The Montpelier (Vermont) Times Argus reported a few days ago on a state program aimed at promoting teacher diversity.
The 3-year-old program repays up to $12,000 in educational loans for people of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds who teach in Vermont public schools after earning their degrees.
Hmm. You might wonder — I know I did — how “diverse” one’s background need be to qualify for the $12,000 state subsidy. Once again that trend-setting student from the University of Central Florida (discussed here) whose goal was to become “diverse” comes to mind. Maybe he’s Vermont’s ideal candidate.
Well, I’m sure you’ve figured this out by now. Vermont doesn’t mean diverse by “diverse” any more than Michigan or any other place else does. The program does favor people “from diverse ethnic backgrounds,” says director Phyl Newbeck, “but selection is made by more than skin color.”
Newbeck said the ultimate goal of the program is to increase minority representation among Vermont teachers and widen the horizons of schoolchildren in the nation’s second-whitest state.
“The children will get a wider variety of role models,” she said. “They’ll see people they don’t usually see in an authority position.”
Funded by a $100,000 one-time grant from the state Legislature in 1999 and private contributions, the program chooses candidates based on a broad definition of diversity. Anyone who can make a case for the uniqueness of their background is encouraged to apply, Newbeck said, though people belonging to minority racial groups will have an advantage.
So, “diversity” means color or ethnicity after all. Surprise, surprise. Oh wait, this program uses “a broad definition of diversity.” That means you can try to persuade the state that your background is “unique.”
So far 10 applicants have been selected, and they hail from 5 countries and a race: Bosnia (2), Jamaica, Cuba, Venezuela, Thailand and one African-American.
No doubt the lucky students of Vermont will be immeasurably enriched by observing teachers with such diverse/unique backgrounds in positions of authority. Nor, of course, will any poor Vermonters who would have loved to become teachers, and could have with a $12,000 subsidy, resent that they were effectively excluded from the program because they were not “diverse.”
Vermont is 99 percent white. Perhaps Vermonters should just learn to celebrate their homogeneity.
Interestingly, North Carolina has diversity scholarships to its colleges and universities, and white North Carolina residents can get money to attend North Carolina’s public historically black colleges and universities.
Government can’t regulate who lives in Vermont- they can’t say oh we have to have less white people here and we must make it diverse, because how can you force populations to move in? Such a thing would be discriminatory in itself… choosing a place to live is a freedom that we should have and government regulation of the population would be contradictory to people’s right to make decisions for themselves… where people choose to live has to do with a number of factors… climate, jobs, etc. and the distribution of populations is something that not only is impossible to control, but furthermore is not something that rightfully should be under the jurisdiction of the government.