It has been said that if you gain a new language, you gain a new world. When our spirit is universalized, we can cross boundaries and feel comfortable in other worlds. We can teach and learn from others in a mutually supportive effort to acquire a profound respect for the human condition. Schools and educators are entrusted with the responsibility of helping children extend the knowledge and abilities that they are developing in their families and communities. This is done by giving students access to many different points of view, a wide variety of subjects, and diverse experiences.
Diversity is the key to the universalization process of education.
Diversity in education is the opportunity to empower those who have experienced rejection to get their fair share of what has been denied them and ensure that folks who look like me, who have been denied access, are able to make a greater contribution than that which they were allowed to make in the past. I was born in Harlem in New York City. Abandoned by both parents, I was taken to Puerto Rico and raised by relatives. Later, I returned to New York to attend high school. Because my first language was Spanish and teachers were teaching me in English, I could not understand what was going on.