fossildoc
11-23-2007, 05:34 AM
As usual, this post does not target any particular school.
During the period of denouement with the former Soviet Union, someone convinced the politicians that the most sensible route to easing tensions between doctrinally opposed cultures was direct person-to-person contact among average working people, as opposed to legalistic and military posturing. And so, the United States and the Soviet Union began an exchange program in which certain categories of people, including whole families, would visit the other country for a year or so, then return home to tell everyone that the folks over there weren't "so bad" after all.
There were complications, of course. For a while, every time we sent someone to the Soviet Union, they reciprocated with spies. We sent ice skaters, they sent spies. We sent students, they sent spies. We sent ballet dancers, they sent -- that's right -- spies. Have you ever seen a KGB agent in leotards?
The whole thing fell apart when the entire Russian ice skating team -- including spies -- defected. Then the Soviets got real, and the program continued. The end result was the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which was prodromal of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The lesson to be learned from this is that diversity is a Good Thing. Whether based on religion, race, language, culture, political ideology, or opinion of rap music, the mixing of groups teaches us that previously held notions of irreconcilable differences turn out to be unfounded; in other words, it teaches tolerance for each other's beliefs and practices, and lessens tensions between groups that would otherwise be poised to attack each other based on misconceptions of the other's motives and intentions.
It is also stimulating to mix with folks unlike oneself. Native born Americans tend to think the United States is the only country in the world, and that there are no ways of living other than the American way. Spirited discussion with people of other cultures dispels such notions, and make one a more humanistic person, in my opinion.
There will be fringe tensions that will not be ameliorated by cultural exchange. For example, I hope the American people will never tolerate the flogging of lawbreakers, no matter what the others' beliefs may be. Such extreme examples, thankfully, are rare, and should not stand in the way of implementing cultural exchange between divergent peoples.
In the past half century in the United States, certain well-intentioned efforts to promote easing of racial tensions through person-to-person contact resulted in de facto segregation, which is not a good thing. "De facto" was a favorite term of that period, although you don't hear it used much today. It refers to an unintentional yet real effect of some unrelated activity. For example, the HMO movement created a de facto healthcare crisis for some individuals, a situation which HMOs were purportedly designed to alleviate.
Certain types of segregation are acceptable in most societies, particularly with respect to schools, and other types are not. We would never tolerate a school that shut out members of some race, but we do it all the time based on religion. We have Catholic schools, Lutheran schools, Baptist schools, yeshivas (Jewish schools), and the like.
There is a de facto cultural segregation occurring in some medical schools. De facto implies that it is real, yet unintentional. It is a Bad Thing, in my opinion. I would feel really strange in an all-white school or in a school where there were "tokens" to satisfy some law, and equally misplaced where I was the only white. As I've stated, cultural diversity is highly desirable, and that's how I think med schools should be, but certain marketing or admissions practices have unintentionally produced de facto segregation, not only among the student body, but among the faculty as well.
If owners really want their school to be exclusively for one race, religion, or culture, they should make the announcement and be done with it, but to ignore de facto segregation is not a good idea because it will alienate the minority groups, just as segregationist policies did in the early twentieth century, and bring the school into disrepute.
What should be done? Sorry, I only know the questions, not the answers. I've seen what hasn't worked, however. Various experiments in the United States included "affirmative action", which is still the official policy of government agencies and many colleges. In practice, however, affirmative action became a little too affirmative, to the point of becoming reverse discrimination, a charge leveled by the leadership of the very minorities whom such programs were intended to help. Those leaders wanted equality, not handouts. A short-lived experiment involved racial quotas -- the most extreme form of affirmative action -- which just about everybody decries today.
De facto segregation in the medical schools is a difficult problem whose solution exceeds my limited capacities. I would like to see at least a feeble attempt by school owners to grapple with this problem, and try various remedies. Students are generally better at finding solutions to anything than administrators are, just as ordinary folk were more effective than politicians and generals in bringing down the Soviet Union. Students should be polled for their opinions, and possibly therein lies the solution to segregation in our schools.
During the period of denouement with the former Soviet Union, someone convinced the politicians that the most sensible route to easing tensions between doctrinally opposed cultures was direct person-to-person contact among average working people, as opposed to legalistic and military posturing. And so, the United States and the Soviet Union began an exchange program in which certain categories of people, including whole families, would visit the other country for a year or so, then return home to tell everyone that the folks over there weren't "so bad" after all.
There were complications, of course. For a while, every time we sent someone to the Soviet Union, they reciprocated with spies. We sent ice skaters, they sent spies. We sent students, they sent spies. We sent ballet dancers, they sent -- that's right -- spies. Have you ever seen a KGB agent in leotards?
The whole thing fell apart when the entire Russian ice skating team -- including spies -- defected. Then the Soviets got real, and the program continued. The end result was the collapse of the Berlin Wall, which was prodromal of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The lesson to be learned from this is that diversity is a Good Thing. Whether based on religion, race, language, culture, political ideology, or opinion of rap music, the mixing of groups teaches us that previously held notions of irreconcilable differences turn out to be unfounded; in other words, it teaches tolerance for each other's beliefs and practices, and lessens tensions between groups that would otherwise be poised to attack each other based on misconceptions of the other's motives and intentions.
It is also stimulating to mix with folks unlike oneself. Native born Americans tend to think the United States is the only country in the world, and that there are no ways of living other than the American way. Spirited discussion with people of other cultures dispels such notions, and make one a more humanistic person, in my opinion.
There will be fringe tensions that will not be ameliorated by cultural exchange. For example, I hope the American people will never tolerate the flogging of lawbreakers, no matter what the others' beliefs may be. Such extreme examples, thankfully, are rare, and should not stand in the way of implementing cultural exchange between divergent peoples.
In the past half century in the United States, certain well-intentioned efforts to promote easing of racial tensions through person-to-person contact resulted in de facto segregation, which is not a good thing. "De facto" was a favorite term of that period, although you don't hear it used much today. It refers to an unintentional yet real effect of some unrelated activity. For example, the HMO movement created a de facto healthcare crisis for some individuals, a situation which HMOs were purportedly designed to alleviate.
Certain types of segregation are acceptable in most societies, particularly with respect to schools, and other types are not. We would never tolerate a school that shut out members of some race, but we do it all the time based on religion. We have Catholic schools, Lutheran schools, Baptist schools, yeshivas (Jewish schools), and the like.
There is a de facto cultural segregation occurring in some medical schools. De facto implies that it is real, yet unintentional. It is a Bad Thing, in my opinion. I would feel really strange in an all-white school or in a school where there were "tokens" to satisfy some law, and equally misplaced where I was the only white. As I've stated, cultural diversity is highly desirable, and that's how I think med schools should be, but certain marketing or admissions practices have unintentionally produced de facto segregation, not only among the student body, but among the faculty as well.
If owners really want their school to be exclusively for one race, religion, or culture, they should make the announcement and be done with it, but to ignore de facto segregation is not a good idea because it will alienate the minority groups, just as segregationist policies did in the early twentieth century, and bring the school into disrepute.
What should be done? Sorry, I only know the questions, not the answers. I've seen what hasn't worked, however. Various experiments in the United States included "affirmative action", which is still the official policy of government agencies and many colleges. In practice, however, affirmative action became a little too affirmative, to the point of becoming reverse discrimination, a charge leveled by the leadership of the very minorities whom such programs were intended to help. Those leaders wanted equality, not handouts. A short-lived experiment involved racial quotas -- the most extreme form of affirmative action -- which just about everybody decries today.
De facto segregation in the medical schools is a difficult problem whose solution exceeds my limited capacities. I would like to see at least a feeble attempt by school owners to grapple with this problem, and try various remedies. Students are generally better at finding solutions to anything than administrators are, just as ordinary folk were more effective than politicians and generals in bringing down the Soviet Union. Students should be polled for their opinions, and possibly therein lies the solution to segregation in our schools.