diversity

**//Have you ever wondering why schools want to have diversity? Is it just to look good to the public eye, or is there something more? Keep reading to find out ... //**



 After reading this article from the Admissions at the University of Michigan, it seems that a diverse community is an important aspect of student life. The university wrote, "A first-class education is one that creates the opportunity for students, expecting differences, to learn instead of similarities. Likewise, encountering differences rather than one's mirror image, is an essential part of a good education. Race is educationally important for all students, because understanding race in America is a powerful metaphor for crossing sensibilities of all kinds."

Learning about different races can help people learn about different societies and cultures. They are saying that being a part of a diverse community can help people learn hands-on, compared to media images which lead to stereo-typing. This happened back when things were segregated. Nobody really knew about the other groups of people except from the media.

I think in our society people believe that race is important because we make it important. Since race is blown up to be this big important thing, schools use diversity as a way to attract students and their parents. It is believed to be a great aspect in a school, so I think all schools are trying to create a diverse enviornment, but some are being questioned.

Click here to learn about racial diversity in one Christain high school.


 * //This leads us into how schools create diverse enviornments. We now know why they want to, but how is this accomplished? Affirmative action has a lot to do with it...//**

Affirmative action helps people of color overcome racism. It gives them an equal chance to compete in the educational field. Schools can accept students based more on race than on grades because they are trying to give equal opportunities to everyone and not discriminate towards certain groups of people. Some schools may have a variety of different people just by going through the normal application process, and not even taking race into consideration. This, however, probably does not happen too often, so affirmative action is there to help. Affirmative action is the reason schools can create a diverse community. Affirmative action definitely sounds like a great thing, but for every great thing, there are always controversies. There's no doubt that affirmative action helps minority groups, but some people in majority groups thinks it hurts their chances of getting into a good school. They have good grades, but they feel like a person of a different background beats them out for a spot just because the school wants to be diverse. According to the National Organization for Women, those people shouldn't be mad. The organization says, "I f half of the people of color who are admitted to schools under affirmative action programs were cut, the acceptance rates of white men would only increase by 2%." Going off of this statistic, affirmative action is fair to everyone. It really doesn't affect the people in majority groups that much.



Next, I plan to go into more details about problems that arise with affirmative action: the pros, the cons, and how it has changed over time. I would also like to find some statistics on the change in diversity in universities and private, non-religious schools.

AnnBibCarlton