Benefits of Diversity

To prepare our students for life and leadership, our educational philosophy must focus on the total, or holistic, development of students as people. Students develop in many dimensions in their Agricultural Education programs: intellectually, cognitively, socially, emotionally, culturally, and psychologically.

To help our students learn and grow in all these dimensions, we must strive to immerse our students in an environment that is conducive to learning both inside and outside the classroom. Our responsibilities as educators include providing content and context, promoting professional and personal growth, supporting career planning, and the development of skills, and fostering the ability to negotiate a complex and dynamic social world.

Agricultural Education, building on our traditions of problem-solving and interdisciplinary collaboration, must educate with an eye to the future, to help our students meet the changing needs of society. We must be committed to an educational environment that fosters exploration, discovery, creativity, design, and invention. Overall, we must strive for our students to be at the forefront of enhancing the quality of life.

We must aim to prepare students for the complexity and diversity of our society - to recognize, value, and learn from heterogeneous cultures, communities, and perspectives. Our goal must be to develop a fundamental respect for different ways of living, working, and learning. Valuing diversity goes beyond a simple tolerance of different backgrounds and approaches: it recognizes, appreciates, and facilitates the processes involved in the exploration and discovery of the unfamiliar, allowing for a variety of ways to think about and communicate ideas. Furthermore, valuing diversity makes for stronger affiliations within our community and enhances our ability to be effective in an increasingly complex and pluralistic society. Our students must understand and respect people and ways of life that are different from their own.

Diversity expands and enhances what we already do. By increasing our comfort levels with differences, we increase our flexibility to learn in different ways to enrich our students' experiences, both educational and otherwise. Diversity encourages critical thinking and increases communication across cultural borders, and helps to forge relationships. Diversity of views and perspectives is important in any educational program, but especially in Agricultural Education programs, which rely so heavily on collaboration as a basis for innovation. Fostering mutual respect for our differences strengthens our total Agricultural Education community.

Learning to navigate a rich array of diverse communities is a life skill needed for any person in a world brought together through technology and ease of travel and communication. True exchange of ideas - a key to progress - requires sensitivity to and understanding of others' views, values, and ideas.

All of these things will not happen simply because diverse students are thrown together to work and play. We, as educators, must create the conditions that enable diversity to enhance - not hinder - intellectual and social growth among all students, both within and outside the classroom. The frequency and quality of interactions and the social milieu in which they take place are vital. Environments that foster equal status interactions, afford opportunities to explore the existence of common goals, provide occasion for informal one-on-one interactions, and espouse social norms that endorse equality and group interaction are the ones that are most likely to experience the immense benefit that diversity can offer. In other words, we cannot just throw students with vast differences together without any support; we need to teach them how to negotiate those differences and use them to everyone's advantage.

In conclusion, we must be committed to the holistic development of our students, we must aspire for them to excel not only as professionals, but also as human beings, devoted to the principles of a multicultural and democratic nation. And finally, we must prepare our students to move through multiple communities in this increasingly complex and opportunity rich world, we must believe they will make a difference!