Education and Culture

It seems to me sometimes that we - this huge, cultural, ambiguous "we" - really want everyone to be and act the same. Ah...But we celebrate diversity, you say. Um, true...if you count celebrating MLK day and Cinco de Mayo as celebrating diversity. Or maybe they're just reasons to take the day off work or drink yourself into a stupor.

We live in a country where it used to be (very, very recently) all right to hang a man from a tree in his front yard because he made a pass at a white woman. One of the largest terrorist organizations in America founded on the principle of a singular nation comprised of middle-class, white, male Protestants - the KKK - still operates today. Our government right now is trying to ban people who love each other from marrying - in the case that these two people share the same sex. When foreigners travel to America we expect them to speak English and (heaven forbid) if they move here and don't speak enough English, we think they should "go back to where they came from." As children with disabilities go through school, they are not instructed in ways to learn, work and study in a way that works best for them; children with disabilities are taught how to get along in a world where people are "normal" and no one needs handicap ramps or special bathroom stalls or little bumps on the keypad at the ATM or extra time on a test. Essentially, they are taught how to pass the standardized exam with the same expectations as everyone else. Don't make waves. Keep your mouth shut. Wear the right clothes. Only share what's appropriate.

Yet we value individualism? We celebrate diversity?

Gifted students too are expected to conform to this "norm" - the umbrella standard we have set up for all students to conveniently fit under. In doing so, we abandon those students in this field of boredom where school becomes for them a waste of time. Perhaps it's because teachers are afraid of progressing this elitist movement that GT students are thought to have - even though research and testimony show that that's not true. Perhaps it's because as adults, we're afraid to acknowledge that a child is more gifted than we are with our college degrees and super-important business suits...which points more to pointless and destructive pride on the part of the adult more than anything else. Perhaps it is a way of avoiding another underserved portion of our population - which will only work for so long.

My point is simply this: diversity is here and it is around us and it should not be ignored. To ignore it is to lump everyone together in this mold that meets no one's needs. All categories of students - ESL, gifted, special needs, at-risk, jocks, emo, preps - need to be specifically targeted in the classroom to make the school experience and learning in particular significant to their lives. This means not giving everyone in the class the same copy of the same novel and requiring them to be at a certain point by Wednesday for a test. If we really are celebrating diversity and taking care of each individual's needs, we cannot continue to treat all students the same, because it does nothing but alienate the students that fall outside of that umbrella and teach them to hate school.

And then we wind up with more idiots who think that homosexual marriage is destroying the sanctity of marriage as a whole, foreigners are stupid for not speaking English, immigrants should bow in reverence of all that is American, owning guns with the intent to actually kill another human being is all right, and we can really get a good feel for what people know by having them take a bubble-sheet test in two hours or less.