The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line [Hardcover]

Ms. Susan E. Eaton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1, 2001

METCO, America's longest-running voluntary school desegregation programme, has for 34 years transported black children from Boston's city neighbourhoods to predominantly white suburban schools. In contrast to the infamous violence and rage of forced school transportation within the city in the 1970s, METCO has quietly and calmly promoted school integration. How has this programme affected the lives of its graduates? Would they choose to participate if they had to do it again? Would they place their own children on the bus to the suburbs? Sixty-five METCO graduates vividly recall their own stories in this revealing book. Susan Eaton interviewed programme participants who are now adults, asking them to assess the benefits and hardships of crossing racial and class lines on their way to school. Their answers poignantly show that this type of racial integration is not easy - they struggled to negotiate both black and white worlds, often feeling fully accepted in neither. Even so, nearly all the participants believe the long-term gains outweighed the costs and would choose a similar programme for their own children - though not without conditions and apprehensions. Even as courts and policymakers today are forcing the abandonment of desegregation, educators warn that students are better prepared in schools that reflect our national diversity. This book offers an accessible and moving account of a rare programme that, despite serious challenges, provides a practical remedy for the persistent inequalities in American education.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1966, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity in Boston bused 220 inner-city Boston black children to schools in seven largely white suburban areas. By 2000, METCO was busing 3,100 kids to 32 suburbs. The program's endurance and expansion over 30 turbulent years of race politics is reason enough to make it the focus of detailed analysis. Eaton, a civil rights researcher at Harvard and coauthor of Dismantling Desegregation, chose to study METCO by interviewing former students whose firsthand memories break up Eaton's sometimes tedious sociological prose and give more depth to the analysis. One former student, Sandra, wonders aloud if she'd really gotten a better education in the suburbs, concluding, "other people think I did and that matters." We hear Marie's amazement that white suburbanites thought of her as a "poor little black girl" when her family was actually quite wealthy. Just because you're black, Marie says, "you are assumed to be poor and deprived and low-class and so sort of backward." While there were dissenters, METCO parents generally found busing to be a practical way to get their kids a good education and learn how to cross racial borders. In the end, METCO remains one of the few viable models for voluntary school desegregation. By detailing everything from her method of selecting participants to how she recorded interviews even including a copy of the interview protocol Eaton is bidding for serious attention from the social science community. Still, general readers who are seriously interested in race relations or education reform will want to read this book. (Apr.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Many people know the story of Boston's school busing order that went into effect in 1975 and of the violence that it spawned. Few, however, know about the "other" Boston busing story the one about Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO), founded in 1966 by black parents and activists as a voluntary school desegregation program. In its first year, METCO bused 220 black children to suburban communities. Approximately 4300 students have now completed the program. Eaton (Dismantling Desegregation), a consulting researcher for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, interviewed 65 adult former METCO students, asking what they felt they'd gained and what they'd lost from being in this program. While the majority of those interviewed had both positive and negative experiences, nearly all of them think the program was beneficial overall. METCO is a unique program that would not work everywhere, but it has survived for over 30 years without a lot of fanfare and without the violence often found in desegregation plans. Eaton's focus is on the former students' experiences. She doesn't propose radical changes in the way busing or integration is structured. Yet her research, she feels, may help in the designing of future programs to ease racial tensions in education. A good choice for most public libraries. Terry Christner, Hutchinson P.L., KS
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (April 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300087659
• ISBN-13: 978-0300087659
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,122,191 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A GOOD READ -- OPENS YOUR EYES, April 22, 2004

By 

"fartheralong" (Wallingford, CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line (Hardcover)

I picked up this book at a friend's house and looked in it and was immediately hooked. I don't usually read sociology studies by choice but my friend, who is a sociologist, insisted that this was an insightful book and also a great read. Its a very emotional book in parts that shows you the struggles that African American children went through in order to get a good education. It very powerfully debunks the idea that African AMerican kids and parents do not value education -- read this book and you will see that no community can be depicted that way. Being a teacher in a pretty much all-white school, that recently has had a growing enrollment of African American kids -- who've sometimes seemed hestitant to join in -- I now understand that I DID NOT UNDERSTAND. Since reading this book, I have become a better educator, with more compassion and understanding -- and also an understanding of how much better my school is now that it is growing more racially diverse. SInce reading this book, I've also picked up similar books on this subject. None of them are as good -- but I await this writer's next. If you are a teacher in a school that has a minority of black children -- read this book!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing and accurate portrayal, May 22, 2003

By 

Laurel M. (Missouri, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line (Hardcover)

I was a student who took part in a program exactly like this one, in another city. I got assigned this book in my sociology class and it was so amazing for me to read it because it is exactly what I went through 5 years ago. Also, many of my friends who are black and who went to suburban schools for different reasons said they could relate to this experience. I could not believe it when I read that this author was white, because all along I was reading it and because it was so accurate and real I naturally assumed she must be a black woman. This made the truth and honesty of the book even more amazing. The book would be really good for all teachers, guidance counselor and school principals and white parents to read because it really speaks to the black child's experience in a white school. And when I was a kid in school I could not have put into words some of the struggles but also all the benefits and good things that grew out of my complicated experience. But this puts it into words what so many young people are feeling but also what they think about their experience when they are looking back as grown ups.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Important insights, June 27, 2001

By 

shel99 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Boston Busing Story: What`s Won and Lost Across the Boundary Line (Hardcover)

The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or METCO, is a program that buses students from inner-city neighborhoods of Boston to various suburban districts for part or all of their schooling. Although the stated goal of the program is to provide equal educational opportunities to students living in districts where the schools are regarded as being lower in quality than in the suburbs, it serves another important purpose in promoting racial desegregation. Most of the students that participate in METCO are African-American, and most of the districts that they are bused to are mostly, if not entirely, white.

"The Other Boston Busing Story" is not a statistical study of the costs and benefits of METCO and other such programs. Neither is it a single narrative story. Rather, Susan Eaton has interviewed 65 adults who participated in METCO when they were students. Their memories of the experience vary, but there are several common threads running through each person's story. The awkwardness felt by black students in predominantly white settings - as well as the corresponding discomfort that came from losing a sense of belonging to the predominantly black neighborhoods in which they grew up - is explored through personal recountings and reminiscences. The interviewees also, for the most part, credited their years in suburbia with making them better prepared to venture out as adults into a society where they will always be a minority, and will always face some degree of racism and bigotry. The advantages and disadvantages of programs such as METCO are explored in depth and with great sensitivity.

I have just completed my first year of teaching in one of the suburban districts that participates in the METCO program. I had four METCO students in my class, and often wondered what they were feeling or thinking, how their formative adolescent years (a difficult time for anyone) were being impacted by this experience. Reading many of the interviewees' comments about the lack of understanding shown by some of their teachers, I had to admit to myself that I have been guilty of similar misunderstandings, and gained some important insights on how I can better relate to my METCO students in future classes. This book should be a requirement for any teacher or counselor who works in a school that participates in METCO (or similar programs in other cities).