Understanding Equity

Diversity is individuality, the state of being unique. We humans offer a variety of interests, needs, orientations, talents, medical conditions, and neurological patterns besides gender, caste, class and creed based diversity. Diversity is us and we are diversity defined.

As children are born, their uniqueness is celebrated. However, as they grow, we as a society tend to bring them into the fold. We develop the ‘sameness’ in the child. Each day, their diverse ideas, ways of seeing the world, their interests and needs change. And while children also grow to become more diverse through the process of conditioning and their own internal journey of self awareness, the outside world, on the contrary, demands the sameness as a means to create order, an easy way to run the show, or let’s just say to get things done in this world.

Sameness of the content and the pace of learning, the norms of the curriculum, then the board of examinations, the discipline of each subject and finally the sameness in wanting to enter the different professions and what they entail, all take us humans away from that uniqueness, the diversity that made us, us.

As a society, we understand that each one of us is diverse or unique; not just in our outward appearances, but deep within our thoughts, interests, passions and ways of doing, being and seeing. But we have not yet found a way to value human diversity through all phases of life. Early years pedagogy salutes the diversity of each child. Montessori, Steiner, Reggio Emelia and Te Whariki are well known approaches where each early childhood learners’ diverse skills and ways to learn and communicate are considered to be the prerequisites for their learning.

As we grow out of that age though, we long to express this diversity. Expectations suddenly change. We are expected to be the same as others in every way. We want to scream to the world that ‘I’, the individual is different, with specific needs to learn, express, live and transact. But there is no time to acknowledge and preserve it. Finally, we give in to the sameness demanded by the world through the rest of our education, only to find that in our professions the biggest need is for unique ideas and diverse, out of the box thinking and to uphold the diverse needs of our team!

If only we had carried on the early years approach for the rest of our academic life and professional training. If only we had nurtured the diversity in an unhurried way all through life, we could have retained our individuality.

Then, we would have retained our spark and our uniqueness. Acknowledging diversity was never at loggerheads with academic rigour of what is taught. We just forgot that celebrating diversity uplifts, develops and nurtures the child who is taught.

To use diversity as a condition for learning, let us know each individual who is learning. Let us slowdown the process so this is possible.