"Diversity" of Educators

Toward the end of the 2005-06 academic year, my colleagues and I were presented with a survey/census for us to complete. The objective of the census was to determine if the hiring practices of my board were "equitable" - and presumably if they were not, to look into the means of addressing the situation. The survey was entirely voluntary, although it was hoped that we would fill it out thus giving them a more "accurate" picture of the diversity of educators.

Typical of the board, their intentions are reasonable, but their efforts are not necessarily grounded in any kind of critical analysis. There are fundamentally two flawed assumptions with their approach:

1. The first problem lies in the assumption that there is a diverse body of potential candidates to draw upon. This is difficult to believe given the nature of public education, higher education, and teachers' college, not to mention the interests and career choices of potential candidates. Therefore, in surveying current employees, one must assume that all cultural, ethnic, racial, and sexual groups are all equally represented in the teacher pool of candidates to hire from.

2. But let's give the Board the benefit of the doubt and assume that they know that there is already the above mentioned flaw. Let's assume that what they are trying to measure, is that in spite of the disproportions in the candidacy pool, their own hiring practices reveal a fairly reasonable level of diversity. Well, based on the questions asked on the survey, the word "diversity" is being used in its current PC guise - namely through qualities like race, culture, ethnicity, as well as sexual orientation. There were certainly no questions with regards to:
A) Philosophy of Education;
B) Economic class (at least growing up);
C) Whether or not educators had entered the profession directly from their own educational training, or whether they had spent limited or significant amount of time doing other occupations or careers;
D) How many have parents and/or other family members who are educators;
E) How many did poorly in school;
and a host of other potential qualifiers that could expand the word "diversity" beyond its current superficial meaning.

It is dangerous to assume that a visually or sexually diverse labour force represents a diversity of ideology. For one thing, if they all accept the institutional nature of public education, then how is that diverse? I maintain that a public system of education that imposes a limited and narrow curriculum in a hierarchical and authoritative manner; that is more concerned about behaviour control and ranking of humans than the right to self-determination, exists to support and preserve power and privilege within a small percentage of the population. A "diverse" body of educators defined by PC terminology does nothing to undermine or subvert the current structure - it does more to keep it in tact as these superficial appearances seem to suggest a "diverse" institution.

I have always supported the emancipation of marginalized voices - namely through the emancipation of the students - who truly represent a diverse and often marginalized population.