The Need for Diversity Fortifying Education Together
Alexis Whaley
Keiser University
Abstract
In our society today, schools are failing to promote equality and social mobility denying diversity in education instead of understanding why it matters. As a society we must work to promote the kind of diversity that reflects our American values. According to Jordan (2014), Despite our country’s growing diversity, our public schools provide little contact between white students and students of color, in fact in every state but New Mexico and Hawaii, the average white student attends a school that is majority white. Moreover, we need to work jointly to promote all types of diversity within our academic system, not just of race, but of national origin, gender, disability, and creed. The educational system needs to focus on Integrating all races and social classes, also a quality education that is equal for all individuals is what America and our world deserve. For the sake of our country, communities, and of course our children, we cannot accept no for an answer, but make our mission to be for a broader definition of the public school making it a greater school for all. Let me begin this journey with reasons on why diversity is important in fortifying the minds of tomorrow.
Keywords: diversity, world, promote, school, system, history, social, educational
During the civil rights movement, there was an extreme effort to desegregate schools. Since the 1930’s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People have argued, that separate is not equal and every child regardless of race deserves a first-class education (“School Segregation and Integration | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress,” n.d.). Intelligence is the world’s ultimate weapon making education a constant war a privilege that many people would say not all individuals deserve. In my opinion, we should absolutely retain the right to education no matter race, creed, sex, or social class. The educational system needs focus on Integrating all races and social classes, also a quality education that is equal for all individuals is what America and our world deserve. Without doubt, diversity plays a very important role in fortifying the minds of tomorrow by preparing them for a very diversified world full of color not just black and white.
Within our society and the educational system, we need to focus on Integrating all races and social classes, providing a quality education that is equal for all individuals is what America and our world deserve. Today the more fortified the mind the more powerful the weapon, and to able to utilize our minds to our maximum potential to show the world equality is possible. Sadly, many years after Brown v. Board of Education we can still look across our country and see many schools and even neighborhoods that are more segregated by race, and by class. Looking at the statistics data points to resegregation of America’s schools, such as a 2014 report from The Civil Rights Project at UCLA that noted, In 1993, black and Latino students were in schools with 52% and 58% poor children, respectively, and no racial/ethnic group attended schools of overwhelming poverty, on average; by 2012, blacks, on average, attended a school that was two-thirds poor children and Latinos a school more than 70% poor. Latino and African-African-American students are isolated in schools with lower graduation rates, less availability of college preparatory courses, the overuse of suspensions and the number of experienced teachers. By contrast, almost half of Asian American students and about 40% of white students attend schools that rank in the top 20% of Academic Performance Index test scores. Black and Latino students attend schools that on average have more than two-thirds poor students, while whites and Asians typically attend schools with most middle-class students (“California The Most Segregated State for Latino Students — The Civil Rights Project at UCLA,” 2014). With these sad statistics we should want to fight for Diversity with the knowledge of why it is no longer a luxury, but necessity helping our youthful minds of tomorrow get ready for the world they will encounter after high school, and increasingly, throughout their lives. Today our schools are failing to promote equality and social mobility. So, I would like to begin this journey with a few reasons on why diversity is important in school and in life.
First, Diversity requires students to learn alongside one another Children, benefit if they learn from and are guided by a variety of adults with unique experiences and perspectives.
Second, it discloses developing minds to viewpoints and thoughts that broaden their worldviews. Victory nowadays requires acing the craftsmanship of working profitably with people whose encounters are distinctive from your own. Third, our kids need to be ready for a more established world with more fiber-optics and fewer fences. Children wish to grow up to work at Google, Facebook, or create video games, they better be able to relate to people around the world as well as knowing how to code. Fourth, A more diverse teaching workforce. Fifth, treating students equally, giving them equal chances for success, and equal access to the curriculum, teachers and administrators must recognize the uniqueness and individuality of their students. We must work to promote the kind of diversity that reflects our American values as Rose (2011) states, “The stakes go beyond the economics to the basic civic question: What kind of Society do we want to become?”(p.195). Finally, we need to promote and support socio-economic and racial diversity, creating real economic mobility and provide access to opportunities for every child in every community, by developing strategies to increase socioeconomic diversity in America’s public schools.
Carson writes, “In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms”(p.225). Throughout our history we have depended on our educational facilities to signify a place preparing developing minds no longer only for educational success, however for citizenship, for participation in our wealthy civic life. Educational facilities have been the location where we prepare youthful minds no longer simply to adapt to social and monetary changes, however to aid our country towards an extra successful future. Sadly, many years after Brown v. Board of Education we can still look across our country and see many schools and even neighborhoods that are more segregated by race, and by class. Moreover, we need to work jointly to promote all types of diversity within our academic system, not just of race, but of national origin, gender, disability, and creed. The decision in the Brown case made clear diverse schools benefit students of color and that segregation goes against the Constitution of the United States and all-American morals and values. Without doubt, today, we know that diversity of all types benefits all students. Undoubtedly, diversity is not just amenity but a necessity where all are equal, not for just a few individuals but for all individuals. The transformative control of differing qualities in instruction is gigantic; it boosts compassion and decreases predisposition. Expanding the opportunity that low-income students will go to school without compromising the scholarly results of their middle-class peers. Differing qualities moreover increments the probability developing minds will succeed ending up pioneers in their careers and communities. Our duty is not to repeat history but make history, undoubtedly; no amount of wishing for a different time will change the fact that our world is becoming more interconnected. America’s students are the best-positioned in the world to thrive in it, to lead it to seize maximum advantage of it. Demand diversity, not just in schools, but within the classrooms within those schools.
In conclusion, should we absolutely retain the right to education no matter race, creed, social class or sex, to be able to utilize our minds to our maximum potential because diversity is no longer a luxury, but necessity helping our students get ready for the world they will encounter after high school and, increasingly, throughout their lives. Today, we know that diversity of all types benefits all students. Bazelon (2008) speaks of Justice Breyer expressing a quote from former Justice Thurgood Marshall: ‘Unless our children begin to learn together, there is little hope that our people will ever learn to live together’ (p.210). For the sake of our country, communities, and of course our children, we cannot accept no for an answer, but make our mission to be for a broader definition of the public school making it a greater school for all. One that works and grows with the needs of today, embracing the abundances of our diversity making it our forever reality. Our country is strongest when we live and learn together, and without diversity we are weak. We can achieve diversity in schools and make it a reality, not just a dream, and we can make it happen together.
References
Bazelon, E. (2008). The next kind of integration. In McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues across the Disciplines (12th ed.). New York, NY: Mcgraw-Hill Companies inc..
Carson, C. (2014). Two Cheers for Brown v. Board of Education. In McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues across the Disciplines, 12th Ed (p. 225). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies inc.
Cunningham, M. (2018, September 18). OPINION: Making campus diversity real ? starting in kindergarten. Retrieved from https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-making-campus-diversity-real-starting-in-kindergarten/
Jordan, R. (2014, August 27). America’s public schools remain highly segregated. Retrieved from https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/americas-public-schools-remain-highly-segregated
Rose, M. (2014). What College Can Mean to the Other America. In McGraw-Hill Reader: Issues across the Disciplines, 12th Ed (p. 195).
School Segregation and Integration | Articles and Essays | Civil Rights History Project | Digital Collections | Library of Congress. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.loc.gov/collections/civil-rights-history-project/articles-and-essays/school-segregation-and-integration/
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