The recent founding of The Harvey Milk School in Manhattan's East village has caused lots of controversy. The virtually all-homosexual high school caters to students who have been harassed by fellow peers in their other schools. The school's aim is to provide a safe environment for homosexuals and other groups experiencing discrimination. The school is voluntary and admits students regardless of their sexual orientation. However, the school states that each individual who wishes to join the school must demonstrate that he or she in danger of dropping out of their current school because of harassment.

By creating an exclusively homosexual school, we are taking one giant step backwards from what the civil rights movement during the 1950s and '60s was trying to achieve. An exclusively gay school goes against the entire movement that many black and white leaders worked hard to accomplish. What the founding of The Harvey Milk School says is that we support the idea set forth in the 1950s and '60s. We're saying it's okay to segregate. Do we Americans support the decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education that separate but equal schools are constitutional? What if the Little

Because cultural domination has been at the core of the educational system, we must still to this day fight to overcome this type of domination. There is no need to make separate schools. According to Jennie Oakes in “The teaching challenge of the Twenty-First Century,” Horace Mann, who augmented Jefferson’s vision of public schools, intended common schools to teach the knowledge and habits, as well as the basic literacy, that citizens needed to function in a democracy. He envisioned the common school as the “great equalizer” and the “creator of wealth undreamed of” and hoped it would eliminate poverty and crime and shape the destiny of a wise, productive country. “Like other modern thinkers of the day, Mann believed that social improvement would follow from advances in knowledge and that knowledge and that schooling would extend individual rights and liberties to all” (Oakes, p.5). Therefore, instead of just pulling away from the problems that not only LGBTQ students face, but other groups that are categorized as the “other,” must provide appropriate training for all school personnel and those preparing to be teachers, to examine and redesign our curricula, and to develop and enforce school against all violence.

th

Some topics in this essay:
Horace Mann, Milk School, Manhattan's East, Harvey Milk’s, Logos Team, Rock Nine, Jennie Oakes, School Oakes, Board Education, Harvey Milk, milk school, harvey milk, harvey milk school, school system, 1950s '60s, students teachers, founding harvey, founding harvey milk, jennie oakes, cultural domination,