Over the course of the year our Principal Richard Dyer will dive into all our Dover Court values. The first value in focus is Diversity, where Mr Dyer looks at the idea that our individuality is defined through our differences.
There is a sentence near the start of our mission statement which challenges us to embrace diversity. Following that challenge, the statement is qualified with a rather intriguing phrase about difference and individuality.
We embrace diversity; our individuality is defined through our differences and together we can achieve more.
Like each aspect of our mission, there is more than meets the eye. The idea is that each part reveals much more if we spend some time thinking about it.
This month, I will focus on this idea that our individuality is defined through our differences.
Some years ago, I spent time in the north-east of Sarawak, trekking across the rainforest with a Kelabit guide called Pian Ulu. The quest was ambitious: to meet with some of the few people of the Penan tribes who still lived their traditional nomadic lifestyle. These people are very different to me. Physically short and stocky, with large, wide feet and earlobes stretched to their shoulders. They are marvellous natural engineers, constructing 2m long blowpipes that are gently curved so that when held to the mouth, they flex under their weight to create a perfectly straight line for the poisoned dart to fly from. They make these blowpipes with respect for their environment, cutting from trees in such a way as to allow the trees to recover. Their clear difference to me got me thinking.
In international schools, we often talk about diversity and what it means to live and work in a multicultural environment. It makes sense to reflect on these things, to think deeply, as the terms themselves need unpacking. To say we are a diverse community is simply a description of the current reality. It begs the question, “What does being part of a diverse community confer on us? How is it a good thing?”
Terms such as “diversity” are used so easily and so frequently that we need to come at them from a new direction if they are to have a fresh impact, so that we can reflect and consider what they mean to us. The result of this, if we are fortunate, might be a profound shift in our thinking. The Greeks have a word for such a mind shift: metanoia. It’s the sort of shift you get when looking at a picture that, all of a sudden, changes perspective. Like when you look at a Necker Cube, the wire-frame drawing of a cube that shifts perspective.
Try this mental exercise for a moment. Think about who you are. Imagine you are about to travel to a new home, a new job. You have been given the email address of someone in your new home who is going to help you settle in. You are going to send two or three sentences about yourself. Two or three things that describe you, who you are. What are those sentences going to be? Is it the same as your Facebook or LinkedIn profile, if you have one? Or something else?
What do people typically say?
“I am from France, have black hair and brown eyes, and like blues music and football.”
Or, “I am tall, have blond hair and blue eyes and speak English and Mandarin Chinese.”
Or, “I am from Indonesia, I am a fast swimmer and like watching National Geographic.”
Or, “I am a Buddhist, I come from China and have lived in five countries.”
Not many people say this sort of thing:
“I am a mammal, a biped female with bilateral vision and highly a developed frontal lobe.”
Or, “I use my mouth to talk and eat and have a nose for smelling in the middle of my face.”
Or, “I come from planet Earth. I have to eat and drink every day and spend time sleeping at night.”
The point is this. We define ourselves by our differences. Without other people who are different to us, with different beliefs, different viewpoints, different strengths and challenges, and different interests, we can’t enjoy our uniqueness. We are unique simply because other people are different. We are who we are because of diversity.
When I was at school, I wouldn’t dream of introducing myself as English – everyone in school was English! In fact, everyone was from Bristol and one small part of Bristol. I wouldn’t dream of walking up to a new student and saying, “Hello, nice to meet you. I’m from England, you know!” That would have been like walking up and saying “Hello, I’m from planet Earth! ... and my favourite hobby at the moment is breathing and making my heart beat regularly.”
Some of the world’s most isolated tribes in the Amazon Basin or West Papua, for example, are proof of the need for difference in defining ourselves in that they have no word for who they are and no word for their own language: they simple call themselves “the people” and their language “the word”.
North Sentinel forms part of the Andaman Islands, lying west of Thailand. The Sentinelese people are one of the most isolated groups of humans on the planet. No one is sure how many of them there are. Estimates range from 40 to 400. Like the Penans of Sarawak, they are hunter-gatherers, and they are very suspicious of outsiders. These people, the Sentinelese of the Sentinel Islands, do not call themselves ‘Sentinelese’. They simply have no need to because they don’t talk to anyone who isn’t Sentinelese.
Think back to the Penans. What made them unique, different, and interesting to me was not that they live in the rainforest, that they have large feet and long earlobes and hunt for monkey and mousedeer using blowpipes. What made them unique and interesting to me was that I am different.
We are who we are because other people are different. We define ourselves through our differences from others. If it weren’t for other people, with their differences, we’d live in a world without individuality and be very much poorer for it. Being in an international school and a multi-national, multi-cultural community strengthens our uniqueness, strengthens our identity because there is so much diversity. That, for many, can be metanoia, a mind-shift, that leads from tokenistic internationalism to a deep appreciation for what Jonathan Sacks called “the dignity of difference.”
I hope this can provide a perspective on diversity that will stimulate conversation with your children over the coming weeks.
Sacks, J. (2003), The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations, London: Bloomsbury.
