From the moment of our birth, people who are similar to ourselves surround us. At first, it is our family, and then, once we are school-aged, it is people who live in the same city, if not the same neighborhood as we do. In most places across the globe, this means we are surrounded by people who speak the same language as us, identify with the same race or ethnicity as us, and perhaps even go to the same church or other religious institution as we do. One of the most unreported stories in recent years is that our schools are actually more segregated now than they were before Brown v. Board of Education.

If helping us relate better to our fellow humans – especially different kinds of humans – is a job the schools should be doing, schools are failing. Telling a child in elementary school to play nicely is not enough. I am lucky that I grew up in New York City, one of the most diverse places in the world, and that I go to Hunter, one of the most diverse colleges. Simply by interacting with a diverse student body, I have gained an appreciation and acceptance of difference. But even this is lacking in certain kinds of diversity: for example, everyone I go to school with is living in New York City at the time I’m interacting with them.

The good news for both myself and students who live in much less diverse places than New York City is that technology provides a amazing opportunity for schools to provide interaction between their students and different kinds of students – different kinds of humans. You no longer have to sign up with a pen-pal program to get to know someone who lives across the world. Schools can include students from across the country and globe in classes, as they did in one of the short stories we read earlier in class. I honestly believe schools don’t need to do much to facilitate learning how to interact with humans who are different from us – simply by providing regular interaction with a diverse population, these skills are acquired, at least in my experience.

The one area that I feel schools in the United States are really lacking is education in the language and culture of other people. While students who attend schools in Europe or Asia graduate from High School fluent in their native language, English and perhaps even another language, American students often graduate high school with only rudimentary Spanish that quickly fades. While many people think that the advent of technology means that we no longer need to learn other languages, since we have computers and software that can translate for us, there is a human element to translation that (at least right now) cannot be replicated. Not to mention that learning about the language and culture of different kinds of humans can be one of the best ways to learn how to relate better to other kinds of humans!