Unhappy Experiment

Since its incorporation 25 years ago, the Toronto suburb of Forest Hill Village has grown into a typical, well-to-do community, with handsome houses .set off by spacious lawns from the tree-lined streets. Its civic boosters proudly call it "the richest square mile of residential area in Canada." The village has also become the chief residential zone of prosperous Toronto Jews, who today make up 40% of its 18,-ooo inhabitants. There has been little anti-Semitic friction in Forest Hill, however; the village long has been proud of that.

But under Forest Hill's placid surface run some familiar, ugly currents. Last year, when the village opened its new, ultra-modern collegiate (i.e., high) school, the Forest Hill Board of Education suddenly brought the subject into the open. Newly arrived Jewish families, usually younger than the established residents, had more children of school age than their gentile neighbors. And many wealthy gentiles sent their children to private schools which often were closed to Jews. The result was that 65% of the new school's 550 students were Jewish. Though there were no public complaints from parents, no apparent dissension between Jewish and gentile students, the board decided that something must be done.

Strange Solution. The board noted that the students had already begun to adopt some adult prejudices. Jews and gentiles "dated" almost exclusively within their own groups. The board, and some parents, thought that gentile students were lonely and unhappy in classes where they sometimes were a minority of two or three out of 30. This fall the board produced a strange solution.

Seven classes in grades eight through twelve were restricted entirely to Jews. The board explained that the idea was to increase the ratio of gentile to Jew in the remaining classes so that gentile students no longer would feel outnumbered. Oddly enough, the experiment was not extended to those school activities where racial prejudices were most apt to crop out. In the gym, the library and the cafeteria there was no line drawn between Jewish and non-Jewish students; they played on the same teams, acted in the same school plays and attended the same school dances.

Trying to explain all the contradictions, one board member insisted that the whole experiment was "not segregation but congregation--of friends." Said Board Chairman Harold Rogers: "Some people thought we were grouping according to religion. Broadly speaking, I suppose we are. but that is secondary. Our main purpose was to evolve some sort of plan which would make everyone happy."

Discreet Backtracking. But it was soon clear that the scheme was a blunder that made almost everyone quite unhappy. If any Forest Hill pupils had not previously been aware of a distinction between Jew and gentile, they were certainly aware of it now. Said one gentile student: "The adults stirred up the fuss, not us."

It was the kind of situation that would have provoked an immediate uproar in the U.S. But with typical Canadian restraint, Jewish organizations, admitting that the board had acted in good faith, decided against public outcry. Instead, they turned on the heat in private.

Last week, after two months of its unhappy experiment, the board backtracked as discreetly as it could. Chairman Rogers announced that the plan could not be stopped now, in midterm, because of administrative problems. But he promised it would be abandoned for good at the end of the school year.

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