Week 4: Google

Sept. 27, 2010:  Diversity is any kind of variety that makes our world a better place.  

Can you guess what is the world’s most popular website?  The answer, as many of you know, is Google, which was born in Palo Alto, California twelve years ago this week.  Here’s something for you to consider.  The Internet gives us access to an enormous variety of information, but has it made the world a better place?

On the one hand, the Internet makes it easy for us to learn about the world.  And we can easily share our thoughts, ideas, and experiences with thousands, even millions of people.  On the other hand, the Internet has also caused all of us to spend more time sitting in front of a computer and less time on other healthy activities.  And even though the Internet provides the potential to effect positive change, there is also the potential for negative activities as well. For today, let’s agree to celebrate all those aspects of the Internet that do help us to make our world a better place. 

Remember, you don’t have to travel as far as Palo Alto, California to find diversity.  There are hundreds of opportunities to celebrate diversity right in your own school.  Find one today!

Week 3: Central High School, Little Rock

Sept. 20, 2010:  Diversity is any kind of variety that makes our world a better place.  

Would you attend a school if you arrived on the first day to find guards blocking your entrance and 400 angry people waiting there to threaten your life?  Or, would you be willing to stay at a school where students threw acid in your eyes, pushed you down stairs, and subjected you to beatings?  This week we celebrate the unfathomable courage of nine students, who in 1957 became the first black students to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

Justice didn’t arrive simply because the Supreme Court ruled that separate schools for whites and blacks was unconstitutional.  When the governor of Arkansas, Orval Faubus, refused to follow the law, it took President Eisenhower to send in the military to enforce the law.  The following year, Governor Faubus decided he would rather shut down every Little Rock high school instead of allowing blacks to attend—and so he did.  The courts ordered schools reopened by the following year, but even still, it took another 13 years before every school in Little Rock was fully integrated down to the elementary level.

Today, Little Rock’s Central High School still functions as a school, and it is also an official National Historic Site with a civil rights museum.

Remember, you don’t have to travel as far as Little Rock, Arkansas to find diversity.  There are hundreds of opportunities to celebrate diversity right in your own school.  Find one today!

Week 2: Marco Polo

Sept. 13, 2010:  Diversity is any kind of variety that makes our world a better place.  

It takes courage to bridge the gap between two different groups of people.  For example, you have your circle of friends, others have theirs.  Sometimes there are differences in language, culture, or even attitude that make friendship difficult among people.  But can you imagine how much courage it would take to bridge two entire civilizations that didn’t even know each other? 

Today we celebrate the courage of Marco Polo, who was born this week in the year 1254.  Marco Polo spent 24 years on a journey from Italy to China and back, at a time when Europeans and Asians knew very little of each other.  His contribution to world history is important because he taught the Chinese about life in the West.  He taught Europeans about life in the East. 

Remember, you don’t have to travel as far as Italy or China to find diversity.  There are hundreds of opportunities to celebrate diversity right in your own school.  Find one today!

Week 1: the Lebombo Bone

Sept. 6, 2010:  Diversity is any kind of variety that makes our world a better place.  

Today we have a variety of tools to solve math problems.  Calculators and computers come to mind right away.  But don’t forget that rulers, multiplication tables and even calendars are math tools too.  Can you guess what is the oldest known math tool ever found? 

The answer is a baboon bone.  On this week in 1968, excavators were searching through a cave in the Lebombo Mountains of Swaziland, Africa.  What they found was a 35,000 year old baboon tibula (a bone in the leg).  Scientists believe it was used as a math tool because the tibula had 29 distinct notches carved into it, most likely to measure some kind of 29 day monthly cycle.  Today, the famous bone is known around the world as “the Lebombo Bone.” 

Remember, you don’t have to travel as far as Swaziland to find diversity.  There are hundreds of opportunities to celebrate diversity right in your own school.  Find one today!