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At the beginning of class this week Professor Grobstein raised the question of whether it should be an explicit objection of classrooms to change students' attitudes about diversity so that they can see its benefits.  At one point in the discussion Jenna brought up that this might be more difficult in certain disciplines, and this made me think.  Jenna commented, and others seemed to agree, that experiencing the benefits of diversity in educational settings must start at a much earlier stage like pre-school.  Teaching the benefits of diversity may be difficult when students are in high school or college because while talking about diversity is quite natural, say in a Sociology class, doing this in a Math class where most questions that are addressed have one right answer would be difficult.  I was actually surprised with this idea about the difference between a humanities class and a science class, because in my experience looking at how differently each student solves the same problem (mental diversity?) is so much more interesting in disciplines like Math or Physics.  When I was a high school student in Japan, I accidently (!) started attending an after school “cram school” that specialized in calculus.  There, students enjoyed applying calculus to any problem- not just Math and Physics problems but also problems in Chemistry, Astronomy, Biology and even game theory.  In solving any problem, our teacher instructed us to write down our own strategies for tackling it, and students always came up with numerous ways to approach the same problem.  We would often have debates about which one is the “best” approach (the most efficient, the fastest, the most fun, the most beautiful etc.) but it was clear that each person had their favorite type of approach.  We were a group of Japanese students who came from similar backgrounds, went to similar schools, and all (except myself) shared an arduous love for calculus; yet our uniqueness and the diversity in the classroom was so obvious.  I was disappointed when I took a Calculus course at Bryn Mawr, because the professor simply told us which approach to use for each type of problem.  The few times when the professor tried to have students tackle questions without her telling us how, there was often a lot of unhappy people because students got so frustrated and confused by different things that people were saying.  In my opinion, the major difference between the two classrooms was the students' purpose in solving the problem.  The students in my cram school were not really all that focused on getting the right answer; they were much more interested in the feeling they get from engaging in the problem-solving process.  On the other hand, the students in my class here seemed to be interested in nothing else but getting the right answer. I think that a first step that teachers can take to encourage students to appreciate diversity in a learning environment is to encourage students to change their attitude towards problem solving so that they are not so focused on reaching the right answer.