Through Diversity to Chaos
Diversity is celebrated in our public schools as passionately as a religion. Teachers are taught to talk about diversity in a way that encourages interaction in specific ways with people who are different than we are. “Diversity Days” are introduced to discuss the advantages of interactions with those different than we. The most common diversity identifiers are sex, race, nationality, language, disability and religion. Secondary diversity identifiers include hair color, eye color, skin color, cognitive ability, subject interests or occupation. The opposite of diversity would be homogeneity or conformity. Conformity implies sameness of the identifiers mentioned above. So if a classroom has all students of one sex, race, nationality, language, disability or religion, it is said to lack diversity. If a class lacks diversity, the implication is that that is a bad thing. Such a classroom would be considered richer if it were more diverse.
For a moment, consider a classroom of homogeneous students from the perspective of the teacher. Suppose a teacher has a group of similar individuals with similar characteristics—a class of all girls, for example. The distractions inherent in interacting with boys are lost. Issues experienced by girls can uniformly be acknowledged and dealt with. Subjects of no interest to boys can be discussed openly. Boys won’t be bored to agitation by issues not pertaining to them. Girls can then focus on what does interest them directly. What having a unisex class loses is the fun interaction between the sexes. The flirting, teasing, taunting, baiting and chasing that helps normal children explore the mysteries inherent in being male or female. Society also has rules about incest (a lack of diversity). The function of those rules is to keep the genetic mix healthy. My conclusion on sexual diversity vs. homogeneity is that one needs both. When it comes to study, tracking is useful. When it comes to life, diversity is useful.
Similarly, a classroom of all English speaking students viewed from the teacher’s perspective will be easier to manage since all communication can be conducted in one language—English. Last year I had an experience where I was reading to students in a project called DEAR Day. The DEAR acronym stands for “Drop Everything And Read”. I was a volunteer giving my time to read a story that was meaningful to me and had the possibility of helping the children enjoy the reading experience. The teacher had several students not paying attention to my reading, but instead doing another activity. She asked me to ignore them. The reason given was that they speak Spanish, so would not be able to understand. Consequently they lost any opportunity of becoming homogeneous with respect to language. They missed even trying to understand my story. They were being encouraged to perpetuate their language diversity.
Language diversity is, in my view, fun but not useful. It is better to have a common language in order to communicate. The world is too big and too complicated to try to force a universal language. Some have tried the Esperanto model where everyone learns a completely new language. Folks have a hard time giving up old habits. So, if a Spaniard comes to the United States with his family, he’s likely to continue to speak his native language at home even if he speaks American English in society. When I lived in Holland, I worked very hard to learn, speak and understand Dutch. At home, however, it was English all the way. So how does language diversity help a classroom? It doesn’t. Better that a student learns the common language of the country in which he resides and becomes able to communicate with the host country’s citizens.
In my view, those who focus on racial diversity exhibit ignorance. By the grace of God, each individual in the world is unique. No two are alike. Even identical twins are not truly identical. Therefore, to group people in categories is to ignore the truth of that uniqueness. Race is a category that I think should be abolished completely. Perhaps this is a utopian view. Nevertheless, I don’t think we should ask questions about ethnicity in our government. We should not track racial achievements. We should eliminate programs that use race to benefit a class of people over another. True opportunity comes from working hard, seeking to do good in the world and being rewarded by others wanting to engage in those efforts.
Race diversity is also celebrated in public schools. Lots of attention is placed on the racial demographics of a school. Census is taken to divide race into separating categories such as Asian, African, White, Latino, Native American, etc. Then percentages are assigned to each race to show how diverse or homogeneous the school is. Government seeks to validate equal protection clauses by distribution of tax money fairly across demographic classes. If a racial class is lightly represented, great effort is focused to provide more money and presumably opportunity to that class. The object is to bring them up to par with some more advantaged racial class. I have come to believe that the longer we perpetuate the focus on race, the more likely we’ll never develop equality. There will always be an underclass defined by race as long as we continue to measure diversity using the racial standard. Rather than any race working to develop equality on the basis of achievement, they’ll continue to try for parity based on their race. If a race-based program is eliminated, the affected race will fight against the loss by claiming racial discrimination.
Cognitive ability is measured in part through test scores. Those scores are used to determine if a school is meeting certain pre-set standards. If a school has low scores and has a particular racial demographic, the two data sets are linked to make a point that there must be discrimination among that demographic. With diversity standards in place, classes of mixed cognitive ability are encouraged. The theory is that so-called “smart” students will encourage less smart students to excel. Rather than tracking to help high achievers stay motivated to learn even more, they are slowed down by the repetitive and often boring problem sets of those who don’t understand as quickly so that the teacher can manage grading one set of homework instead of multiple sets. Diversity makes it harder to teach.
The ultimately diverse class would have students all the way from remedial to brilliant. How smart is that? Some cognitive diversity is acceptable. That is why we utilized a public education for our children. Through that education, they could see the disparity between achievers versus non-achievers. They could make a choice as to how motivated they were to be in the hard-working achiever group, knowing that the end result was a more productive, satisfying life. As they advanced, more of the classes became homogeneous. They became leaders naturally among the less ambitious.
Nationality is another diversity indicator. If you are from another country, that identifier makes you, by definition, part of diversity. Many years ago, the goal of most immigrating people was to blend into the new society thereby becoming part of something great. Generally, each culture coming to the United States wanted to blend into the great melting pot of homogeneity. Yes, discrimination existed and that made it difficult to assimilate. Yet in general, many nationalities did a good job of overcoming the negative stereotypes foisted upon them. Stories abound of settlers of Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese or Japanese being discriminated against. In each case, those cultures tried very hard to work into the so-called American culture. By so doing, some of the old traditions and customs were lost. But overall, each nationality managed to improve on their outlook. Particularly the second generation benefitted from the melting pot. I can remember my parents discussing what fantastic workers the first generation Japanese immigrants were. They came here as gardeners or laborers and worked diligently to provide a better life for their children. In one or two generations, from skilled labor, families became well educated—entering the white-collar market as professionals in medicine, law and business. They transformed their lives by diligence, perseverance and respect for education. As a culture now, nobody can deny their having earned a place among the world’s elite. The key is that their common nationality earned them that position and I can generalize from personal observation that as a culture, those Asian Americans can be trusted to excel in whatever they choose to do.
African Americans on the other hand had a legitimate gripe about how they were brought to this continent as property. They did not choose to come here. It was forced upon them. Therefore, the lasting damage done to that culture is still being felt. How to provide reparations for the sixth or seventh generation of those atrocities is still a thorny cultural problem. Nevertheless, opportunities in this society abound. If the attitude of achievement is instilled from an early age, no matter what original nationality it is possible to make a good life in the United States. By assimilating different nationalities in a classroom, one huge advantage is that students who have felt discrimination can also see the opportunity, thereby getting beyond the biases that come from nationality generalizations.
Disability diversity is a hard subject for me. We all are disabled in one way or another. Some have a problem with math; others, the written or spoken word; still others, music. And some have physical disabilities, but their minds are sharp and they cannot express their brilliance easily. Others are mentally dull. Whatever the disability, it takes extra time to attend to a disabled person’s needs. Bringing disability into a classroom, just as in language diversity, slows down the learning process for the less-disabled student. I believe that there can be no hard and fast rule of thumb on disability diversity. The decisions on how to place a disabled student should be left up to that student, their parents and the teacher. “Mainstreaming” a disabled person helps society in two ways. It develops compassion and understanding in the “able” society as well as enabling the disabled person to reach their full potential.
Those who have strong religious beliefs do not always tolerate religious diversity. Just look at the number of divisions in the Christian faith. One hears, “How can anyone who believes “that” (whatever ‘that’ is) possibly be right…I’m so sure of my position.” So diversity in religion is hard for many. The United States was founded in part on the premise that there would be religious diversity—or at least lack of religious persecution by way of a state religion. Indeed, we have religious diversity. Without a religious background, how does one teach ethics, the origin of life and explain the creation of the universe in a public setting? That is almost an impossible task. If you were to ask me to teach Islam, I’d have a really hard time doing that. I know very little about it other than having read the Koran some forty years ago and being shocked by what I perceived as intolerant portions of it. Indeed, the Bible also tells a bloody story. Where does one draw the line in intolerance for hatred?
I would argue that as long as we pay attention to the differences, we will continue to perpetuate them. But distrust of people is so deep, it has been almost impossible for Palestinians and Jews to live in close proximity to one another. Will diversity education ever solve that problem? Perhaps I’m cynical. But I think it is unlikely.
©Frank Bliss 2010 All rights reserved
June, 2010
