Diversity is where you look for it a brief presentation.

Diversity is where you look for it

a brief presentation

After Hitler came to power, “science” in Nazi Germany took a decidedly political turn. (it wasn’t the first nor the last time this would occur). And a paper (signed by 50 scientists - some quite respected and famous) was published saying that Einstein's theory of relativity was wrong. When asked about, it Uncle Al responded, "If the theory is wrong, it will only take ONE scientist to prove it."

As we go thru this thing called life, we find out who we are:

We are a member of a family; and sometimes not the nice TV version of the "Nuclear Family".

We are of a certain gender, race, ethnicity nationality, etc, etc

- there are almost no ends to the "things" that we are stamped with.

From Wing to Kevin

[P. 104; Golnick and Chinn]

Wing Tek Lau is a 6th grade student in a predominantly White and African American [community]. One day when his teacher, calls him by name, he announced before the class "My American name is Kevin. Please everybody, call me Kevin from now on." The teacher and classmates honor his request.

[Later, when his mother finds out, she says to the teacher,] "That child is a disgrace to our family. We heard his sister call him that, but thought it was a joke."

From Armenia to Russia via the USA

When the artist Vostanik Adoyan arrived in the United States, he was so ashamed of being from Armenia (which had just been decimated by Turkey during the 1st World War), he told everyone that he was Arshile Gorky and was Russian.

During the filming of Monty Python's Life of Brian one of the characters (ostensibly a man) says that from now on he wishes to be called "Loretta". This was not a moot point, the openly gay Python member Graham Chapman took it upon himself to crusade for presence and visibility in many of the roles on their TV programme.

Scarcely half a century prior, Oscar Wilde was imprisoned in England for being a homosexual.

Without Wilde there is NO "Portrait of Dorian Gray"

Without Gorky there is NO "Garden in Sochi"

And then with the Viet Nam War, we got things like:

My country right or wrong. America love it or leave it.

The Medium is the Message - so Marshall McCluhan told us.

as well as: Environments are invisible.

Their groundrules, pervasive structure, and

overall patterns evade easy P E R C E P T I O N .

Then:

Think globally, act locally

and of course The Matrix, 9/11….

But concept alone is not enough.

As John Good (best known as the founder of "Room to Read") relates:

While reading Asne Seirstad's portrayal of Afghan life,

"The BookSeller of Kabul",

[which] raised the question, how could we hope for a world at peace when these lessons were being drilled into the heads of millions of children throughout their formative years?

For example,

[For example,] War was a central theme in math books too. Schoolboys ... did not calculate apples and cakes, but [something like this:]

"Little Omar has a Kalashnikov with three magazines.

There are twenty bullets in each magazine.

He uses two-thirds of the bullets and kills sixty infidels.

How many infidels does he kill with each bullet?"

[Good, P.132]

John Good raised money to publish new textbooks for a generation of children who will never know the Taliban.

The Taliban (like all authoritarian systems) denied diversity. The night the Taliban fell, hundreds of young men across Afghanistan shaved their beards - which had been forbidden by the Taliban’s narrow interpretation of the Quoran.

Without diversity and the finding of self,

the reality our world is irrevocably obliterated,

ground up in time and spit out onto the pavement

of a frozen intellectual plane surrounded by the vacuum

of infinite possibilities - DENIED.

The finding of self is literally the essence OF self

Prejudice Hatred Racism Mutilation Genocide

Tolerance Interactions Self Intersections Diversity

Ideas Virtual Reality Real Reality Simulations

Or as H.G. Wells said:

“More and more civilisation becomes a race

between education and disaster”

and

“Those that fail to learn from the mistakes of history

are doomed to repeat them.”

Don't just celebrate diversity; seek it out.

--30--

References

Gollnick, D.M. and Chinn, P.C. (2006). Multi-cultural Education

in a Pluralistic Society, 6th Edition. Upper Saddle

River, NJ: Pearson.

Wood, John (2006). Leaving MicroSoft to change the world: An

entrepreneur's odyssey to educate the children of the world.

New York: Collins.

Image Sources (accessed 2008.06.29)

http://mum6kids.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/

portraitofdoriangray.jpg

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/nourrolf/blackangel/images/

gorky5.jpg

(surreal self portrait)

Fiore, Quentin and McCluhan, Marshall (2001). The Medium is the

Massage. Corte Madera, CA: Ginko Press.