Milton Alan Turner
French and Spanish Teacher, Saint Ignatius High School

In a July 16, 2023 article on Forbes.com entitled, “Is DEI officially dead?” https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2023/07/16/is-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-officially-dead, Janice Gassam Asare wrote, 

DEI in higher education is facing repeated attacks. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has become one of the most vocal figures in the anti-DEI movement. In May of 2023, DeSantis signed legislation prohibiting public colleges and universities from funding DEI initiatives in the state of Florida. An anti-DEI legislation tracker from Bestcolleges.com revealed that as of June, there were several states where anti-DEI legislation had been introduced or approved including Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Oklahoma. (Gassam Asare 2023)

But what is it about DEI that is triggering attacks or backlash? Why are diversity, equity, and inclusion now viewed as bad things? Isn’t creating an environment of respect and belonging something to which we should all aspire?

The unfortunate fact is that diversity, equity, and inclusion are associated with educational topics such as social-emotional learning and social justice and, as a result, with uncomfortable issues like race and racism. Unfortunately, race and racism (like politics and religion) are topics that many people prefer to avoid rather than acknowledge and discuss. Like critical race theory and social-emotional learning, DEI becomes a proxy for anything uncomfortable and becomes redefined as something divisive, threatening, and dangerous.

However, education and learning do not happen in a vacuum. Everything must be understood in its proper context. For this reason, Jesuit education is rooted in the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm, which envisions all learning as

• Situated in a specific context.
• Rooted in previous experience and the result of new learning experiences.
• Dependent upon – and deepened by – reflection about those experiences.
• Made meaningful when new knowledge is put into some kind of action.
• Reinforced by explicit evaluation (and ultimately, self-evaluation) of those actions and the degree to which learning has occurred.

Understanding the context of our students is a prerequisite for successful education. From the linguistic science of pragmatics, we also know that understanding the context of any conversation is a prerequisite for successful communication. You cannot separate what is said from who says it and in what context. After a sports match where Team A defeats Team B, you interpret the expression “That’s just great!” very differently if the speaker supports Team B rather than Team A.

One of the three modes of communication used in language is interpersonal communication. Most fields actively teach the other two modes: interpretive and presentational communication. World language education is unique in fact that we explicitly teach interpersonal communication.  Interpersonal communication requires listening to one another, negotiating and interpreting meaning, and arriving at a mutual understanding. We must understand the context of our interlocutor to communicate with him or her effectively.

The importance of culture in world language is largely why Ohio’s 2020 revision of language standards now leads with culture before communication. As the introduction to the revised standards explains, “The standards also change the order in which the learning end goals are presented, with Cultures preceding Communication. Placing the Cultures standards in the first position sends a clear message to Ohio educators that the study of culture is equal to language study. To achieve high levels of proficiency in another language, learners must simultaneously develop their intercultural competence and communicative proficiency.”

One of the points of teaching languages is to get our students to embrace differences—to embrace diversity. We want our students to view difference as normal and as good. Different is neither inherently worse nor better; it is simply different!

Refusing to acknowledge differences is not only bad policy, it’s bad pedagogy. We know that ignoring difficult issues like prejudice and race does not make them go away and that explicit targeted teaching about racism and prejudice is the most effective way to combat and eliminate it. Ignoring differences does not make it go away. It makes matters worse. It fosters inequity and exclusion.

DEI is essentially about expanding opportunities for everyone. Strategies for doing this include identifying and mitigating biases and being supportive to a wide range of students. Far from being divisive or threatening, this is welcoming and inclusive, which is what an effective classroom should be.

The College Board’s Advanced Placement French, German, Italian, and Spanish Language and Culture Courses use the theme Public and Personal Identities. AP Classroom addresses this theme in the unit The Influence of Language and Culture on Identity.  As the article implies, people can have multiple identities.  Our job as educators should be to make students aware of these possibilities in their home and target cultures and assist them in successfully navigating these identities.

In the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 2 musical episode “Subspace Rhapsody,” Ensign Nyota Uhura, the Kenyan-born specialist in xenolinguistics, questions her value as a crew member on the U.S.S. Enterprise. During her solo song, she realizes that her job as communication officer and linguist is to “light the path” for others to follow and, as the song title states, to “keep us connected” (which can be viewed on YouTube at https://youtu.be/V9dP6KBFmQU?si=Yt5U0VgrN3aMITlL ).

Embracing DEI in our roles as world languages and cultures educators allows us to “light the path” that will allow others to discover new worlds while at the same time keeping us all connected.