Enjoying Diversity

10/24/2005

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Plato

In the September 2005 issue of Exchange, Renatta Cooper and Elizabeth Jones contributed a powerful article, “Enjoying Diversity,” promoting the celebration of diversity and deploring current standardizing trends. This complete article can be viewed on our web site at http://mail.ccie.com/go/eed/829 Here is a brief excerpt:

“We want our children to be safe. We want them to learn the skills they will need to live successful lives in a competitive society. But in a diverse and rapidly changing world where we are only an e-mail’s blink away from all those strangers everywhere, we think it’s safest in the long run to teach young children, and ourselves, to enjoy diversity. By cultivating curiosity more diligently than suspicion, we open possibilities for international cooperation and even peacemaking. ‘Who are you? What have your experiences been? What could we do together?’

“There are many trends in our educational systems at this time to move, instead, toward standardization, one-size-fits-all, and punitive measures when learners or schools or teachers don’t measure up to whatever the latest hurdle defines as success. We are struck by the deep cynicism of designing a system that, in teaching all the children the same thing on an inflexible schedule in a non-developmental manner and relying on test scores to assess growth, guarantees that many of them will fail, and yet touts its ideal as ‘No Child Left Behind.’ Behind what? Children are not all alike, nor do we want them to be. If we were all the same we’d be collectively stupider, not smarter. Democracy is built on the strengths of diversity.

“It’s time for those of us who like brainstorming better than one-right-answer to assert ourselves -- especially in early care and education. The children are emphatically on our side, busily exploring their world-so-new-and-all and thinking out loud about it with words and other noises, acting-out, drawing, construction, pattern-making of all sorts, and arguing with their friends and with us. ‘Why? I won’t! I will!’”

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