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Amongst my circle of family and friends, what makes the children and young people interesting is how different they are. One is into deep-sea diving, another studying ethics at university; one is developing open-source software applications, another teaching primary school; one is doing research in a zoology lab, another is travelling around Europe earning his keep by house painting ... Moreover, all of these youngsters dress differently, speak differently, like different music, read variously, love the movies which others hate, hang out at home or hang out anywhere but at home ... We can but stand in awe at their dissimilarities – or, to use the in-word today, their diversity.
It was distressing therefore to visit a residential program recently where all the kids looked like peas out of the same pod. It wasn’t just that their dorms and clothes looked like clones; it was also that it seemed to have been assumed that all of these young people would be interested in the same things at the same times, so that the provision and the programming was uncompromising uniform. And knowing ordinary kids, this all looked wrong.
This is not just about the sterility of battery-reared youth, though that is soulless enough. It’s about the denial of the exciting inherent differences which exist amongst people. As we grew up, how very much did we learn from people and situations that, to us, were different? How much were we stimulated, surprised, provoked, enticed, inspired, awakened by differences. We were spared the ennui and the entropy of sameness, but the course of our whole lives was doubtless influenced and changed through our exposure to diversity.
Of course we have to manage obvious threats, but in our practice today we avoid the excuses that allowing difference is risky, impractical and costly. We may have no better resource to offer our youth than the infinite possibilities personified by the group of adults and peers who comprise any good residential program. And most of all is the opportunity to be acknowledged, respected and admired for who they are themselves.
