Students are challenged to demonstrate respect and appreciation for people of different cultures, religions, genders and economic backgrounds.
While there is a wide variety of strategies to “measure” the degree to which students embrace diversity, it is also true that this task is much more difficult to quantify than, say, academic excellence.
So, it was in search of ways to measure the diversity statement that caused me to bring my digital camera to the Freshman Retreat. I thought that a useful approach would be to photograph our newest students’ interactions during a highly organized activity. Then we could observe them over the course of the next twelve months to see if they organized themselves in homogenous or heterogeneous ways when they thought the adults weren’t noticing. The students were randomly assigned to small work groups, which insured that they would be interacting with a diverse set of peers (not difficult to do in a School where 50% of our students are non-white!). I proceeded to record their activities with my camera and, when I reviewed the day’s activities, found smiling, engaged, and enthusiastic teenagers happily interacting with their new classmates.
It was because of this experience that I was surprised to learn about a new study published by Robert Putnam which concluded that the greater diversity there is in a community, the fewer people vote and the less often they volunteer, give to charity, or work on community projects. In fact, in the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. In short, the author found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
Putman has spent the last twenty years conducting research on “social capital” – the concept that social networks – friendships, neighborhood associations, religious congregations, etc. – are key indicators of civic well-being. His best known work on the subject was the book Bowling Alone, published in 2000, in which he first observed a declining pattern of civic engagement (of which social capital is a by-product).
In becoming familiar with Putnam’s claim about an apparent inverse relationship between the diversity of a community and the civic engagement of its members, I realized that we here at La Salle take for granted the three underlying assumptions of our mission to encourage students to celebrate diversity:
o The heritage of the Christian Brothers is rooted in and built upon the notion that Lasallian schools must be accessible to all and treat everyone as brothers and sisters
o As a school located in one of the most diverse metropolitan areas in the United States, our students grow up in communities that are already heterogeneous
o We expect our students to become engaged in and give back to the communities they occupy, especially by leveraging individual and collective talents
And because we here at La Salle place a special emphasis on service learning and community service, I can’t imagine our students leaving us without a clear understanding of and appreciation for the gifts and talents of those around them - and of recognizing the importance of sharing them with each other.
As I looked through the pictures from the Freshman Retreat I realized that we are extraordinarily fortunate to draw students from families who share our communal values. And, after reading about Putnam’s conclusions regarding declining civic engagement in highly diverse communities, I also realize that there was never a more opportune moment for the students entrusted to our care to build the world of the future in which diverse individuals come together to strengthen their community. I think my little photography project may be more valuable than I initially believed.
