from the report on creation of the Human Relations Unit (regarding the brainstorming sessions for NYC educators on three successive May weekends in 1967):

Finally, before they embarked on their project, the participants were given certain basic assumptions with respect to quality integrated education prepared by the Office of Integration and Human Relations.  These assumptions, which served both as a common frame of reference and as a “jumping off” point for the deliberations, follow:

1. Quality integrated education is the most desirable education for our democracy and the most realistic for our nation and world.

2. The development of good racial attitudes is important for every child, regardless of race, creed or national origin, and each school bears a major responsibility in such development, regardless of the pupil population of that school.

3. Quality integrated education is more easily achieved in a desegregated school, although with special effort many of the elements may be made to apply to segregated schools.

4. The development of academic skills must be a major goal of quality integrated education.

5. A successful program of quality integrated education requires belief in and commitment to its goals, as well as an understanding of the responsibility of the schools as one of the most important agents of our society in achieving these goals.

6. Adult fears, suspicions and disbeliefs concerning the values of quality integrated education must be met by a staff confident of these values, a program devoted to securing them, and an opportunity for adults of both races to participate in such a program.

7. Adults with an understanding of and belief in the values of quality integrated education must be reassured that the school system and staff have that same understanding and belief.

8. The search for additional avenues of desegregation must be never ending.

9. Similarly, the search for improvement in quality integrated education must be an ongoing process which is the responsibility of each and every member of the school system.

10. Our schools must exercise a major part in the leadership which inculcates in each pupil, each parent and each member of the community a sense of responsibility toward the achievement of quality integrated education.

source   pages viii-ix