Our high school students’ online history project tells the epic

history of their own schools’ desegregation, from 1955-2000. It includes

an introductory slide show, a timeline and graph of the county’s massive

demographic changes, a set of oral history interviews, and then a deliberative

forum on the topic, "What should have been done to address school

segregation in 1955?" The project will never be complete, because

students can always add interviews, historical data, and new perspectives.

But it is now ready for a public launch at an event tomorrow. Therefore,

we invite anyone and everyone to visit and participate. The URL is www.princegeorges.org/history.htm

I wrote part of a grant proposal today that would allow our high school

students to conduct research connected to nutrition, exercise, and

obesity. They would identify local opportunities for recreational

exercise and healthy food, and also local sources of unhealthy food and

barriers to exercise (such as streets without sidewalks). They would place

these items on an online, public map along with the routes of local buses

and Metrorail. Their goals would be (a) to show local residents how they

can get to healthy opportunities; and (b) to show local policymakers how

inaccessible certain important opportunities are.

At the same time, students could calculate how much unhealthy food (i.e.,

grams of fat) can be purchased in various locations for one dollar, versus

how much healthy food can be bought. These figures could also be displayed

on a map. Students could then compare statistics from comparable areas

such as Takoma Park or Silver Spring, MD.

I have been thinking more generally about how young people—especially

non-college-bound kids and kids of color—can learn to play a role

in local decisions about zoning, economic development, and transportation.

They are disproportionately affected by these decisions, yet they rarely

participate in public meetings or discussions. CIRCLE has identified "non-college

youth" as a group that does not vote, does not attend community

meetings or join local groups, and does not have the knowledge necessary

to participate. Furthermore, habits of participation or non-participation

are usually set in adolescence, so unless we find ways to involve these

young people while they are still in high school, chances are they will

be uninvolved for the rest of their lives. One promising idea is to get

them interested in using technological tools for urban planning, such

as the many wonderful products described by PlaceMatters.com.

My colleagues and our high school class have been using oral history

methods to construct the Prince

George’s County Information Commons history page. Today an expert

from the Oral

History in Education Institute at University of Maryland came to class

to teach our students proper interviewing techniques—unfortunately

too late to improve our most important interviews, which are over. I thought

one of the most interesting distinctions she made was between journalism

and oral history. She claimed that oral history is less adversarial than

reporting. "We are recipients of the story," she said. She taught

the students to avoid leading questions and questions that anticipate

yes/no answers. Open-ended questions are the oral historian’s tool.

The class and I came to understand our serious responsibilities better

as a result of the session. The desegregation of Prince George’s County

Schools was an epic struggle. Understanding it is crucial, since racial

divisions and inequities remain, and no one is sure how to address them.

In nearly half a century since the struggle began, no one had interviewed

some of the key players, such as the first African American students to

attend White schools in our county. Chances are, no one else will interview

them after us. So we alone are creating primary source materials for later

historians—and they better be good. We didn’t seek this responsibility.

Our original intentions were to provide a civics lesson and to develop

innovative ways of using websites. But the responsibility is real even

if we backed into it.

We were given these links to good online oral history projects conducted

by youth:

What

Did You Do, Grandma?

The Whole World Was

Watching: An Oral History of 1968

We Made Do: Recalling

the Great Depression

The Stories

of the People

(I have found the same list on this

webpage.)

Our high school students interviewed

a white graduate of largely African American public schools in Prince

George’s County (class of ’98). It was interesting to compare her experience

to that of the African Americans who first attended the County’s all-White

schools in the 50’s. In short, she fared much, much better. She professed

never to be uncomfortable because of race, although her friends were mostly

among the other white students.

We asked our students to frame possible answers to the question: "What

should have been done with the County’s segregrated schools in 1954?"

They come up with these options:

• "leave it alone" (1 vote)
• improve the County’s two Black schools and let White students in (7

  votes)

• build more Black schools (in different parts of the County); also

  let Black students attend White schools (5)

• integrate the teaching staffs first (5)
• ignore schools and integrate housing patterns by pressuring realtors

  (4)

• allow students to transfer on request, and advertise this opportunity

  (6)

• send everyone to the nearest school (6)
• bus to achieve an equal racial distribution in all schools(4)

(I list the students’ votes not because they necessarily represent the

views of any larger population, but only to give a sense of the class’s

opinion.)

There could have been two kinds of "diversity" in the schools

of 1954 when the County was about 11 percent African American. Some schools

could have been predominanly Black and others predominantly white (diversity

among schools); or all schools could have been 11 percent African

American (diversity within schools). Our students, who are all

kids of color, unanimously preferred the latter.

We also asked them about these value priorities:

• choice in what school to attend (2)
• having a racial mixture in all schools (3)
• having a few excellent, minority-dominated schools (1)
• convenience (4)
• avoiding disruption and conflict (2)
• quality of education*

*"quality of education" won hands down on the first ballot,

so everyone had to vote for another choice.