Diversity in action
A commitment to diversity is a pre-requisite for every organization, but beyond rhetoric and lofty
intentions how can schools ensure they are genuinely celebrating and embracing difference? The IB is dedicated to exploring issues surrounding diversity in all its forms, beginning with a rigorous and challenging evaluation of educational diversity from Professor Lani Guinier, one of the world’s foremost authorities on civil rights and student testing.
But equality extends to the background of schools themselves, which is why on page 20 we look at four places where the IB has engaged governments to open up its programmes to as many state students as possible. And on page 14 we visit Atlanta, Georgia, USA to see how Bill Moon and his remarkable teaching staff have taken the IB ethos to a student body many assumed would be unteachable. Their success shows that the fundamental requirement for diversity may not be inclusion but, quite simply, caring.
Fair game
Injustice fired Lani Guinier to the top of her profession. Now she wants every school to think about how it treats students
Being labelled an ‘outsider’ isn’t something that unduly concerns Professor Lani Guinier. Growing
up as part of the only black family in a working-class area of New York City, she developed a passion for championing the underdog, which eventually led to her becoming one of the leading civil rights lawyers in North America. She’s been taking aim ever since at institutions she regards as outdated and elitist – and her views on student diversity will have a resonance with teachers across the world.
In the USA, she entered the national consciousness in 1993 when she was nominated by President Clinton as assistant attorney general for civil rights – an honour that would turn into a political furore as Republicans rounded on Prof Guinier’s support for proportional representation in electoral systems as evidence of ‘anti-democratic’ beliefs, forcing her withdrawal.
She became the first black female professor at Harvard Law School, one of the most prestigious in the world, has taught at more than 100 institutions and is the author of six books. She has been a vigorous critic of the lack of diversity in education, and in her forthcoming book Meritocracy Inc. targets testing in schools, which she believes has made going to college or university “a gift from the poor to the rich.”
Prof Guinier’s willingness to challenge injustice probably stems from her childhood. Her father was denied a place as a student at Harvard due to his colour but eventually went on to chair the university’s department of Afro-American studies. In addition, she came face-to-face with inequality early on, as an eight-year-old Brownie [part of the Girl Guides], during a hat-making contest: “The winner was the daughter of a professional hat-maker, who actually made her hat for her in full view of all the other participants. I was deeply offended by what I thought was a rigging of the rules, and I quit the Brownies.”
The experience has informed her views on testing ever since, she says: “Even when the rules appear fair, they may have the same effect as a professional milliner making the hat for her daughter.”
IB World How does the idea of meritocracy apply in an educational environment?
Lani Guinier The term ‘meritocracy’ was invented by a British sociologist, Michael Young, to poke fun at an elite. Young’s satire was a critique of meritocracy as a type of contest put in place by those with privilege and power. The rules of the meritocracy, which claimed to reward hard work and individual talent, nevertheless left existing distributions of privilege intact.
Those who were born to well-educated parents with a high family income did well in a meritocracy, just as those who were born to parents with wealth and the right pedigree did well in an aristocracy. The beauty of
the meritocracy, according to Young, was its ability to maintain an unequal status quo while convincing both the winners and the losers they each deserved their lot in life.
Many leading schools have public roots but do not serve the public
But one important difference between the meritocracy and the aristocracy has emerged. The aristocrats believed in noblesse oblige – they realized an obligation to serve was one of the prices of privilege. By contrast, the ‘winners’ of a test-centered meritocracy sometimes take their privileged position for granted and forget that they too should serve the larger society.
IB Does the way students are often taught at present – particularly the way they are tested – encourage this meritocracy rather than true diversity?
LG If we work from the assumption that talent is equally distributed among all groups, we are denying many people an opportunity at present. We are also denying business and industry access to a full talent pool. And we are undermining the potential of a society to solve hard problems creatively.
Many leading schools have public roots but do not serve the public. They distribute what has become an increasingly scarce public resource as if they were awarding a prize, according to test scores set to theoretically objective criteria – but those supposedly objective criteria correlate very strongly with wealth and race. As parents’ income goes up, so do test scores.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t reward or create incentives for excellence. But the idea of excellence in an institution should be linked to its students being better public citizens, demonstrating leadership and exploring new ideas, not just being plugged into a network of other equally privileged people. Too many schools stake their reputation on the competitiveness of their entering class rather than on the actual contributions of their graduates.
By seeing education as a prize, they end up providing education to people from educated families rather than acting as an escalator for those who do not already have those advantages.
IB What is the fundamental problem with current systems of testing?
LG Scott Page [University of Michigan professor of complex systems, political science and economics] talks about giving a test to three people when you can only hire two of them to join your organization
as faculty or students. You ask them 10 questions: one gets seven right, one gets six right and one gets five right. Which two people would you hire? A meritocracy assumes you hire the two with the highest scores –but Page says you should look behind the scores to see which questions each got right. You’d be best off hiring people who got different questions right, so your organization has different knowledge bases and skills. Institutions produce more innovative problem-solvers when faculty and students have access to a diverse set of tools.
The idea of excellence in an institution should be linked to its students being better public citizens, not just being plugged into a network of other equally privileged people
[Author] Malcolm Gladwell compares the way the US Marine Corps selects recruits to the way a modelling agency recruits. A modelling agency looks for people who are already beautiful, while the Marine Corps takes those who are minimally qualified and moves them on. Are educational institutions more like the Marine Corps or a modelling agency, associating themselves with those who are already beautiful or bringing in people who can contribute and improve?
IB How did your childhood inform your views of education?
LG I grew up with a white mother and a black father so I was looking at the world through different lenses. My mother taught me to see the world through other people’s eyes. When we moved to Queens [in New York] and were the first black family on the block many of the white neighbours were hostile and their children were mean. When we played ‘school’ together, one or two of the older kids would be the teacher. They were always giving me, and me alone, hard words to spell. Then they would laugh when I got one wrong. I’d complain to my mother and she’d tell me to think about it from their perspective. Although they were older than I was they probably didn’t do as well in school as I did. So perhaps in their own way they were just trying to even the score. I learned to see myself not as a victim or as someone with an individual grievance. I learned that by stepping outside yourself you can develop a more complex perspective that helps you better understand and ultimately better negotiate an uncomfortable situation.
IB What can schools and educators do to encourage diversity and raise standards among all students?
LG There are examples out there. Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA, was concerned about its ability to attract students. It was in an area with many recent immigrants and people of colour, a lot of crime and weak local schools. The university considered relocating, but instead it invested in the community. It created an innovative public school. Sixty per cent of the students at the school were black, Latino or Vietnamese. Three quarters qualified for free or subsidized lunch. Some were reading at fourth-grade level in the seventh grade. Now, 100 per cent of the school’s graduates go on to college. Clark was committed to adding value, emphasizing critical thinking and low-stakes writing and encouraging students to seek help when they needed it.
Or look at Texas. The Texas Ten Percent Plan started over 10 years ago in response to litigation to open up the state university to a more diverse student body. The new law meant that anyone who finished in the top
10 per cent of their high school class would automatically be eligible for admission to the University of Texas. Previously, 75 per cent of students came from 10 per cent of local high schools. Now, students come from many different schools, including those in poor urban areas and in rural communities. And those who come in under the Ten Percent Plan outperform, at college, those who are admitted on the back of their SAT scores.
IB What role can teachers play?
LG I have worked on different types of pedagogy aimed at creating a learning community rather than just measuring people by a single yardstick to rank and sort them. There are three parts to this: creative experimentation, shared power (so students feel they have some sort of investment in their curriculum and learning) and a critical reframing of issues, reinterpreting sources of conflict to become learning opportunities.
IB Does the IB pedagogy achieve this?
LG I’ve had students who have taken part in IB programmes. To the extent that the IB is encouraging people to think outside the box, that has to be a good thing.
IB Are we, globally, becoming a more diverse and just society?
LG I certainly think the fact that people understand we are living in a global society is positive. The demographics of many former imperialist or colonialist countries have changed and as a result more people
are learning to challenge conventional assumptions of homogeneity.
Find out more about Lani Guinier’s work and views at www.racetalks.org
Different is also right
Monique Seefried, chair of the IB Board of Governors, explains why the idea of diversity is part of the organization’s lifeblood
Considering diversity takes us back to the reasons why the IB was originally created – to serve students in international schools who came from diverse backgrounds, to allow them to understand each other and work towards a more peaceful world. That ethos has continued throughout the IB’s growth.
As former IB director general Roger Peel said: “The honesty of the IB stems from the fact that we require all students to relate first to their own national identity – their own language, literature, history and cultural heritage – no matter where in the world this may be. Beyond that we ask that they identify with the corresponding traditions of others. It is not expected that they adopt alien points of view, merely that they are exposed to them and encouraged to respond intelligently. The end result, we hope, is a more compassionate population, a welcome manifestation of national diversity within an international framework of tolerant respect.
“Ideally, at the end of the IB experience, students should know themselves better than when they started, while acknowledging that others can be right in being different.”
The IB originally had a very Western-based curriculum, and in order to encourage diversity we have been working very hard to infuse our programmes with international-mindedness and more recently – through partnerships such as the one with the Aga Khan Development Network – with the humanist traditions of other cultures.
We see those influences in our curriculum and our teacher training, so IB is not just a rigorous academic programme but also a way for young people to learn about themselves and each other. Our central message has always stayed the same.
We also promote diversity through our access policy – we make our programmes available in other languages and, by giving grants, open them up to people from lots of different socio-economic backgrounds.
Teachers have a vital role to play and I would encourage them to exchange ideas with colleagues from
other cultures and backgrounds to develop a network. That is particularly important for those within national systems who may not have the opportunity to work in other countries.
Diversity is at the core of every community. The IB is a community made up of schools, students, parents and teachers spread around the world. Diversity is therefore an important aspect of the IB and needs to be celebrated by promoting our similarities as well as our differences in the recognition of shared humanity.
