Diversity and its Positive Affects on a High School.
If you were to walk into Jericho High School a decade ago you would find a homogeneous student body comprised of wealthy, white, and predominantly Jewish people. This was also true when observing the faculty, made up of mostly White teachers. This created a learning environment that isolated its students from minorities, other races and religions that make up the overall population of this country. Language classes were required just as they are today in high school. Spanish, French and Italian classes were taken not out of personal interest but because it was necessary to graduate and most pupils didn't take them seriously. When kids took the number of credits necessary to graduate, they opted not to pursue a language and dropped the class, making the classes much smaller. Contrary to other high school course offerings there were no Russian, German or Japanese classes taught because when the school attempted to introduce these new classes, students were just not interested in learning about other people and their cultures. This eventually led to ignorance amongst those who were educated at this high school. Teachers were setting their pupils up for a culture shock, one so drastic that it would forever change their outlook on other groups of people. Their unawareness would be detrimental to their life in the long run and more immediately in their attempt at furthering their education in college. In contrast, a more diverse student body would introduce students to people of other backgrounds, help them to understand, interact and embrace other cultures and give them a realistic view of the variety of customs and ways of life present in our society.
Back then, many graduates at this time were going off to college without an understanding of the different backgrounds and ways of life that make up the world in which we live. For lack of a better word, people were living in a bubble; and when they went off to college it burst.