Learning Through Experience: What Graduates Gained by Attending Desegregated High Schools

In this article, we discuss one of the central findings from our study of the long-term impact of school desegregation on adult graduates of racially mixed high schools: what graduates said about the impact of their schooling experiences on their current understandings about race, and on their lives in a racially diverse society. Of the 242 graduates we interviewed, nearly all said that their high school experiences left them more prepared for life in a racially diverse society than they otherwise would be. In addition, every one of the graduates interviewed said that their high school experiences left them with a deeper understanding of people of other backgrounds and an increased sense of comfort in interracial settings. Many of these graduates stressed the importance of their daily experiences of negotiating race in high school as one of the most challenging yet rewarding aspects of their education. These lessons, they observed, could not be gained through multicultural curricula or student exchange programs; rather, such insights, they believed, could only be learned by the daily experience of attending racially diverse schools. In this way, the experiences of these graduates speak to the need to reconsider our national retreat from policies designed to foster diversity in public schools.

Notes

1. Our study, entitled “Understanding Race and Education,” was funded by the Spencer Foundation, the Joyce Foundation and the Ford Foundation. We are grateful to these foundations for their support, but the views expressed in this article are our own, based on our analysis and findings.

2. By “racially mixed,” we mean between 40% and 75% of any one race, and no more than 25% of the racial balance of the city or town for any one race.