Diversity: It's Everybody's Focus
District 742's commitment to diversity is so strong it's written
into our mission statement:
Our mission is to prepare all learners, in partnership with
their parents and the community, to live and contribute within
a changing and diverse world.
Our commitment to diversity is as beautiful as the many-hued faces
in our classrooms. It's as real as our policies
against hazing, harassment and violence, gender discrimination and disability discrimination.
Diversity is difficult to define because it embraces many concepts,
including tolerance, cultural relativity, equality, fairness and
support for minority points of views. In lieu of a definition, we
offer quotations from famous women and men who have wrestled with
these concepts:
The highest result of education is tolerance.
-- Helen Keller
We must learn to live together as brothers and sisters or perish
together as fools.
-- Martin Luther
King, Jr.
I believe that if we really want humankind to spread and increase
until it makes life safe and sane, we must also be certain that
there is no one true faith or path by which it may spread.
-- Adlai Stevenson,
Jr.
I was the son of an immigrant. I experienced bigotry, intolerance
and prejudice, even as so many of you have. Instead of allowing
these things to embitter me, I took them as spurs to more strenuous
effort.
-- Andre Bernard
Buruch
To hate a person because he was born in another country, because
he speaks a different language, or because he takes a different
view of this subject or that, is a great folly. Desist, I implore
you, for we are all equally human.
-- John Comenius
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