This is exactly my point! A well-rounded education brings in the best of both worlds and allows everyone to share their specific knowledge in contributing towards improvement!

Without offering too much pushback (As, I am really just seeking to defend my post and my reading of the text, not to put down the message of Dr. Steele), I gave credit to his chapter nine arguments, in terms of the awareness he is trying to promote. However, when it comes down to specifics, I would argue that he does not go as far as is necessary, even in chapter 9. For the sake of fairness, let me not speak for Dr. Steele, and instead allow him to talk. In chapter 9 he offers two solutions to stereotype threat, stating the following:

“The research of this chapter offers two strategies for reducing identity threat. First, realizing that this threat arises from cues in a setting that signal possibly threatening contingencies of identity, one can try as best as possible to eliminate those contingencies and cues that signal them. You can become alert to how the features of settings affect people and change them so that they don’t disadvantage certain groups. . . Second, the intervention studies show that, when the effort to change the identity relevant cues and contingencies in a setting can go no further, helping people understand the safety that they do have in a setting is immensely valuable.”

So, let me now demonstrate my attempts to address this in my post. Regarding the first “strategy,” I addressed this when I pointed out the fact that this first strategy is impossible to implement due to the main “threat to identity contingency” having been the fact that minority students are minorities to begin with. Dr. Steele admits that this is at the core of the problem. There is no way to remedy this, short of shipping in a vast amount of minorities from other states and countries to equalize the distribution of race and ethnicity at a given school. Steele, admits that this is most likely an impossible situation when he admits that there is a time when the effort to change identity contingencies “can go no further”. He then provides an alternate strategy that suggests we make them understand that they have safety in their environment, but this is really vague. Are faculty expected to take all of their minority students aside and whisper in their ear, “you’re safe, know that, take advantage of that.”? Or are the current principles of community enough? Does this involve the creation of offices for diversity or specific housing environment? Or does that border on segregation? There just isn’t enough information in his second contingency for me to know what he actually expects university personnel to do.
Once again, I bring this up, not because I hate Dr. Steele, and I’m sorry if I’m coming across as overly defensive to you, but I feel that this issue is critical and I’m tired of half discussed solutions. It reminds me of the presidential candidates for the United States. All of them are quick to say. “Our tax plan should revolutionize the country and ensure that the wealth is distributed in a way that is fair and gives benefits to those who need them” but I don’t think that that means much until you actually start to crunch the numbers and consider the loopholes. I agree with Dr. Steele, but I want more from him.

When you say, “the way to go”, to what are you referring? The way to eliminate stereotype threat? The way to help underperforming students? Or, the way to help people prosper in life? These all have very different responses.

Well, hello Ohio! Good to see that the new format is working to help load speeds. It’s a humble blog, that’s mostly for class, but I’m glad to know that someone is reading. Best to you and your lunch!

This is all that we can really hope to do. Year after year, little by little, we can try to improve our teaching until it is as good as those in the articles we read.

I’m not certain that “We only let one group of people do this” is a valid argument for change. We only let doctors prescribe medicine, and we only let aerospace engineers design airplanes. In fact, education is one of the only spheres where we feel like just being there means you deserve a voice. Personally, I don’t really care how many times you’ve flown in an airplane, you really shouldn’t weigh in on flight science, unless you have some expertise in the area. likewise, as much as I’d like to listen to the students opinion of what they think is relevant, they may be lacking the experience to determine that with any degree of accuracy.

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Ha ha! My memory must not be that great because I completely forgot to include Sir Ken in my discussion. I meant to, and I think that, while he is making a change on the high school level, he is working hard to achieve the same goals as Dr. Langer and Wesch. It would be great to get the three of them in a room so that we could begin working on coordinating education at all levels on one front. It seems that currently that we all too often keep higher education separate from primary and secondary school. This is a shame. We all need to remember that at the end of the day, teaching is teaching no matter the level.

If that’s true, then it makes me immensely happy that University of Pheonix is held in such low regards by employers. It makes me feel that there is hope for the future of education after all.

Hey, Thanks! Glad to hear you enjoyed it!

What if your strengths are saturated in the current economy? Say I’m really good at making pots, but there are thousands of pot makers. Should I still make pots?