On Diversity as an Educational Practice
Just as Corporate America has experienced the influx of diverse employees into the workforce, America’s public schools have experienced the same boon in a diverse student population. Meeting the needs of all the students enrolled in schools is not only essential to humanity, but now it has become a federal law under President Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” mandate. Schools must demonstrate inclusion for each and every student at all levels of education.
It clearly follows that the diverse work population will want the best possible education for its children. No longer is it the norm for communities to be clustered or segregated into ethnic groups. Instead, our communities and schools are reflective of a multicultural nation. Meeting the needs of the schools and communities invites the opportunity for adults to bring in a worldview and macrocosmic understanding of human needs and similarities. As a result, many consulting groups, diversity trainers, and passionate individuals can see the benefits of inclusion and of a multicultural perspective on our global marketplace and community.
Some schools in the Atlanta, Georgia, area boast as many as 17 different native languages spoken within its student population. If investigated, other schools even could boast more. The Valuing Diversity paradigm includes an understanding of these differences and sees each student’s cultural heritage as enrichment to the school climate and the curriculum. Those schools that still practice Assimilation or Else are indeed missing educational opportunities and are certainly leaving children behind.
Defining Human Diversity simply means the ways people are unique, including their age, gender, physical and mental abilities, and sexual orientation. Diversity does not stop there, though. Cultural Diversity includes people’s attitudes, heritage, values, and religious beliefs. Furthermore, Systems Diversity refers to organizational schemes in which people have worked and includes our schools and how people are educated.
Educational trends have already acknowledged differences in students from Learning Styles Inventories, Special Education, Gifted Education, Talents, and Inclusion classes. Many schools are lacking in the awareness of Institutionalized Discrimination. Institutionalized Discrimination is defined as discrimination so embedded into an environment that it becomes commonplace and unnoticed to those people living and working within the confines of that environment. Most of the time, an outsider has to come into the institution to recognize that this paradigm paralysis exists. If not, the school is at risk for creating either a discriminatory or hostile environment for some of its population.
Cultural surveys reveal patterns among different ethnicities, but the prudent principals or headmasters would assess their own educator base and student population so that accurate educational orientations would be determined. Then in order to get 100% out of the teachers and paraprofessionals in the school, and to reach 100% of the student population, that principal or headmaster would implement strategies based on those findings. Then the school would certainly master the “No Child Left Behind” concept.
What can a school do? By having policies in place and a work climate and educational climate that promotes diversity, people can bring their unique qualities to work and into the classroom. This workplace satisfaction will allow a teacher to focus on the task at hand rather than struggling with a barrier in the school that states, “Your difference is clearly not welcomed here.” Those talented, diverse educators have gained the social leverage and social mobility to move into school systems that establish diversity as a precedent and an advantage. Clearly, if your school does not reward a diverse climate, those talented educators will move elsewhere. If students stay in a barrier-filled learning environment, the educators are asking students to learn with one hand tied behind their backs—what child wants to do this? Imagine the loss of learning when an educator or environment inhibits a child’s capacity to learn.
In order to have high-achieving schools and high achieving students, our educational leaders must provide diversity training for its staff and its students. Our schools then must implement these diversity practices as part of their operating norms on a daily basis. Then, and only then, shall we in America achieve the “No Child Left Behind” mandate.
*Copyright pending 12-4-03
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