In 1974 Boston, Massachusetts was forced to confront its civil rights violations. In the case of Morgan v. Hennigan, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. found the city of Boston guilty of intentionally segregating its public schools and ordered Boston to bus students to achieve integration. When busing commenced in the fall of 1974, Boston was a city divided. The citizens of Boston were divided into two main groups: the opponents and supporters but there was no uniform consensus in either group. This study will argue that the motivations for support or opposition were multi-faceted. Those who supported busing had varied reasons for their support and those who opposed busing had varied reasons for their opposition. Through the examination of local and national newspapers and letters of public opinion this work elucidates how Judge Garrity and the Morgan v. Hennigan decision were represented and perceived throughout the city.

In 1974 Boston, Massachusetts was forced to confront its civil rights violations. In the case of Morgan v. Hennigan, Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. found the city of Boston guilty of intentionally segregating its public schools and ordered Boston to bus students to achieve integration. When busing commenced in the fall of 1974, Boston was a city divided. The citizens of Boston were divided into two main groups: the opponents and supporters but there was no uniform consensus in either group. This study will argue that the motivations for support or opposition were multi-faceted. Those who supported busing had varied reasons for their support and those who opposed busing had varied reasons for their opposition. Through the examination of local and national newspapers and letters of public opinion this work elucidates how Judge Garrity and the Morgan v. Hennigan decision were represented and perceived throughout the city.

This study is an exploratory piece of research into the question of attitudes towards the process of integration. A socio-political approach to attitudes is used as a theoretical framework for exploring and understanding the meanings and the complexities involved in the formation of attitudes. The study considers the case of one primary school in particular, Yorkshire School, that had a policy of integrating, in a cross sectional way, forty pupils identified as having special educational needs, including six pupils with Down's Syndrome. The research involved extensive participant observations within the school, semi-structured interviews and informal discussions with nineteen (19) teachers as well as individual and group discussions with the use of a picture with a hundred and three (103) pupils. The findings of this study show that integration has become a contentious term. Teachers' attitudes are conflicting and often confusing while the directives embedded in the teaching act, especially after the introduction of the Educational Reform Act, render the commitment of inclusive education more difficult to maintain. Further, the exploration of the meanings children ascribe to their interactional and perceptual patternings with disabled peers revealed the ways that "handicapped" identities are being socially created. The value conflicts and ethical dilemmas in which both teachers and pupils are becoming enmeshed as well as the structural conditions within which integration is implemented are discussed in an attempt to show that integration must become a policy oriented towards its own destruction. The findings also confirm the necessity of a socio-political approach in the study of attitudes by revealing that any serious attempt of exploring and understanding the complexities involved in the formation of attitudes towards the integration process cannot be divorced either from the wider set of social formations or from the educational context within which attitudes have been developed in the first place.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1961. / Sponsor: Gerald Dykstra. Dissertation Committee: Harry Robert Wilson. Bibliography: leaves 246-252.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Illinois State University, 1979. / Title from title page screen, viewed Feb. 14, 2005. Dissertation Committee: Ronald Laymon (chair), J.H. McGrath, Larry Kennedy, Ned Lovell, Rodney Riegle. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-89) and abstract. Also available in print.

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