DIVERSITY AND ACCEPTANCE

ELIEZER R. RAMIREZ

Psychologists and educators agree that teachers have a strong influence on children’s views about diversity. If they remain silent, they will likely take their cue from other sources, not necessarily positive or healthy ones. Teachers can help children develop their own attitudes towards cultural diversity by giving them accurate information about their own heritage and about other cultures and by helping that bigotry and intolerance are hurtful.

It is important to promote a strong, positive self-image from the first years of life. Building and maintaining a healthy self-identity is a life-long process and includes learning to get along with people different from ourselves. While it is fine to be proud of your own cultural identity or heritage, it doesn’t mean that yours is superior to someone else’s.

Children need to be taught to respect others and not to pre-judge them. They can help them see that there is much to learn from people who are different from themselves, including those who live far away or lived long ago. They must teach them to behave respectfully towards other people and make it clear that it is wrong to tease or reject a person because of his or her appearance or heritage. They must also make them understand that some people behave in harmful ways towards others, and that their behavior should not be tolerated.

Bias based on gender, race, disability, or social class creates serious obstacle to all young children’s healthy development. Children can begin to learn at an early age to resist bias and to value the difference between people as much as the similarities.

Remember that children will model teacher’s behavior towards others.

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The author is Teacher III at San Antonio Elementary, Guagua West District