September 17, 2003
Diversity Proficiency

The Seattle Public Schools are in the process of revising the high school graduation requirements. Among some of the proposed new requirements is the following:

Areas of proficiency
The student will demonstrate competency in targeted skills in each of the following areas of proficiency. These demonstrations will take the form of exhibitions, projects, portfolios or performances.

Communication (2008) Quantitative and Scientific Reasoning (2009) Democracy, Diversity and Community Stewardship (2010) Career Awareness and Life Skills (2011) The Arts (2012)
I haven't seen any specific proposals that explain how one might demonstrate he is "proficient at diversity", so I'm not sure what they mean. I think about my son David, who should be in the high school class of 2020. His paternal grandfather is a Jewish Israeli, his maternal grandparents were born in Korea, his half-sister is 3/8 black and 1/8 American Indian. I'll be fascinated to see what the Seattle Public Schools are going to teach David about being proficient at diversity.

In the meantime, among the other essentials the Seattle Schools might want to add to its graduation requirements:
* Safe and responsible firearm use
* Capitalism and the free-market
* How to be a self-sufficient member of society who doesn't expect the government to satisfy his every whim.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 17, 2003 07:01 AM
Comments

The "quantitative and scientific reasoning" thing sounds interesting, though.

Posted by: David Foster on September 17, 2003 04:41 PM

What happened to the ability to read, write and compute (arithmetic)? There's some diversity that we are sorely lacking in a great many hiigh-school graduates (and not a few college grads too)!

Posted by: DK on September 17, 2003 08:32 PM
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