School

10 Pages 2478 Words

As seen many times so far, Boston represents itself again as a city dealing with various issues, one of them being the problem of integrating minorities within the city’s white community. At a time when one of the Diver’s sons is ready to go to school, Colin and Joan Diver – as many other families – have to realize that segregation as well as desegregation is cot only a problem they come across with in their jobs, but also in their every day lives.
Hence, by the 1960s the public schools had gone so bad and hostile that parents were taking their kids out of school, searching for educational alternatives. A group was formed, called “Friends of the Mackey”, in which parents got together, building a new school out of an old school, called Mackey. Not only did they help to build the school, but they also helped the principal and staff with whatever they could possibly do in order to add to their children receiving a good education. By forming the “Mackey Parents’ Association” they also created a more demanding, more aggressive group, which would come together once heavier issues concerning the Mackey were concerned. The school favored an “open education”, which focused on the children as being individuals, doing what they want to do and with the teacher being less an authority figure than an experimenter – simply said the school reflected the liberal times of the sixties. That the Mackey – later known as the Bancroft Program !
– went against all regulations of other public schools, didn’t concern the Mackey’s principal, Francis Xavier Murphy at all, since he was convinced to have found the right school system, being highly innovative to everything seen before. Indeed it seemed to be more than just a school, since it represented itself as some sort of community enterprise, in which parents, teachers, students and other volunteers worked together for one mutual goal – education. However there came the time ...