture.)

By contrast, the people who went to all-Deaf schools tend to have have much healthier self-image and self-confidence, and much better social skills. They often become leaders in the community, and are at ease with either deaf or hearing people. (These are the ones who were patient with me, laughed at my blunders and said, "Don't worry, you'll get it.")

So while there are certainly educational needs specific to deaf kids that can not be ascribed to gay and lesbian kids, in terms of the larger point -- whether segregation would impede these kids' chances at functioning in the "larger" world after graduation -- I think there are instructive parallels.

IMO a step in the wrong direction. Don't see how gays will gain acceptance by segregation.

I can confirm this for the case of yet another outsider minority; one that doesn't usually make any headlines: girl nerds. When I was studying physics, about 15% of my fellow students were women. More than half of these had gone to girls-only high schools even though at least 95% of all high schools are co-ed in Bavaria. It turned out that the share of girls who chose advanced science classes in these schools was about the same as the share of guys who take them in "normal" high schools, but much fewer girls in normal high schools are taking them.

I was very surprised by this fact because a) I don't like schools segregated by sex on principle, and b) because teachers in German high schools go out of their way to avoid nudging students towards certain subjects based on gender. They seem to be quite good at it as far as I have experienced -- I never saw a girl being given a hard time because she specialized in math and natural sciences towards the end of high schools. Nevertheless girls in regular high schools obviously felt discouraged from taking advanced science classes when they weren't in girls - only - schools.

I don't want to oversell the parallel with gays, but it does go to show two things: 1) Contrary to intuition, segregation can benefit students. 2) The minority in question is more competent than the mainstream majority at deciding whether to segregate or not. More generally, I believe that segregation didn't get its bad name because it is itself so bad -- it's because of legislation, mainly in the pre-1960s South, that enforced segregation on unwilling bus companies, schools, and other public institutions. I think it's important to distinguish this mandatory segregation from the kind of segregation that happens when people self-select on a voluntary basis.

-- Thomas

Fallacy: Argument from lack of imagination. --T

Thomas- Your experience with female physics students reinforces what I have read on numerous occasions. Apparently, many girls become intimidated when they have to share a classroom with boys in those subjects that are predominantly taken by males..........math, the hard sciences. When they are surrounded by other females, there is less pressure on them, and they are able to succeed.

Phoenix32890



That is by no means true in today's society. Women's lib put an end to that.

Sozobe - Once again you offer some very good comments. I don't agree with your most recent comments, but that doesn't mean I miss the fact that you've given this lots of thought.

Regards,
Scrat

Really.. hmmm interesting. So we should build seperate schools for fat kids, nerds, kids with braces,etc. Everyone who was ever picked on should have their own school.

People get picked on,it's part of life. Deal with it.

Sure! And one legitimate way to "deal with it" is for the picked-on to leave mainstream schools and start up their own thing. That's all I'm saying. My point regarding your post was that just because you (or I, or even the most intelligent person in the world) can't see exactly how this creates a net benefit, it doesn't follow that no such benefit exists. This is for the picked-on to judge, not for us.

-- T.

Thomas - I think if a group of parents wants to start up a safe-haven school that's fine, but I think that if public schools instead set up a separate facility for the predators it would send a much more powerful message.

And here's a prediction for you: Some kids at Harvey Milk School will make fun of some of the other kids there. Some of the kids at HMS will be unhappy, feel picked on, etc.. When that happens, what do we do then?

... at the cost, I believe, of ending up with an empty facility. As long as parents have some choice about where to send their children, how many parents do you expect to send their child to the O.J. Simpson School for insufferable Bullies you appear to be proposing?


"We" will do nothing -- individual students will. There are several options.

1) They decide that while being picked on still sucks, the abuse they're getting is a lot milder than the homophobia they're experiencing at other schools. Given that, they either try to resove it by talking to each other, getting teachers to inhibit abuse, or just suffer in silence. That's what I expect to be the most probable scenario, but I could be wrong of course.

2) Sufficiently many pupils feel they'd be better off leaving the school, in order to join another, existing one or to start up a new one. I see no built-in limit as to how small such schools can get, so I don't see what the problem is with this option. (If there was such a limit, the extreme case of a small school -- home schooling -- couldn't be practical.)

Greetings

-- Thomas

Thomas - I would not allow students to "opt" into a "bullies" facility, I would have the school system send them there if their behavior warranted it. (Their parents could opt them out of the public system if they didn't like it.)

I'm all for school choice, but I can't help feeling that spending $3.2M on a school for a very small number of children effectively reduces the choices that most students in that system will have. It may be an idea with some merit, but I don't think the theoretical gains justify the cost, and I suspect that a lot of NYC parents/voters will make their displeasure about this use of their money known at the next elections there.

But we don't know what the cost of starting up this school was! If a building needs renovation, it needs renovation no matter how you use it afterwards. This 3.2 million figure tells us how much has been spent on this building, but it doesn't tell us how much the city had to invest because a school was being started up in it. All we know is that the relevant figure is lower -- we don't know how much lower. But typical New York voters won't bother distinguishing between total cost and marginal cost, so they will make their displeasure known anyway.

-- Thomas

That would be a valid argument if we didn't know that they intend to make THIS school a GLBT school. That means that the money was spent to renovate a facility that will now be used for THAT purpose. Stating that it had to be renovated anyway doesn't wash since any OTHER purpose for which it might have been used is a non-issue now that we know what it WILL be used for.

Bump