The Effect of Diversity on School Experience
Heather Sanderson
Eastern Connecticut State University
Dr. David Stoloff
January 20, 2018
We all have unique school experiences based on our genders, our socio-economic statuses, and our ethnicities. For this assignment I interviewed a peer who is 22 years younger than me as well as a male peer-teacher who is similar in age to me. Through these interviews, I realized how fortunate I am to have had a much more diverse school experience than my peers.
Both peers expressed regret that their suburban school experiences lacked diversity. My younger peer, who attended school in an affluent suburb, had some classmates of Indian and Asian descent, but few Hispanic or black classmates. Her school had an Open Choice program that included students from Hartford, but the town only took a small number of these students. As a result, her friend group was mostly white, her teachers were mostly white, and her experience overall felt “sheltered’ and “like she grew up in a bubble.” When she went to college, her roommate happened to be a black student from Hartford who often struggled financially and academically. This experienced opened her eyes to the daily struggle that students from lower-income areas and under-funded school districts must endure. She said, “I felt like I had it easy compared to my roommate.”
My male peer attended a working-class suburban school district that lacked any racial diversity at all. As a result, many of his classmates developed racial biases that were sometimes overtly expressed. He participated in sports, and when his team traveled to play “city schools,” he can recall his teammates making ignorant comments, such as “We are going to the ghetto “or “We are gonna get shot.” His town also had the terrible distinction of not celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which received much negative publicity at the time. He remembers that a white supremacy group organized a march there. In his words, “it was embarrassing.” It was not until college when he received a “proper education” that he began to appreciate racial and economic inequalities. As an English major, he read books written by African American, Hispanic, and Native American authors, and he worked with children in a government subsidized housing project, which he credits as helping him to overcome his own ignorance and biases.
I find it interesting that both peers credit their college experiences for offering a better understanding of diversity. What happens to the kids in those suburban towns who do not go to college? How do they overcome ignorance without the exposure to other racial and ethnic groups? Are high schools in Connecticut still too segregated? Do school districts do enough to celebrate diversity?
On the other hand, I grew up in a single-parent, low-income household and in a more diverse urban school district. The makeup of my high school was approximately 50% white, 30% black, and 20% Hispanic. While my school was diverse, my classes did not reflect those same percentages. Honors classes had mainly white students, with perhaps just two or three minority students. Socially, however, students of diverse backgrounds did get along and develop strong friendships. I was a cheerleader during high school, and since athletics were popular, our diverse squad socialized with many of the athletes who were also from different racial, ethnic, and economic backgrounds. While my urban school may not have scored as highly on standardized tests as my peers’ schools, I still feel as if I received the better education. Heading into college, I was much more sensitive and culturally aware than they seemed to be.
While I had a positive school experience and am grateful to have been educated with classmates from different races and ethnicities, we still had no black or Hispanic teachers or administrators. I sometimes wonder, were all my classmates treated fairly? Perhaps the diverse population of my school would have benefited from a more diverse faculty?