As a psychology student during my undergraduate studies, this researcher was introduced to a phrase known as self-fulfilling prophecy. This term deals with the idea that people will behave and perform as others expect them to behave and perform. For instance, if a parent constantly
both children will act in ways that confirm their parent’s belief. Although neither may possess the trait described by their parent the simple act being labeled as such leads them to act in that manner in order to meet the parent’s expectation.
Same is true for classroom students. Many black students, particularly those in poor communities are often viewed by their teachers in a negative manner. Given that schools do not operate in a vacuum and once teachers, both black and white enter the school buildings they are not magically shielded from their preconceived beliefs of blacks, particularly black boys, it is not surprising that many view their students in a negative light.
The lead story on the local evening news regardless of where one resides is usually about a crime that has been allegedly committed by a black man between the ages of 16-29. The newspapers tell the same stories, television shows and the movies perpetuate the negative
stereotypes by portraying blacks in a similar light. It has gotten to a point where not only has the black youth been marginalized from society, they have effectively been dehumanized. By that this researcher means teachers do not see them as individuals, instead they are viewed as a group bent on causing trouble and performing poorly in school. Ferguson argues that teachers’
perceptions, expectations, and behavior probably do help to sustain and perhaps even expand the black-white test score gap.
Oftentimes these lowered expectations and preconceived negative stereotypes are guided by fear, which beckons the question, how can one effectively teach that which they fear? How is a teacher who may or may not have been exposed to or been around black children expected to objectively interpret a students’ behavior given all of the negative stereotypes that are attributed to blacks? This researcher submits that institutes of higher learning chiefly those involved in pre-service teacher preparation should be charged with the responsibility of producing culturally
sensitive teachers in their programs. Pre-service programs should not simply deal in pedagogy, rather they should attempt to delve deeper in an attempt to understand our basic cultural
differences which will hopefully lead to a better understanding of our similarities.
True education reform will only be possible if there is a move from rhetoric to reality. Schools and school districts must reexamine their curricula and question for what purposes are we educating and how. An important change that needs to occur is the practice of teaching about important black historical figures only during black history month. At which time the students are taught about the same figures such as Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman, leaving the students feeling if one is not leading a civil rights movement or discovering an underground railroad they would have accomplished nothing worthwhile. These figures are sometimes so grandiose and such extraordinary trailblazers that students might not view their accomplishments as something they could replicate or an attainable aspiration.
However, students could be taught year-round about other significant black figures who have accomplished things on an individual basis to which students can relate and aspire. Prominent figures such as Benjamin Banneker who published an almanac based on his astronomical calculations; Dr. Daniel Hale Williams who founded the Provident Hospital in Chicago and performed the first successful open heart surgery in 1893; George Washington Carver who was as important to farming in the south as anyone for developing hundreds of applications for farm products; Charles Henry Turner who received his PhD from the university of Cincinnati in 1907 and was the first researcher to prove that insects can hear; Dr. Charles Richard Drew who conducted research on blood plasma and is noted for setting up the first blood bank; Lewis Howard Lattimer who invented an electric lamp and was the only black member of Thomas Edison’s engineering laboratory; Granville T. Woods who invented a telegraph that
allowed moving trains to communicate with other trains and train stations thus improving railway efficiency and safety; Garrett Morgan who is credited with inventing a gas mask used to protect soldiers from chlorine fumes during World War I and also invented a traffic signal that featured automated STOP and GO signs which were later replaced by traffic lights; and Frederick McKinley Jones who among other things invented the first automated refrigeration system for long-haul trucks.
These names and accomplishments were not presented as a space filler, rather as
illustration of the multiple examples with which students can be presented that covers basically all of the subjects being taught in schools. Oftentimes black students in poor communities are unable to envision their lives beyond the communities from whence they come and are devoid of positive social capital that may show them other options. This is why many homes in those communities are often inhabited by three and sometimes maybe four generations. If students are presented with attainable options they will hopefully find something of interest towards which they will gravitate. However, if they are only presented with extreme examples of prominent blacks (not many people can become MLK or Harriet Tubman) and the only real and attainable images with which they are presented in the classrooms are white, then they begin to believe those attainable aspirations are the privilege of whites only.