Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Zara Schreiber - Blog Post 4

Racism in the classroom, whether it's intentional or not, often results minority students having an educational disadvantage. For example, if a teacher were to have higher expectations for their white students, they would most likely do better as it's known that lowered expectations usually result in lower scores. This is a hard problem to fix as the teacher may not even be aware of their racist actions. 
As a start, teachers and educational staff has to be diverse. Schools could try to give students a teacher of a different race from the year before. This may have no effect, but it could possibly benefit students who had trouble relating to a teacher of a different race. However, students should be exposed to teachers of many different races so that they are not surprised by diversity later in life.  As well, the classes themselves should have a diverse student body which enriches everyone's educational experience as new world views and opinions can be shared. 
There are also more blatant examples of racism within schools, where a teacher may purposefully discriminate against a certain race of students. To protect against this, students should have an anonymous outlet to file complaints of discrimination which would then be investigated. If a teacher was found guilty of blatant racism, they would be fired and it would go on their record so that other schools would know about their racist tendencies.  If they were found guilty of unconscious racism, they would be required to attend a seminar about preventing discrimination within the classroom and would then be reevaluated a few weeks later. 

No comments:

Post a Comment