In the book “What Universities Can be”, Robert Sternberg (a psychologist and psychometrician at Cornell University) devotes a chapter to diversity in higher education. He begins this chapter by saying rather frankly that people learn better and learn more if they are mixed in with people who don’t look and think like them. He says “You cannot be an active concerned citizen if your only concerns are for people you view as like yourself” (Sternberg, 73).
This is an anecdotal claim at this point, and he uses it to identify with the readers because it is sort of a no brainer concept if you think about it. Our social and educational experience can only benefit if we have variety in our peers. Sternberg than uses a few study examples, one being done in rural Kenya. This study pooled Kenyans and asked them to identify herbs that would help heal with different ailments. They all did a great job with this, but when the objective changed and they tested these same people in more academic tests, the results weren’t as good. This study is used to illustrate his point that there are different types of knowledge and intelligence. One group of people (mostly western, white people in this case) can be better at testing and doing well in standardized settings, while the other group of people might not do so well in that area but excels in the area of experiential knowledge, of being able to identify and do things in the real world outside of the classroom. Another example is using Alaskan Yup’ik peoples, who are able to do things like ride a dog sled over vast areas and hunt animals and identify that storms may be on the way by examining their kill. These sorts of things are unimaginable for most students or people who aren’t part of that culture.
This goes further into what Sternberg calls implicit theories of intelligence- folks ideas of what they consider to be smart. The same idea is very prevalent in high school and college testing, where white people who tend to be more affluent do better on these exams and end up in a better situation for college and life afterwards, and minorities who may not do as well on these exams are slighted, yet they excel in other areas of intelligence such as in the social realm.
This chapter from the book has an academic style to it, yet the messaging to the audience could be more broad than someone who is in one of his psychology courses. He uses studies to back up his arguments about diversity and also brings personal experience to identify with the readers easier. What we can take from this chapter is that diversity and inclusion are important to the whole picture of academic life, and we benefit as a whole from participating in it. There is more than one cog in the wheel when it comes to intelligence so it serves us better to include as many of them as we can.
I have included a link for further reading from Forbes that addresses the new changes in college admission testing since the pandemic, and how the lack of using these exams may be helping expand diversity in colleges:http:// https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/04/27/sat-act-policies-may-improve-diversity-at-colleges-and-universities/#4eb2b3f83bd5
j.ctt20d890h.8 This is the link to the pdf file of my article I summarized
Good work, Aaron–sounds like an interesting study. I’d be interested to see you carry your analysis (in that next-to-the-last paragraph) even further to connect the dots to our ongoing discussions.
Note that your link doesn’t work (because there are 2 “http”s in it–just edit your post to fix that)