In this paper, I shall address topic of teachers' exercise of discrimination within the educational context.
The outline will be as follows:
Part I: Definition of discrimination in the positive sense of the term
Part II: My personal stance on discrimination
Part: III: For what purposes do we discriminate?
Part IV: On the need for discrimination
Part IV: Conclusion
Discrimination in positive sense of the term
The term discriminate generally carries a negative connotation to the general population in America and
is closely linked to prejudice, stereotypes, hate crimes, and racism. Discrimination is furthermore not limited to
discrimination on a personal basis, but carried out on a wider scale through institutional discrimination, or
discrimination that as promoted by government or public institutions. Historically speaking, schools have taken
a role in promoting political agendas for the mainstream class and ethnocentric educators have participated in
perpetuating discrimination and social inequality in American society (Sadovnik, et al, p. 19).
However, as Professor George Fouron notes, the term discriminate also has a positive definition, which
is to recognize the difference between things. Professor Fouron has furthermore opined throughout the semester
that teachers do not discriminate enough in their own classrooms in the positive sense of the term. So what does
discrimination in the positive sense of the term mean exactly?
Discrimination here, as I define it, means to exercise, at the most basic level and as accurately as
possible, judgment in identifying the various characteristics and factors that influence one's students' learning
and differentiating between students who come from different environmental and sociocultural backgrounds
with different personal experiences/beliefs/perceptions, and learning styles with the purpose of informing one's
instruction and adapting one's teaching in such a way to minimize bias in teaching and improve the quality of
one's instruction by providing the best instruction possible to all students.
Diversity, in America, as emphasized by Professor Fouron, refers mainly to the student population's
diversity in dimensions including, and not limited to, the students' cultural, ethnic, racial and socioeconomic
(SES) backgrounds, which can be labeled as environmental factors in this paper as students are mostly
socialized or born into these backgrounds. Diversity, in the present paper, can be expanded to refer to
differences in aspects such as affective factors and learning styles which are related to varying extents to
students' personal identities.
Personal Stance
I agree with Professor Fouron that teachers need to discriminate within their classrooms because it is
instrumental for promoting best educational outcomes for all students when there exists a wide diversity among
the student population. Some opponents of discrimination within the educational context may argue that many
educational systems and schools manage to produce students with good test scores and academic results while
adhering to strict educational environments which attempt to promote conformity and uniformity and view their
student population as a single entity. However, this model of education is not suitable for schools in the United
States for the reasons below.
Firstly, it goes without saying that this style of education goes against the democratic tradition that is
ingrained within the American culture. Moreover, according to psychologist Abraham Maslow, students, like all
other individuals, have to a sense of belonging and feel comfortable in their social environment in order to be
psychologically healthy. This need, similar to the need for food or safety, has to be fulfilled before one can go
on to higher achievement (Fouron, p. 214). Teachers can help promote this type of healthy and democratic
environment by giving their students the lenses to see humanity for its common and shared characteristics and
goals instead of superficial differences (like the color of one's skin) and inculcating in their students a
appreciation for diversity in an effort to prevent potential conflicts and bullying and minimize unwarranted
social stress for their students. Teachers can do this by modeling to students how to acknowledge differences
and discriminate in the positive sense. They may for example ask students to compare their own cultural
customs for celebrating new year with other students and participating in the discussion themselves in foreign
language or social studies classes.
Moreover, this model does not work well in a country as heterogeneous as the U.S., where students hail
from all countries around the world and demographics are rapidly shifting. Students should not be seen as just
students because although they are all here with the same goal, which, at the most basic level, is to learn the
content that is being taught and to grow intellectually, they do not constitute a single entity with uniform
characteristics, and as such, should not be seen as such. Students in America have diverse experiences,
worldviews, values, and perceptions as influenced by factors such as their gender, cultural and ethnic
background, and socioeconomic class. One important part of teaching lies in activating students' prior
knowledge and helping them accommodate or assimilate the information being taught (p. 243) despite cultural
biases in the curriculum. In face of the diversity among their students, teachers must learn to create an inclusive
environment by acknowledging all experiences (across cultural boundaries) as valid and attempt to connect
these experiences to the content they are learning.
Research has, more specifically, shown that students' learning is significantly influenced by a myriad of
factors other than their teachers' own specific teaching techniques. One prominent researcher, Benjamin Bloom,
has suggested in his analysis of the learning process that students' cognitive entry skills and intelligence (IQ)
account for about 50% of their academic performance, the quality of instruction 25%, and affective
characteristics (ie: personality, locus of control, attitudes, study habits) of students 25%. Some argue, based on
Bloom's analysis, that educators will benefit their students more by learning to recognize the potential effects
that affective and cognitive factors may have on students' performance than by acquiring and utilizing the
teaching effective teaching techniques (cited in Research & Education Association, p. 243). This is an important
insight because, as research shows, students' affective factors can be easily influenced by multitude of factors
such as the physical learning environment, the social environment (ie: peer networks and influence), feedback
from teachers and parents as well as conflicts in messages by teachers and parents, as well as internal beliefs
(self-concepts and locus of control).
Although I will discuss some of the factors that can influence academic performance in more details in
another section, I will support my stance in favor of discrimination and justify the need for discrimination here
by providing below a brief list of examples to illustrate the diversity that exists among student population in
America and demonstrate the ways in which actions by schools and teachers themselves along with
environmental/emotional factors may intersect with students' identities and beliefs/perceptions of
schools/teachers and their ability to learn and ultimately influence their academic achievement for the better or
the worse:
1. latent cultural bias within the curriculum & students’ socioeconomic background: variable being
students' sociocultural background (ie: acculturated versus enculturated), their differing levels of
baseline knowledge of, comfort in studying, and intrinsic motivation in studying subjects and content
material that is within or not within their native culture;
2. tracking of ELL: variable being students' nativity (foreign-born vs. U.S. born), their differing level of
English language proficiency especially among English Language Learners (ELL's), and their teachers'
attitudes towards the students' usage of their mother tongues, and the decision to place ELL students in
the lower tracks; ELL's are often labeled as poor performers because of their language difficulties;
3. teacher-learner match: variables being students' learning styles and one's teaching style and mode of
content delivery, ie of learning styles: students' personal preferences in reading comprehension strategies,
their preferred way of absorbing information
4. student identity and motivation (positive affective factor) for heritage language learning: Some heritage
students are forced to learn the heritage language and culture by their families and dislike taking the
courses for this reason. Others on the other hand feel proud of their heritage and have good connections
with their ethnic community, so they feel more motivated to learn the heritage language.
Lastly, it is true that there exists some hesitation to discriminate because we do not want to accused of
identifying these differences for the purposes of labeling and stereotyping, but the fact is that part of being a
good teacher is being able to discriminate these differences so as to increase the effectiveness of their
instruction and the effectiveness of their students' learning. It is important to note that discrimination does not
necessarily lead to stereotyping and biased treatment of students, but can, on the contrary, serve important
function in improving educational outcomes for students when teachers discriminate and exercise with
discretion the appropriate adaptive instructional strategies in addressing student weaknesses. As we will see
below, failure to discriminate may even actually lead to more damaging effects for students than if the teacher
had discriminated and adopted proactive measures in some cases. Teachers do not necessarily have to exercise
discrimination by adopting the negative sense of term and focus on the weaknesses of their students and label
them as poor learners and assign them to a life of negative interaction and outcomes with their schools and later
society based on these weaknesses and stereotype (ie: I have a low SES student in my classroom. I predict that
he will have trouble and will give up before I even try to teach him/her because reports indicate that low SES
students fare worse academically), but rather being aware of the potential barriers that students with certain
characteristics may have in learning and adopt a strengths-based approach in their instruction and exercise
discrimination in the positive sense of the term. Teachers can do this by focus on improving and overcoming
their weaknesses while concentrating on developing their strengths and integrating their assets in such a way
that promotes self-awareness, self-acceptance and appreciation among students of their own unique personal
qualities.
Purpose of discrimination
Teachers should discriminate with the following purposes in mind: better understanding their students as
learners; making use of the information by using it to inform their teaching by differentiating instruction and
ultimately promoting higher quality and more effective instruction for all of their students in mind. Part of being
a good instructor involves knowing how to accommodate students coming from variety of backgrounds and
making it work in favor of promoting better educational outcomes on the part of the students. Differentiation of
instruction is one effective strategy for integrating the diversity among students into the curricula and has
received a lot of research as of late. However, as the purpose of the present paper is not on instructional
strategies for incorporating diversity into the curricula, but rather on addressing the question of why teachers
should discriminate in the positive sense of the term within their classrooms, we shall, in the next section, turn
to look at what research on some of the varying factors to see how they can intersect to influence learning and
academic performance in our attempt to address the question of why positive discrimination is important.
Secondly, by failing to acknowledge or ignoring the differences that exist in our students in the United
States, educators are, more importantly, marginalizing students, perpetuating cultural hegemony, and
perpetuating social inequality. While in the past and to a lesser extent today, educators and those writing
curricula have used the school and curricula as a means of promoting cultural hegemony, the goal that we as
teachers in America should be aiming to fulfill is that of promoting academic success and cultural appreciation
and harmony within a framework based on multicultural education and culturally responsive pedagogy.
Teachers should seek to construct an environment where students of all backgrounds should feel validated and
comfortable and motivated enough to achieve academically.
Part IV: On the need to discriminate
Let us look at some more examples of how students' identities intersect with environmental and affective
factors to influence their academic performance. We will look at the following aspects related to students'
learning within the educational context below: A) Cultural and social identities and curriculum/assessment
mismatch and B) Different identities as readers and reading comprehension of disciplinary texts.
Cultural and social identities and curriculum/assessment mismatch
Students who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds and minority cultures may fare worse
academically, as measured and indicated by standardized test scores, because the curricula is centered around
white middle-class culture. The example given in lecture was one that focused on the selection of English
vocabulary words for assessing the verbal ability of students and which specifically used the word "Regatta,"
which means a series of boat races. While white middle-class children are likely to answer this question item
correctly because they are socialized by their parents and communities, and they are enculturated, meaning that
they are learning their own culture. African American and other minority students on the other hand have to
undergo acculturation, or the learning of a culture other than one's own, and are at a natural disadvantage when
it comes to performing in tests that are based on white middle-class culture because they are not socialized into
that culture from a young age like the white middle-class students are.
Another example from lecture of how culture influences the way we comprehend academic content and
the world around us is one from Caribbean students. In this example, students were asked to choose the correct
answer from the multiple-choice question that asked which item should go with the picture of the umbrella
shown. The students in the Caribbean chose the sun rather than rain as most other students had chosen because
they associate the usage of umbrellas with the burning sun and because the people from their particular culture
uses umbrella to mostly shield themselves from the sun rather than the rain. Their particular way of looking at
the question and their line of thought is logical and appropriate for their particular culture, yet these students are
marked wrong when they submit their answer because it did not fit the line of thought of students from other
cultures, the answers from which are considered mainstream.
What is moreover damaging to their self-identities as academic learners is that these minority students
are often labeled as poor-performers and "stupid" for a lack of a euphemistic term by their teachers and schools
when they do not attain the expected standards. Students are placed into lower level tracks in their schools
based on biased assessments, and they are encouraged to stay in the same track and made to believe that they
are low-achievers because their teachers do not believe that they can demonstrate higher performance. This
(mis)labeling and tracking is a significant issue because research has pointed out the effect that labeling and
mislabeling have on teacher-student interaction and expectations and students' academic performance. The
negative effect that labeling has on student performance has been called the Hawthorne Effect (Research &
Education Association, p. 253).
As the above examples show, there is clear evidence of how students' culture and socioeconomic
backgrounds and experiences intersect and affect the way they understand content material, and also how the
biases in academics may affect their educational outcomes to a great extent . Teachers therefore need to be
aware of the hidden bias within the curricula and tests and understand the significance that this has on the
academic performance of minority students. The same awareness for potential bias and marginalization should
be applied to the teaching of female students for the same reason. Female students fare worse on standardized
tests, but outperform their male peers on the university-level, because as explained by Fouron, the tests are
written predominantly by males. When female students are moreover given less attention and less opportunities
for participation in classroom discussions in school by the teachers (consciously or unconsciously), the effects
for female students' academic performance may accumulate and the cumulative effect be rendered obvious.
What this all tells us is that teachers must first cautiously discriminate in the positive sense of the term
within their classrooms and be aware of their students' sociocultural backgrounds early on and use this
information to address the cultural biases in their curriculum and to promote higher quality education for nonmainstream and female students. They should ask students about their families' ethnic and heritage backgrounds
and seek to educate themselves about the history and culture that is representative of the students. Furthermore,
they need to root out the biases in their curricula and seek supplementary learning materials and alternative
means of assessment that are more culturally-responsive for their students whenever possible in order to
minimize mislabeling due to socio-cultural bias and help ensure a positive learning environment and access to
academic success for all.
Reader Identities and reading comprehension of disciplinary texts
Having discussed how teachers should be sensitive to students' sociocultural identities, we now turn to
look at literacy and the concept of students' self-perceptions and identities as readers and learners. Students
come into our classrooms at the Grade 7-12 levels with their own identities and self-perceptions of their
academic abilities, and this affects their academic performance through various pathways. Teachers must
understand firstly that identities are not static but rather fluid and capable of changing over time, and secondly,
that student' identities still yield a large influence over the way they interact with texts, teachers, schools; their
identities also influence their attitudes and motivation towards different subjects and learning goals.
We can look at students' identities as readers as an example to better understand this issue. This
discrepancy in reading abilities is in part due to the fact that students come with different educational
experiences, reading skills, and literacy developmental histories. Students have different levels of mastery in
reading skills at the elementary grade levels and with different reading habits. Some students may have more
exposure than others early on to reading materials and family support for the development of good reading
habits in a print-friendly environment at home while others are not privileged with such environments. The
discrepancy may also be attributed to their basic proficiency in the English language. Students who are English
language learners (ELL) constitute a major subgroup of struggling readers who may fall behind and be
identified as poor readers and low achievers early on (Bowman-Perrott, et al, p. 92). ELLs are often placed in
lower tracks as result of their language limitations and denied access to academic resources and success
(Sharkey, et al. p. 357).
Whatever the causes of reading difficulty, students who are good at reading literary works (ie: fictions)
early on may identify themselves as good readers while those who struggle with reading may identify
themselves or be identified by their teachers as poor readers and students. The identification by teachers may
serve as the first step to helping students improve their reading skills when given appropriate types of support
and instruction. Alternatively, it may brand students as low performers and hinder their performance when they
are referred to special education or retained and denied the opportunity to progress to their next grade level due
to their low performance.
Poor quality instruction and support along with negative labeling and grade retention may not only
negatively affect their academic performance but also affect them psychologically for an indefinite period of
time as they lose motivation and hope in themselves, and develop poor self-images as learners and readers.
Research points out that grade-retention may also increase the drop-out rates among students (Bowman-Perrott,
et al, p. 94). While students are unlikely to receive poor quality instruction throughout their entire school career,
it is very possible that there is learner-teacher mismatch for learning styles, causing ineffective learning over the
years.
Teachers at all levels moreover oftentimes come to class expecting students to be able to perform at a
certain level and get unreasonably frustrated when students do not have the reading skills for their grade level.
While it is understandable for teachers to want to have high standards for their students so they can achieve
more, teachers should not hold unrealistic expectations for all students to be equally able to comprehend texts
for a variety of reasons. They should firstly realize there are numerous variables that influence the individual
students' degree of comprehension of texts and learning. Ineffective teachers tend to overlook the role that
different variables have in students' reading comprehension and learning such as reader variables (age, ability,
affect, motivation), text variables (genres, types, features); educational-context variables (task, environment,
social grouping), and teacher variables (knowledge, attitude, pedagogical approach) (Fisher et al, p 329).
At higher grade levels, students may have differing levels of reading abilities for disciplinary texts (or
advanced texts from different disciplines) due to a multitude of reasons, including difficulty caused by academic
discourse (ie: vocabulary load) and assumed knowledge (Buehl, p.54). Enthusiastic ELL students, for example,
may struggle with their texts despite their interest in reading because they may lack not only understanding of
English words but the cultural knowledge that is necessary to make sense of texts that are laden with cultural
references (ie: references to Shakespeare's works) or historical knowledge that the authors may expect the
readers to have (p. 127). The struggle for ELL students lies in their having to simultaneously develop basic
literacy (syntax, conversational vocabulary), intermediate literacy (fluency in reading, writing, speaking and
listening; more sophisticated language structures), and disciplinary literacy (cultural knowledge, literary
traditions) (p. 115). Teachers lastly overlook the fact that many teachers do not teach students how to read for
comprehension but rather for task completion. Students may in fact have engaged in pseudo-reading (or reading
without comprehension) for their entire academic career, without teacher instruction and intervention. (p. 32).
Teachers who encounter struggling students often wag their fingers at students and say to them "You
should have learned this last year. How come you didn't learn it?” This way of handling the problem also
further exacerbates the problem and perpetuates underperformance because it places all the blame on the
students. As students oftentimes already see teachers as being out to get them and may already have developed
a distrust of teachers over the years as they experience teachers who are set out to over-criticize and penalize
them, teachers need to find alternative ways of coping and overcoming the challenges related to student
performance, like the exercise of positive discrimination and providing of instruction and academic support.
After educating themselves on the above-mentioned aspects to literacy and reading comprehension,
teachers should move onto discriminating. They should discriminate here by identifying struggling students,
identifying their areas of difficulty and potential causes, and seeing their students as unique individuals with
unique histories and identities as learners and be sensitive to the students' self-perceptions as learners. They
should be able to personally communicate with the student well enough so that they can develop rapport with
those who are struggling as the first step to helping students become better learners is by showing empathy to
their struggles. Only when they are able to trust you, share their experiences with you, will you be able to get to
know them. Then teachers can help them address perceptions by discussing them with the students and showing
how they are distorted or untrue.
Research has shown that teachers and students alike may benefit from differentiated instruction within
the classrooms (Johnsen, 2003, Hodge, 1997, McAdamis, 2001 Tomlinson, 2005, cited in Subban, P, 2006).
When necessary, teachers can adopt other measures as appropriate, for example, they can adapt texts or seek
alternative text sets which are suitable to students' ability level to complement the main texts to aid
comprehension. While teachers cannot adapt the curriculum to suit every student’s need, teachers can
accommodate nevertheless by being sensitive to their unique needs and doing needs analysis early on. They can
also accept different topics and formats of assignments from students (ie: writing a summary vs. making a
presentation board with main points) to accommodate learners of different learning styles.
To improve their reading comprehension, teachers should explain to students the need for strategies for
both general and discipline-specific reading skills in attempting to improve their reading comprehension as
reading serve as the basis for higher-level learning. Teachers should take the responsibility to teach their
students how to read disciplinary texts and integrate this teaching into their daily curricula. Then they should
explain to them the differences in the ways that they approach disciplinary texts (the differences in the
disciplines' worldviews, manner of discourse, etc). They should let students know that it is fine to be better at
reading texts from a certain subject or discipline (ie: literature) than reading texts in math or science because
one may have developed a habit of reading certain texts and developed a higher level of mastery for reading
them. If possible, teachers should seek to expand students identities as readers and have them develop their
skills and abilities for reading in disciplines that they are not as skilled in and teach them how to transfer the
skills across disciplines. If students have certain preferred methods of interacting with texts (ie: note-taking vs.
marking texts), they should be encouraged to keep using those methods if they work well for them, rather than
be forced to adopt the ones which work for the teachers themselves.
Part V: Conclusion
Teachers should take into consideration the diversity that characterizes the American student population and let
their understanding of the ways in which variation in terms of factors such as students' cultural, ethnic, racial and
socioeconomic backgrounds, English language proficiency, learning styles and the match between this learning
style and your own teaching style, reading habits and preferences in reading comprehension strategies, and
differing levels of reading abilities for disciplinary texts, self-efficacy or belief in their ability to achieve in
school, intersect to affect students' personal academic inclinations and performance within their classrooms. "By
seeing students as individual learners with their own unique needs and level skills, accepting them for who they
are, giving them lots of positive encouragement, and exposing all students to the necessary skills for dealing
with disciplinary texts, teachers have a much higher chance of producing higher academic outcomes.
Teachers who do not take into consideration this diversity and teach their students as if they were all the
same fail to understand the true meaning of educating students and empowering them to achieve their potential
and be successful and but rather limit their students' socio-emotional and psychological growth as individuals
and academic growth as learners and students. They are in essence failing in their duties as educators because
they are adhering to a system which both intentionally and unintentionally exploit differences within student
populations for hidden political agendas and because they are focusing on weaknesses rather than developing
their strengths and assets.