Research blog# 2

ALBERTA, EISEMAN. "The View From: Fourth and Fifth Grade; Between City and Suburb, Helping

                Children Make New Friends." New York Times 07 Dec. 1997: 2. Academic Search Premier.

                EBSCO. Web. 11 Oct. 2011.

In Eiseman Alberta’s article, “The View From: Fourth and Fifth Grade, Between City and Suburb, Helping Children Make New Friends”, she explains how important it is for children at a young age to learn to be friends with kids not only from their school, but between suburban and urban areas. They first started their tasks by gathering one hundred fourth grade students in an auditorium to watch different examples of stereotypes and discriminations. The students were encouraged to ask questions and make comments on the skits and even “booed” at the bad parts. They then created an orientation day which introduced the Historical Society’s “We’re Writing Connecticut History,” which is a program that combines 16 different fourth and fifth grade students from Hartford metropolitan area. They were scheduled for 13 daylong visits to focus on history, and required them to interact with each other. ''The purpose of the program is to build sustained interaction between urban and suburban kids,'' said Christine Ermenc, head of youth programs for the Historical Society. During the program, students were broken up into small groups to get to know one another, which most were confused about, but then talked about their likes and dislikes. ''We consider our program a baby step -- a half-step to another half-step,'' said David M. Brown, interdistrict coordinator for the program. Mr. Brown, who says  he is very committed to this program also states, ''I wanted to get involved in the anti-segregation issue. I would like to see racial balance in the schools achieved by whatever means are possible. It's good for the kids and good for the adults.”

In this article, it is brought up that teaching children at a young age that segregation is okay and that nothing is wrong with it. I do believe it is very smart to teach children these important things at a young age that could later lead to harsh stereotyping as they grow up. The concept of bringing urban and suburban children together to learn and study is good way of getting the point across of anti-segregation without making it solely about the idea of anti-segregation. I found it interesting that they got this concept across without directly touching on it.

I chose this article because I strongly believe that subjects taught at a young age stick longer through life. If this activity was taught in a high school or middle school it wouldn’t work as well due to cliques and stereotypes already being made. Doing this to a group of fourth and fifth graders is the perfect age also because they are just learning and forming, without knowing, groups of friends and cliques. This helped me with my question of what awareness is going around for stereotypes, but it still doesn’t assure me that stereotyping is being taken seriously. I would like to find out more of what precautions or disciplinary actions are being made when stereotyping and bullying takes place.