Positive Discrimination

A couple of thoughts on positive discrimination: In England, the government is now requiring schools to include "realistic images of lesbian, gay and bisexual people and the contributions they have made to different aspects of the curriculum."

This sounds like a wonderful idea. It is using the ideology whereby we deem all people equal and we value the diversity among us, and then incorporating it into an educational environment, where, hopefully, these values will be passed down to a new generation to lessen ignorance and prejudice.

In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson said, "Freedom is not enough... you do not take a man who for years has been hobbled by chains, liberate him, bring him to the starting line of a race, saying, 'You are free to compete with all the others,' and still justly believe you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough to open the gates of opportunity."

The first steps to righting the great wrongs in the world, must be to acknowledge that they are wrong. the second step, of removing the constraints that have held back certain groups, whether this be due to their race, religion, gender, sexuality or a myriad of other excuses for discrimination, cannot be the last step though, for will not be enough to give them 'a fair go',as we would say in Australia.

The concept of positive discimination means that opportunities are explicitly made available to further increase the liklihood of a group achieving success in an authentic context. In Australia, then, we have for example financial grants to encourage indigenous learners into tertiary education, and government positions include reserved places for those in groups often omitted in the traditional employment of workers, such as women and Aboriginals.