Equality in Education

I was just watching an episode of the TV show Modern Family.  I don't know if you have seen it or not, but there is a gay couple that adopts a daughter from Vietnam.  Well, in this particular episode the couple is trying to get their daughter into a high quality preschool and they figure that they will have no problem since they are gay parents and their daughter is Asian.  What preschool wouldn't love to brag about that kind of diversity?  Well, as they are beginning their interview, an interracial lesbian couple enters with their foreign adopted child, and one of them is in a wheel chair.  Cameron, one of the gay fathers, knows they won't be able to compete with that, so he pretends to be a Native American, and the interview only goes downhill from there.

It seems that our nation is all about diversity and equality these days.  However, I think we have a pretty warped view of what that looks like.  Not only as in the example above, but in other ways as well. 

Here is my problem with equality in America: too often we mix up the ideas of Equality and Uniformity.

I hear so much discussion these days about creating uniform guidelines, standards, and curriculum for the whole nation so that everyone will have equal opportunities in education.  See this article.  But I don't think that equal opportunities means teaching the same thing to every student. 

The idea of diversity isn't to stick a bunch of people with different perspectives in a room and teach them to all think the same thing.  The idea is that everyone will have different ideas and experiences.  In conversations they will all be able to contribute something different and challenge each other to think differently than what they are used to.  The beauty is in opening your mind to become more aware of others' perspectives, not in trying to assimilate everyone's ideas into one mainstream thought process. 

I believe that we are doing our children and society an injustice if we teach everyone the same curriculum.  It neglects to be relevant to all children and therefore loses the interest of many.  And on an even larger scale, as soon as we select a single set of ideas we want to teach, we are acknowledging that they are better or 'more correct' than other ideas and perspectives.  We severely limit the future when we tell all children to think in 'the best way' because we ignore the posibilities that other ways of thinking could have very important insights to offer.

This is something that was really revealed to me during my time abroad in Peru.  Here is one example:
At first, everyone's practice of arriving ridiculously late for everything drove me crazy.  I felt like they were all wasting my time.  However, I eventually came to realize that it was because in Peru, relationships are valued over punctuality.  If someone arrives late, it isn't because they are lazy, it is probably because they ran into a friend on the way to school and it would be rude not to stop and have a conversation.  And on a side note, I found life much less stressful when I stopped worrying about getting everywhere exactly on time. 

My ideal view of a classroom with equality is one in where the values of everone are respected.  It is one in where ideas are not taught, but rather discussed and debated.  I want students to see behaviors and try to understand the underlying principles rather than judging them.  And in the end, I hope that everyone would leave with a distinct perspective, because that is what makes our world diverse. 

I never did like the view of America as a melting pot.  I always prefered the mosaic image.