The System of Education Continued April 17 2014 The idea of cultural bias is one that tends to be held by those of the Conflict perspective Potential locations of cultural bias in schools elementary middle high o Teacher expectations and tracking Although it varies from district to district teachers start tracking the levels and abilities of students from very early ages in general sometimes even in kindergarten The concept of a self fulfilling property teachers tend to interact with call on challenge the kids they have labeled as smart and as having more potential more than they interact with other kids The extra interaction these smart kids get causes them to improve and learn more than others thus making the teachers beliefs that these students are smarter come true they end up being smarter because of the extra attention from the teacher The other kids may have had just as much potential but simply were not engaged enough An experiment was done in which researchers told teachers that the students in their classes had taken achievement tests the prior year that had determined their intelligence and learning potential They randomly divided the students in the classes into groups and told the teachers that some of them had high potential some had medium and some had low This was not true at all but the researchers found that the teachers tended to focus their attention mostly on the students they were told had the high and medium learning potential rather than on the students they were told had the lower potential despite the fact that in actuality some of the students with the supposed low potential were very smart and some of the those who supposedly had high and medium potentials may not have been as intelligent This proved the idea of teacher bias and the self fulfilling prophecy Underlying biases about students based upon their race and class which still exist greatly have strong effects on how and what students can learn o School wide curriculum offerings School districts purchase formal curriculums developed by outside groups Those that purchase curriculums that are structured rigidly defined and more likely to focus only on teaching toward a test are more likely to be those that are poor and include more minority groups The curriculum offerings may help students pass tests in the short run but in the long run they decrease teachers enthusiasm for teaching and students enthusiasm for learning thus leading to high teacher turnover and lack of student motivation Wealthier districts which include more Whites and Asians than Blacks and Hispanics have more money to offer AP and IB and other special classes It might look like Blacks Hispanics are not motivated to take these classes when often they just do not have access to them This further impedes these students as they learn less simply because they do not access to more resources They also have fewer credits if they choose to enter college causing them to have to spend more money on classes and have to take lower level classes to fulfill requirements they were not able to test out of earlier o Approaches to addressing to linguistic differences Needs of students with limited English proficiency Lack of sufficient or quality bilingual programs Needs of students who speak Black English Black English Ebonics is a vernacular language according to linguists it is not a lazy form of speech It has a very consistent structure and has developed from historical circumstances of slavery since Blacks were not allowed to read and write they developed their own language and dialogue Black English has a tense that traditional English does not the relative tense It might use the same words as traditional English but it does not mean the same thing Cultural fluency should be practiced just as it is with students who speak Spanish instead of English students should be taught to be able to switch between Black English and traditional English just as they may be taught to be able to switch between Spanish and English However this is not the norm now now teachers tend to assume that people who speak Black English are just lazy o Biased or Limited Coverage of Minorities Often Black history and famous Blacks are only covered during Black History Month Writers are divided into categories Black Hispanic other minority group writers are special and in their own groups World History courses are often focused just on European history which might lead children to believe that Asians and Africans aren t covered because they didn t do anything Racist unfair portrayals in textbooks and other school material The Story of Little Black Sambo o Used as an educational reading book for children until the 1940s 1950s o http en wikipedia org wiki The Story of Little Black Sambo Minority role models are often not focused upon as discussed in the above o Lack of role models section o Test inequalities and stereotype threat IQ tests used to have questions that only Whites or richer people people who live in a certain area would be able to answer correctly People are often primed and then fulfill these expectations Children in poor minority school districts are often told that they need to prove themselves on the tests and that they have to do well They have been stereotyped to do badly hence the term stereotype threat This may blow the results as all the internalized pressure can stress them out and cause them to not do as well as they could As a more general example women tend to do better on English portions of tests and men tend to do better on math and science portions Their scores may reflect their tendencies just because they have been made to think these things over and over When you make a big deal of a situation you internalize the anxiety of the situation and will probably less well than you actually could The idea of cultural deprivation is one that tends to be held by those of the Functionalist perspective o Potential signs of cultural deprivation found within students Uninterested in school What is going on the home environment is incredibly important are you reading to your kids even just talking to your kids The number of words you speak to your kid even before he she can speak back is very important What direct messages are there about learning and school and what is modeled in the home Are communities supportive of education If they are not doing these things it may not be because they do not care for their children but because they were not taught