Ever since our world shrunk into a global village there are scores of people traveling frequently to foreign countries as students, professionals, tourists or immigrants, adding significantly to the country’s cultural, ethnical, lingual and religious diversity. This means that the natives and the immigrants, both, need to exhibit amazing levels of tolerance and open-mindedness to live together, peacefully.

They need to embrace each other’s differences and explore similarities. London, Toronto, Miami and New York are some of the world’s most diverse cities catering to large, empathetic ethnocultural populations.

Karachi, undoubtedly, is the most diverse city of Pakistan. It is home to numerous ethnic groups. People came from across Pakistan to this cosmopolitan city to either settle here permanently, acquire education or seek reasonable jobs and doing so they made its demographics very multicultural and interracial. However, do we value this beautiful mixture of different people along with their cultures, traditions, languages and religions?

Hafsa Tahseen, a student of Mass Communications resonates: “We condemn diversity instead of celebrating it. We’ve experienced several incidents of hostility between different ethnic groups in recent times, which clearly shows that we lack tolerance, acceptance and open-mindedness.”

The observation instigates us to probe deeper and question “Why do we denounce diversity?”; “Why are we so reluctant in recognising and respecting the fact that every individual is unique?”; “Why aren’t we tolerant enough to listen and understand other peoples’ points of view?”

Perhaps because we’ve never really understood what diversity is and how it can be used as an asset in society. Maybe, since we’ve always grouped with like-minded people, we’ve never learned to appreciate our differences. Our teachers, parents and even the media have constantly stereotyped people, religions, roles, responsibilities, casts and professions and we’ve learned to do the same. We’ve mostly “debated” in schools, colleges and universities and have really never tried “discussing” contradicting ideologies.

Now that we’ve identified the problem and its root causes, the first possible step towards solving the prevalent diversity issue is to comprehend its meaning. Diversity means realising and accepting that every individual possesses distinctive characteristics, values, skills, ideas and opinions, which make him/her different from others. This doesn’t mean segregation. On the contrary, diversity means looking beyond sexual orientation, colour, creed, race, religion, lingual disparities and working together to achieve success. It teaches us to be more receptive of varying concepts and acknowledge that not all individuals are alike. There were, are and will always be differences and we must accept them gracefully.

But just understanding diversity won’t be sufficient. We need to start practicing this value too. There are no specific rules of responding to diversity because of the sensitivity of the topic. Nevertheless the best principle is to be thoughtful and sensitive to everyone’s feelings. Besides, it’s time we incorporate and teach diversity in institutions, so our younger generation can progress smoothly without encountering any gender, cultural or religious barriers. Diversity cannot be introduced as a specific subject; it needs to become an integral part of every subject being taught. Teachers need to gradually and consistently inculcate this value amongst students and become role models.

Educators can approach diversity in classrooms by first becoming aware of and evaluating their own prejudices and assumptions. Self-awareness will also help purge any conscious or unconscious bigotry on their part. For example, stereotyping girls as usually being slow with numbers can demoralise female students and make them uncomfortable during Mathematics class. Teachers need to begin treating every student as an individual and with respect, irrespective of his/her skills, interests and IQ level. They must manifest thoughtfulness about the language used in classrooms and should refrain from adopting terminologies that target particular ethnic groups.

It’s imperative that classroom discussions on diversity begin by drawing on different occasions such as Ramzan, Christmas and Devali. For example, during Ramzan, in a Social Studies class, the instructor can also talk about the rituals of Easter and Holi while encouraging the students to explore similarities as their assignment. Similarly, selecting reading books and subject texts without gender bias and free from categorisations will develop a sense of acceptance within the students, making them open-minded, tolerant and liberal.

Teachers may display pro-diversity charts while librarians can recommend multicultural and diverse literature to the young learners. Thay may also invite professionals from a range of community backgrounds to speak to pupils as they’re a great source of teaching diversity. Taking the students on a field trip to a museum to study Pakistan’s rich cultural heritage can also help. Ask the the students to learn greetings in different provincial languages. This will create in them a sense of belonging while reinforcing their national identity.

Teaching diversity can be complicated but integrating it in our lives and curricula can help our next generation reap numerous benefits to make Pakistan more peaceful.