The "Expected to Fail" Mentality in Education

As a student in U.S. schools, and a minority (by disability), this troper has noticed - much to her perpetual annoyance - that the general mentality (not everywhere, of course, but certainly prevalent in her own experiences) espoused towards minorities (of ethnic, differently-abled, and/or economic background to name a few) is that they are expected to fail, and the standards they are expected to hit are (often) noticably lower than that of their "typical" peers. The attitude isn't openly stated, naturally, but to this troper, it was very obvious.

Even though she is white and middle class, it bothers her immensely that her African American and Hispanic peers, her peers with disabilities - like herself, and the peers that came from poorer backgrounds are not encouraged as they should be to succeed, and that it is perpetrated and perpetuated by people in the education system. No wonder so many young people want to give up - no one, not even their schools - is willing to support them and believe that they're as good as everyone else. Of course, many factors play into a decision like that, not just that one - it just strikes this troper as a horrible demotivator...

What do you think? Ever met this unfortunate snake yourself, or knew someone who did? What about in your country (if it's not the U.S.)?

Arbitrarily designating people as "inferior" to others is, obviously, bad. If you think you are "expected to fail", do your utmost to succeed and prove those who expect you to fail wrong.

Education systems should be free of bias. Allowances should be made for students who require them, of course - allow a student who cannot write legibly to typewrite, for example (although that is somewhat unrelated).

I have not encountered such mentality in my school system, or at least, that I recognise. Of course, students who simply do not perform as well as others are places in "lower sets"; in GCSE examinations, for example, a good many students sit "Foundation tier" exam papers *

, while students superior in academic ability sit "Higher tier" *

^{D-to-A*. If you get below a D, you go straight down to U}

. But that is measured in academic ability, not arbitrary "oh, don't bother with him"s.

I've noticed this attitude in some of the staff at my old high school (white people are a minority there, it's populated mostly by blacks and hispanics) and it really bothers me. In fact, there's a lot of poor kids in the school district who may very well have disabilities like ADD, or they're still reading at a fifth grade reading level, but they get no attention or accommodation because their parents don't care, and the school doesn't care either, because they either act up or appear to be part of the "ghetto" delinquent body that acts up.

The film Freedom Writers is actually pretty similar to the situation at my old school, though there's no extremely ambitious teacher trying to overhaul her English class for the purpose of understanding the kids.

edited 27th Apr '11 5:53:18 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Never really dealt with this myself.

The really sad thing about this attitude is that it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. There have been a lot of studies done that show that show that if you prime a student to believe they're expected to do badly on a specific test (because of race or disability or even just their own intelligence), they very often will do worse than they would without that influence.

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I believe that diagnoses of learning disabilities do the same thing to borderline cases and the falsely diagnosed.

edited 27th Apr '11 8:13:18 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I expect most people to fail regardless of minority status, simply because people are dumb.

Fight smart, not fair.

There is a difference between acknowledging that someone might have extra hardships to learning due to their background, and expecting them to fail. The trick is figuring out where the line is, and staying well to one side of it.

Stuff what I do.

"I believe that diagnoses of learning disabilities do the same thing to borderline cases and the falsely diagnosed."

I'd like to study that sometime. I had two ideas. One is to take two groups of ADHD individuals, tell one group that we're trying to see if ADHD overlaps with autism and the other group gets told that we're studying whether ADHD is related to heightened sensitivity, and then both groups are tested on social skills tests.

The other idea is to get a bunch of kids who doctors can't decide if they're mildly autistic or just weird, and randomly assign them so one group is diagnosed with PDD NOS and the other group the parents get autism info rephrased to sound non-pathologizing and are told their kid is quirky but not disabled. See what difference the different diagnoses do. (I have no idea if this study would meet ethics approval, though - I suspect not.)

If I'm asking for advice on a story idea, don't tell me it can't be done.

I vaguely remember an American president talking about the "soft bigotry of low expectations". It was a surprisingly good speech.

"I didn't steal it; I'm borrowing it until I die."

My experience/feeling is that it's not so much an "Expected to fail" mentality, but it's an extension of the "Up or out" mentality that is too prevalent in our society. To put it shortly, either you excel or you fail. There's no room for the middle. If you have to work really hard in order to pass/do mediocre, you might as well not even waste your time because you're still not winning.

Democracy is the process in which we determine the government that we deserve

Ettina: I think that is within the ethics of what is todays standards, so it would be possible to do so. The problem is that you need to get people to join the project, and somehow not tell them what they are joining.
Basically, to do this experiment properly, you need to highjack an entire region, town or area, and let the experiment lose, and hope the court system of the district does not follow the US model.

A guy called dvorak is tired. Tired of humanity not wanting to change to improve itself. Quite the sad tale.