Affirmative Action

Diversification is a value I appreciate in a school. I would love to have more diverse classrooms here at school. From the few experiences I have had, diverse people have greatly broadened my mind. While living in my cultural nutshell, I had the opinion that all foreigners look at America as the best country in the world, and envy Americans. It was not until I talked to people from Israel, Italy, France, Germany, Russia, and Bulgaria, that I realized how egotistical I was. A testimony from Roxane Gudeman at Macalester College on diversification in one of her classes proceeds: .
             In this class the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. It was the collectivity of students .
             that exponentially enhanced class discussion and contributed to better research for every member of the class. For example, the U.S. students of color helped us interpret and analyze readings pertaining to biculturalism. The Latino students helped a European-American design a study of learning at a Spanish immersion school in St. Paul. A Turkish international student made valuable contributions when we discussed another student's research on the significance of gendered features of the Japanese language. (Turkish lacks the kinds of grammatical gender marking found in Japanese and other languages spoken by class members.) Students with multiple cultures or origin introduced challenging perspectives on issues of cultural identity in the United States and on the process of cultural acquisition and enactment. All students were able to contribute cogent original ideas and interpretations because their rich variety of experiences in varying geographical and (multi-)cultural contexts created opportunities for nuanced comparative analyses. Classroom encounters of these kinds did not occur at "quality" educational institutions when I was a student of social science. Even when occasional non-European-Americans were in my classes, they were there to learn Western models and methods, not to teach and collaborate.