U of Manitoba Education faculty - 45% students slots for five "diversity categories"

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Though, I feel dumb that I have to ask, what's your point anyway? What does this have to do with diversity categories at U of M?

Are all disparities in post-secondary education participation due to systemic discrimination? What is the purpose of quotas? Are quotas the best way to address disparities?

We can get a useful perspective on these questions by looking at a major disparity in post-secondary education: participation by gender.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Are all disparities in post-secondary education participation due to systemic discrimination? What is the purpose of quotas? Are quotas the best way to address disparities?



We can get a useful perspective on these questions by looking at a major disparity in post-secondary education: participation by gender.

The best way? Maybe not but I think it connects to your previous point of representation and your assertions on the impact it has on the male student.

If you believe that part of a male student's success is negatively impacted because most teachers are apparently female, thus attributing learning and reading to girls due to lack of male representation, doesn't it make sense that increasing the amount of indigenous teachers would have a positive impact on the success rates of indigenous students in the system?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

And I don't think there's any doubt that there are systemic reasons for that. But I don't see this sort of policy as making any difference in addressing those.

As for the other targeted groups, I tend to doubt that the barriers are anything but financial. Is there really any systemic bias preventing LGBT people or physically disabled people, or people from remote areas, from going to university? It doesn't seem so to me.

EDIT: Actually the last one seems sort of practical; are there not issues getting people to teach in remote communities? If so, getting more people in the program from those areas might be a good idea.

You don't think there are reasons why an LGBTQ kid, or a kid with disabilities might perform worse during high school? Think about being a gay or transgender student living in a household or community where that might not be acceptable.

[rubecube]

Okay, Cliff, we get that you don't think this is the best way of doing things, so how would you try to get more indigenous, LGBTQ, and disabled people into universities?

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Yeah, that wasn't really my point though. If someone wants to go to postsecondary and has the ability to do so, but is being prevented from doing so for reasons beyond their control, then we should be doing what we can to get them there.

I'm aware that your point was not that post-secondary entrance is the only factor that K-12 education should be concerned with, but it should be remembered that it is only one of a variety of benefits. It's a very easy topic for a discussion to get derailed by into missing other major components of the value of having diversity among K-12 teachers. K-12 schools are not just about getting into university.

The goal of the policy, which has been in development since 2012, is to ensure that graduates of the U of M education program help to create a more diverse teaching force in the province, representing the “cultural, ethnic, regional and social diversity of Manitoba.”

“Manitoba is a community of great diversity and as the Faculty of Education, we need to be making a more concerted effort to ensure that our teachers reflect that diversity,” says Melanie Janzen, associate dean, undergraduate programs

Janzen says the policy is an important step for the faculty because it’s an attempt to change the makeup of the Manitoba teaching force so that it better reflects the students and families served by teachers across the province.

“In addition,” she says, “the policy attempts to address the social and historic inequities faced by marginalized groups. For example, Manitoba’s First Nations, Métis and Inuit have faced tremendous historical injustices that have not allowed them the same opportunities as other Manitobans. This policy attempts to address those injustices.”

article from their website

[VladtheImpaler]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Okay, Cliff, we get that you don't think this is the best way of doing things, so how would you try to get more indigenous, LGBTQ, and disabled people into universities?

Abolish reserves, and build more wheelchair ramps?

[Clarkey]

That province is fubar from a social problems perspective.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Okay, Cliff, we get that you don't think this is the best way of doing things, so how would you try to get more indigenous, LGBTQ, and disabled people into universities?

Are LGBTQ and disabled people currently under-represented? I would think that's the first question we should be asking. Let's see some numbers.

As for natives, I've already pointed out that high school graduation rates are woefully low. Why wouldn't you expect a correlation between a lack of success in high school and a low representation in post-secondary education (and the teaching profession)?

So I guess the next question is why the lack of success for natives in high school. There have been all sorts of studies on the subject. But is it any surprise that people who have toxic home lives, with rampant substance abuse and dysfunctional families, not to mention no books in the home or examples of effective study habits, or even stuff as basic as getting a good night sleep at night, is not a recipe for success at school?

You won't improve educational attainment until you improve home lives (and that's as true for non-natives as it is for natives).

[peter12]

Universities are also not just clearing houses for whomever wants to go. Program quality drops with student quality. Why not just push for culture neutral admittance based on merit? Then everyone knows they deserve to be there. As I alluded to earlier, Education faculties, which apparently exist to train future teachers, have now become re-education centres for ideologically motivated teachers and students. I worry what the impact on the education system generally will be in 10 or 20 years.

[opendoor]

Many education programs will have a written portion of the application where an applicant talks about their background and experiences and how they would be an asset in their career as a teacher. That is combined with grades to determine who is offered a spot. That seems like a far better system to me.

If someone can explain why their particular background would aid their teaching career and the education system, then it's a great idea to give that a lot of weight along with grades. And given that you need at least 3 years of post secondary education to even get into the education program at that university, I don't think it's too much to expect any worthy applicant to be able to articulate that as opposed to simply checking a box. And if you don't feel your student body is diverse enough then you can have your selection committee place more emphasis on the written portion, but to just have a quota seems exceptionally lazy to me.

[JohnnyB]

Schools of education have a very important social role to play in developing individual teachers and in shaping the professional teaching work force. They are not simply training people to fill technical or knowledge-based roles. A teacher's role is necessarily related to factors that go beyond knowledge or technical abilities. If a school of education has grounds for believing that they can do a better job of preparing individual teachers and shaping the work force by shifting more emphasis towards teacher diversity, they should do so.

Frankly, I think a teacher education program which requires teachers in training to learn from and with a broad diversity of peers and requires their close interaction with people from the many different backgrounds they will need to work with in future should produce educators better prepared to contribute to the community than would a program which lacks diversity but has students with a slightly higher average gpa.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Could you expand on your assertion that this initiative is discriminatory?

It is pretty much axiomatic that giving some people privileges based on race, sexual orientation etc., and thus disadvantaging others based on those same criteria, is discrimination.

[Makarov]

Originally Posted by SebC

It is pretty much axiomatic that giving some people privileges based on race, sexual orientation etc., and thus disadvantaging others based on those same criteria, is discrimination.

Section 15 of the Charter, for example, exempts activities or laws that have as their object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged groups.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by SebC

It is pretty much axiomatic that giving some people privileges based on race, sexual orientation etc., and thus disadvantaging others based on those same criteria, is discrimination.

It is?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by peter12

Universities are also not just clearing houses for whomever wants to go. Program quality drops with student quality. Why not just push for culture neutral admittance based on merit? Then everyone knows they deserve to be there. As I alluded to earlier, Education faculties, which apparently exist to train future teachers, have now become re-education centres for ideologically motivated teachers and students. I worry what the impact on the education system generally will be in 10 or 20 years.

I'm not even sure what culture neutral admittance would like, but as Cliff mentioned it goes beyond that. As I said, if you have a kid who's hiding his LGBTQ status from his parents and peers, it's probable that they would also be struggling by formalized standards. Same goes for students with disabilities. Anecdotally I'm probably a prime example of this. I was a terrible K-12 student mostly due to the fact that I had ADHD and depression that went undiagnosed/untreated until I hit my 20s and had quite a bit of trouble at home. Flash forward to me getting properly assessed, treated, and provided with the proper resources and accommodations for someone with my disabilities and my GPA is about 3 points higher now than it was during high school.

Obviously quotas themselves aren't going to fix these issues, but unless we want to start pumping more dough into the public school system to provide the necessary resources for these kids, at least we can maybe have more teachers who are able to recognize and relate to the struggles some of these kids face.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by SebC

It is pretty much axiomatic that giving some people privileges based on race, sexual orientation etc., and thus disadvantaging others based on those same criteria, is discrimination.

Who is being disadvantaged in this scenario? And how?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

You don't think there are reasons why an LGBTQ kid, or a kid with disabilities might perform worse during high school? Think about being a gay or transgender student living in a household or community where that might not be acceptable.

This is a fair point. I do think we're doing much better at this now than we were when I was in high school, but it's not perfect. Obviously the better solution to this would be to actually attack the problem at its source in the schools the kids are actually required to go to rather than in post-secondary.

Originally Posted by opendoor

If someone can explain why their particular background would aid their teaching career and the education system, then it's a great idea to give that a lot of weight along with grades. And given that you need at least 3 years of post secondary education to even get into the education program at that university, I don't think it's too much to expect any worthy applicant to be able to articulate that as opposed to simply checking a box. And if you don't feel your student body is diverse enough then you can have your selection committee place more emphasis on the written portion, but to just have a quota seems exceptionally lazy to me.

This makes a bunch of sense to me.

At the end of the day, I think what most people would agree on is that admissions should be based on future potential, rather than past performance - past performance is only useful in so far as it indicates future potential. It is useful for that, but there are other factors to be weighed. If you have some other reason why you'd make a good applicant beyond your grades, there's no reason that shouldn't be taken into account.

This policy, it seems to me, skips that step and simplistically assumes that there needs to be a handicap (in the metaphorical golf sense) to adjust for certain personal characteristics, and this doesn't seem realistically generalizable, even though in some cases it may well be true.

[JohnnyB]

Everyone is so fixated on equity of university admissions that the objective of this decision by the university is being missed. It is not primarily about equity in admissions. It is about reforming the composition of the teaching workforce in order to have a workforce more suitable to the population.

There is a significant difference between the school of education thinking:

a) It seems unfair that more people from minority groups don't get admission to our program, so let's make our admissions more fair.

b) The industry would be better served by teachers who have more experience with and are representative of a variety of groups, so let's adjust our program composition to improve workforce composition.

The university is focused on workforce composition and industry need. To repeat what they state on their website:

The goal of the policy, which has been in development since 2012, is to ensure that graduates of the U of M education program help to create a more diverse teaching force in the province

it’s an attempt to change the makeup of the Manitoba teaching force so that it better reflects the students and families served by teachers

Also, the ability to empathise with diverse children and families is crucial in teaching. A teacher preparation program which emphasises future teachers working with, getting to know, sharing ideas with, understanding and being friends with peers from more diverse experiences is going to produce teachers who are more empathetic to the variety of children and families that they will need to work with in the community. This is a better teacher preparation program.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by JohnnyB

Also, the ability to empathise with diverse children and families is crucial in teaching. A teacher preparation program which emphasises future teachers working with, getting to know, sharing ideas with, understanding and being friends with peers from more diverse experiences is going to produce teachers who are more empathetic to the variety of children and families that they will need to work with in the community. This is a better teacher preparation program.

So the liberal ideal - that people look past one another's gender, race, and religion and regard one another as unique individuals - is pretty much dead? Because judging by the dogma coming from the progressive left these days, it sure looks like it.

And what about the elephant in the room when it comes to society and identity - class. In order to ensure that students from poor families have properly empathetic teachers, should be put quotas in place to increase the number of teachers who were raised in families with < 40K family income? Or raised by families with single-parents, or parents suffering from addictions? Which of the dozens of identities and social influences a person is subject to in their life do we enshrine with 'diversity' status?

[peter12]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Obviously quotas themselves aren't going to fix these issues, but unless we want to start pumping more dough into the public school system to provide the necessary resources for these kids, at least we can maybe have more teachers who are able to recognize and relate to the struggles some of these kids face.

So, incidentally, I agree that the public school system is the real disaster here. I am not actually even sure what the point of a public education is anymore? It seems to be a fairly rote process where students are advanced under a strata of different curriculums designed to suit a crude set of abilities. In reality, the public schools have the most difficult job of all.

And yes, many students are lost under that particular way of doing things. Most importantly, no student, not even the brightest is being equipped to think at the university level.

I was a graduate student, and I taught a few classes for first and second years - all of them political philosophy courses and with a very heavy writing component (typically 2 15 page papers, and then, a 3 hours final exam). I noted a few significant trend:
a) an elite cadre of students - typically 2-5% with natural inborn ability, who were able to excel regardless of difficulty,
b) an even smaller minority of kids who weren't that bright, but had good work effort, and would grind out "B's",
c) a large group of entitled students - from a wide variety of backgrounds, who had been taught ideologically, and learned ideologically, but absolutely failed because they lacked the basic skills.
d) the vast majority of students who obviously had no idea what they were doing in university or why they were doing it. Had come egregiously unprepared, and obviously did not have the merit to maintain anything more than a C or below average in university. We were encouraged to grade these students on the curve.

University should only be for the smartest. In my experience, the best are the only people smart enough to actually achieve that liberal ideal, and share it with minimal bias. Too many students I witnessed were either not able to grasp the intricacies of a liberal education (and why should they be expected to do so!?) or were already set in an ugly pattern of identity politics.

This is my problem with programs like the UofM.