Diversity and Dialogue

“It is amazing what we can learn about each other and each other's family when we just take the time to listen! I am convinced that if we spent more time talking to people about their families and their homes rather than their jobs and their college educations, we would know each other so much more and we would grow closer to each other than we ever thought possible. I try to do the same thing with my students, actually. My students, like most teenagers, get fixated on the surface level of their classmates and never know what is happening in each other's life. I create space and time for them to "cultivate Love" in the classroom. It is a slow process for the younger students, but my juniors and seniors really.”

In my junior level class I teach about “the Other”. I explain the concept this way: in sociology, “the Other” is anyone who is not a member of the “mainstream” demographic in a given society. Of course, this term is entirely relative to the culture in which one finds oneself, but, for our purposes in the United States, “the Other” is anyone who is not white, male, Christian, and heterosexual. I go further and explain to my students that in a philosophical sense, “the Other” is really anyone who is not you. Every human is “the Other” to each other, to varying degrees. The more different we are from each other in terms of our material or surface Truth, the more “the Other” we are. Why does this matter in school? Why does diversity matter?

The Holy Family. St. Theresa Church Discalced Carmelites in Dublin, Ireland. Ultimately, God is "the Other" to us in ways more profound than any "other" in time and space. Relationship with God through the Incarnate Jesus, then, is an opportunity to encounter Love more profoundly than we can experience with other humans. (photo P. Smith) 

At the beginning of this blog I was responding to one of my online participants as they were telling me how she and her colleagues  had met in small groups and in their conversation…their dialogue… they came to know each other better…they came to empathize and even Love each other more fully. Seems obvious. Why does this matter? Education is about creating dialogue between oneself and the world or “the Other”, and, in so doing, we stretch ourselves and expand our understanding of who we are and who “the Other” is. The more diverse your learning community, the more potential for that “stretch” of self. The Authentic Self, as I write in another blog, is one who fully Loves and is Loved, but this Self cannot be achieved by oneself, alone. It requires diversity in the classroom and in one’s life. It is a slow process, this “stretching”, especially with adolescents as it is easier and “safer” for them to surround themselves with people who look like them and talk like them. It takes less effort and it is more comfortable. My students tend to understand this theory; it is logical. But no matter how rational we can make this concept and no matter how well they understand the need to be vulnerable to “the Other” and to listen to “the Other”, ultimately, they must freely choose to engage in dialogue with “the Other”.    As teachers, the best thing we can do is try to create a space in the classroom where students can begin to Love and be Loved in this way. We cannot force dialogue, but we can create space and precedent for relationship with “the Other” to occur.