The ability to choose your own schools typically comes at the college level, a time when many students enter environments that are far more diverse than their hometown schools. Coming from a diverse city school, I was surprised at this fact. During orientation week, there was a survey that asked students if the University of Massachusetts Amherst was more or less diverse than their high school. While the overwhelming majority answered that UMass was more diverse, I looked around the room and did not see a level of diversity that came even close to my high school.
Ideally, experiencing diversity would begin at elementary school, or even earlier. Growing up around people of different identities can help you become a more open-minded person, while educating you on issues affect others disproportionately. Understanding people’s diverse backgrounds can widen your worldview, leading you to have empathy and understanding rather than judgment.
Interacting with people of other cultures can reduce ignorance, microaggressions and negative implicit bias. Additionally, experiencing diversity in your youth can better equip you to embrace other cultures when you enter the workforce. If we teach kids to be inclusive and suppress the formation of bias, they are less likely to uphold the harmful systems that exist in our society as adults.
If diversity and inclusivity is emphasized earlier on, these principles are more likely to be upheld in higher education. In diverse institutions people often choose to make friends with people who share their identity because of relatability. If there was an increased level of inclusivity earlier on, this phenomenon might be challenged.
Diversifying schools would also enrich school communities. Diversity within schools can be fostered through extracurricular activities like sports, volunteer events and even walking around neighborhoods. Even for those who don’t make the effort to interact with other people of diverse backgrounds, it would have to be a cognizant effort to avoid these interactions.
But how do we make schools diverse racially, ethnically and socioeconomically? Within a small suburb or town, there is often one elementary school, one middle school and one high school. Children don’t often think about diversity because they are limited to the confines of a suburb where diversity is scarce.
Even in places where diversity is prevalent, like cities, diverse school communities are not common. In many cases it is the opposite: cities have racially segregated school districts because of historically discriminatory practices like redlining. This leads to schools being afforded inequitable resources, which widens the gap in enrollment in higher education.
Diversification of schools is only possible if resources are equally distributed to schools, which would level the playing field and allows students equal access to critical opportunities. Middle and upper class parents who are leery of an under-resourced schools would not have this concern if resources were equitably distributed.
In many urban environments it is lottery systems and student ranking that determine where students attend school. But this doesn’t necessarily make it fair, and it clearly isn’t making schools diverse. Diversification must to be a conscious effort.
Competitive middle and high schools often screen by district to help make schools more diverse. Taking students from different districts instead of just one district means that there are kids from all different neighborhoods. Instead of taking the top test scores from all applicants, students are compared only to others in their districts, which takes into account the resources each district has.
Exams especially put younger students at an equal level. The later these exams happen, the less it is about a child’s acute ability but rather what kinds of support they were given. For example, exams for older youth, like the SAT, are not equitable because schools in more affluent areas have easier access to preparatory resources, placing them at an advantage. SAT scores don’t reflect someone’s ability to learn, but rather how much resources have supplemented their studies.
Diversity takes intentional effort – it isn’t something that just happens. Making this deliberate effort for diversity in schools will make the school system more equitable and create a generation that has respect and understanding for others. It will break down harmful biases before they are formed and give more children opportunities.
Mirelle Liimatta can be reached at [email protected].
