Aronson discusses how the interaction between race and education could produce extremely debilitating results for certain groups of students. In particular focusing on stereotypes, which are distorted “facts” about specific races or groups, he discusses how their embedment in our culture affects the academic performance of African American and Latino students for example.

A 6-year-old child is already familiar with most stereotypes about specific groups, and that is the exact age at which the child stars elementary school. Being aware of a stereotype regarding your own race puts an even heavier load on your shoulder in an instructional environment, which is a place where a lot of mistakes are generally made. In fact, for example approaching a test is already a task that is usually accompained by anxiety, fear of failing. For an African American student, that anxiety is doubled by the fact that people think students of his race are stupid and will for sure do less well than White students. That extra anxiety is due to the fact that he will be responsible for feeding the stereotype if he fails. Aronson decided then to do experiments and see if by reducing the stereotype factor (for example by stating that in giving a test to students the only thing measured would have been the ability to approach a question rather than answering it correctly) the performance of these students would have changed. The results showed that African American students did much better if the stereotype factor was reduced.

So our whole educational system is a trap for minority groups affected by stereotype, because the whole end-of-the-semester-big-exam philosophy makes them vulnerable to the effects of the stereotype factor. Since we cannot eradicate stereotypes from our society (that being a whole bigger issue), we can definitely try to modify teaching systems so that these children have the same ability to succeed as everyone else.

Sara Camnasio