This Post: Teaching Teens Diversity, Tolerance and Inclusion: There’s More Work to Be Done
Written By: Jessica Manning
I live in a wonderful community filled with kind, well-meaning people. I love my town, and I’m grateful to raise my kids here. But like many small towns in the Midwest, the lack of diversity is palpable.
By diversity, I mean race, religious beliefs, socio-economic status, sexual orientation—essentially anything much different from what my kids experience in our hometown. We are a homogenous demographic here.
Teaching Teens Diversity, Tolerance, and Inclusion:
There’s More Work to Be Done
At the public high school where I work as a counselor, most of the 800-plus students have grown up with parents who have similar ways of thinking. Thus, because most students in our school have not been exposed to a culturally diverse community, if a student in our school has a diverse look, diverse thought, or a diverse way of being, it can be challenging for other students to view it as anything but, “weird.”
While we’ve seen huge strides in our country as it relates to cultural diversity, tolerance, acceptance, and inclusion (and, truthfully, in many ways, our young citizens are leading the path of change), there is still so much work to be done.
My heart breaks for some of the students who have been exposed to a vastly different upbringing than the majority here. It’s hard. They endure comments and judgments from (some) students about their lives that are oftentimes inaccurate or ignorant.
For example, we have a handful of students at our school who practice a certain Christian denomination different from the majority. Sadly, these students sometimes endure jabs and comments about how they practice their faith, even though many of the kids taking the jabs know very little about that faith and have no interest in learning more to understand.
When I was in graduate school, I took a diversity training class that focused on the deviation of power between the majority and minority. What I learned is that when you’re in the majority, you may inherently feel as though you have more power than people who are marginalized, and, as such, you may not view it as wrong.
So when teens make comments about people or their beliefs that are different from the norm, they don’t necessarily see or understand the injustice in it. They are ignorant, but not necessarily through their own fault.
Teens are inundated with misinformation. It’s no wonder they struggle to decipher what is accurate and true. Parents cannot own all the misinformation our kids ingest nor how they respond to it, but we can help them grow in their ability to respectfully live out the opinions they develop as a result.
Parents… let’s talk to our kids and discourage them from thinking that it’s acceptable to:
- Judge how someone loves their God, even when they’ve never deeply studied a religion different from their own, let alone a denomination from the same religion.
- Make comments about someone’s clothes, hygiene, and appearance, even when they have no idea what that person’s financial situation is, nor what it’s like to want for something or possibly to have parents who don’t help with such things as laundry and cleanliness.
- Demean a person’s political stance, even though they’re incapable of speaking in depth about actual policies purported by the party they align with.
- Stereotype a person based on their race, solely from things they’ve seen on TV, movies, social media, etc.
- Spread falsehoods about people from certain cultures, lifestyles, and orientations, even though they’ve never actually interacted with them.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. To be honest, it’s painful to work with kids who speak ignorantly about topics they know absolutely nothing about. I’ve learned to bite my tongue when I witness some things. Yet, when I feel a student has crossed the line and is being downright hurtful and/or hateful, I feel compelled to step in and correct/educate students.
Imagine sitting in my office across from a teary-eyed 14-year-old with a broken heart, because people are spreading falsehoods and taking jabs at core values she’s been taught since birth. Then imagine sitting across from the wide-eyed teenager who said the hurtful words, knowing she doesn’t fully comprehend the wrong in what she’s said.
Teenagers are still trying to define their values – what they believe to be right and true. They’re heavily influenceable, which is why I often can’t help but wonder where they’re getting their information and strong opinions.
I think as parents, we may not realize that we inadvertently perpetuate unfair judgment, misinformation, and biases within the walls of our homes, simply by sharing our opinions with our kids but not explaining the why behind them. (I know I have certainly caught myself doing this with my own kids.)
When parents share their opinions at home about things they haven’t studied from unbiased sources, people they haven’t lived, worked, or done life alongside with, or social issues they’ve never experienced, their teens so often ingest it as Truth.
Then, their teen comes to school and proclaims it, despite who it offends, whether it’s even correct, and whether or not their parents even realize their child is passing along their beliefs and views.
I’m not saying that parents shouldn’t share their opinions with their teens. I think we all subconsciously crave for our kids to have the same fundamental values as us, and how else would we teach them our values and morals without sharing our opinions?
But sometimes I wonder if while guiding our children toward certain fundamental beliefs, we miss the importance of verbalizing how to respect ways of life different from our own.
Most teens are capable of being loving, accepting, and respectful – albeit without necessarily condoning or mimicking behaviors and choices abhorrent to their own beliefs.
Respecting each other as humans does not mean we have to condone beliefs that go against our own. But before we (parents) inadvertently teach our teens to judge others, we should make sure we have accurate information about what we’re discussing.
It takes humility to recognize that we could stand to learn more about people and beliefs that are different from our own. And it takes responsibility to remain steadfast in our refusal to spread ignorance to influential humans with underdeveloped brains (i.e. teenagers).
As a high school counselor who works with students, parents, and families on a daily basis, I am truly confident that most parents are trying their best to raise kind, inclusive, tolerant human beings who embrace diversity – I’ve witnessed it time and time again.
As parents, we can serve our kids well and set them up for a lifetime of open-mindedness, kindness, and perhaps even a passion to understand and embrace others’ diverse beliefs and ways of life by:
1. Admitting to our kids that we don’t have all the answers, that we don’t fully understand all the facts, and that until we do, it’s best to keep our opinions to ourselves.
2. Admitting to our kids that we can and should take the time to learn more.
3. Exposing our kids to a wide variety of cultures, people, and life experiences.
4. Encouraging our kids to use unbiased, reputable sources when researching topics that may have controversial opinions.
5. Modeling respectful, inclusive, tolerant behavior ourselves.
6. Having open communication in our homes where our kids feel comfortable coming to us about diversities they don’t understand or that seem ‘weird’ to them so we can educate them and instill patience, grace, and tolerance.
7. Verbalizing love and respect.
8. Celebrating diversity without teaching them to falter in their own core values. When we do, it will perpetuate love and acceptance in our world, instead of hurtful ignorance.
We’ve come such a long way, parents, but there is more work to be done.
Continue to talk to your teens about diversity and inclusion – help them to understand and even take the time to learn about their peers’ different beliefs, religions, theories, and self-expression. In doing so, we’ll be empowering this generation with the knowledge and grace to embrace each other’s vast and beautiful differences.
About Jessica Manning
Jessica is a high school counselor with over 20 years of experience working with teenagers. She earned an M.A. in school counseling and a B.A. in English and secondary education. Jessica is married to a high school principal and has three teenage boys; her current life revolves around all things teen. When not working or following her sons’ sporting events, Jessica appreciates any opportunity she gets to veg at home with her family and her dog, Phyllis.
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