But through a program sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League's World of Difference Institute, students from both schools are learning that they share more similarities than differences. Together, the children of Watts and the children of Beverly Hills are learning together in the Jordan auditorium. Rabbi Marc Schneier is on stage, as is Martin Luther King III, and even the ninth-graders are paying attention. The problems between the Jewish and African-American communities are often discussed, but King, the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Schneier, the president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, want to talk about shared dreams. The Jordan students also spend a day at Milken.
Students learn their own reactions to prejudice and stereotyping.
The students talk about times they have been hurt by name-calling. By sharing these experiences in small groups, by talking about times they have said something hurtful or times they didn't intervene, the students learn that they have all experienced pain, prejudice and powerlessness. During the social interludes, as they view the Watts Towers in South Central together or snack on pizza during a lunch break at Milken, they discuss music and clothes, television and movies. They complain about homework, overly strict parents and annoying siblings. And they discover, as they chip away at the overlay of learned prejudices and stereotypes, that they are all teenagers, full of normal doubts, anger and stress.