Abstract: Life is an adventurous journey in which we all partake. We experience a myriad of activities and opportunities that help us grow as professionals. How we differ from one another is one of those opportunities that allow us to 'grow' into our own uniqueness. How we think, feel, perceive and interact with others in various contexts are characteristics that make each of us unique. Sometimes we do not fully understand our diversity and because of this we tend to underestimate the importance of how we differ and how our differences shape us into who we are today. Traditionally, diversity tends to refer to one's ethnicity or race (Kottler, 2004). While these are extremely important to understand, our diverse culture involves a set of multiple identities for most individuals (Robinson & HowardHamilton, 2000). Each of us are not only strongly influenced by our ethical/racial background, but also the culture of gender, religion, socioeconomic status/class, geographical location, first language, sexual orientation, political affiliation, profession, and similar identities (Kottler, 2004). While all of these characteristics define our uniqueness as individuals, it seems that as a profession we continue to struggle with attracting individuals of minority populations into secondary and postsecondary agricultural education programs. Let's take a closer look at this. For decades agricultural education teachers have been challenged with trying to build the minority population in their classrooms. Minority students, who are generally defined as male and female students from Black, Hispanic, and Asian ethnic groups, are important to the success of providing diversity to agriculture programs. In 1988, it became apparent that minorities were not enrolling in agriculture classes when the National Research Council reported that enrollment in secondary agricultural education programs was predominantly white males (Talbert & Larke, 1995). While the growth of white females accelerated in the late eighties, the minority population remained low. Today, the lack of minorities enrolling in high school agriculture courses still exists implying that there is not a need for minority students to enroll in collegiate agriculture programs of study. The Education profession has attempted to promote the importance of welcoming minorities to enroll in agriculture courses by following The Strategic Plan for Education (2005) which boldly states, Agricultural education envisions a world where all people value and understand the vital role of agriculture, food, fiber, and natural resources systems in advancing personal and global well-being. How then can we make agricultural education an important area of study for students of minority populations? Promoting the need for minorities to enroll in agricultural education programs is not a new concept. According to Wiley, Bowen, Bowen & Heinsohn (1997), several research studies have reported that low levels of minority involvement in the food and agricultural sciences begin during the high school years (Larke & Barr, 1987; Rawls & Thomas, 1994; Bowen, 1994). In addition, Scanlon, Yoder, and Hoover (1989) found that negative images toward agriculture remain as major barriers to minority enrollment in secondary agricultural education programs (Bowen, Bowen, & Heinsohn, 1997). According to Orthel, et al. (1989), most minority students correlate food and agricultural science careers with more traditional views of agriculture as primarily farming which tends to promote a more negative view of agriculture. To overcome this negative image of agriculture, it is essential that minority students be exposed to all aspects of agriculture including leadership, food and science, and experiential settings. In many situations, high school students (including those of minority populations) are not informed in a systematic way about the food, fiber and natural resources system because many high schools lack the necessary resources to develop an awareness of and appreciation for agricultural science-science related programs (Dolce, 1984). …
Publication Year: 2007
Publication Date: 2007-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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