Let's see if I can summarize this idea from the Teaching book I am reading by Ken Bain. The idea of student "stereotype vulnerability" really interested me. This means that even if a student is not explicitly stereotyped, he or she might anticipate that something is being done because of  stereotyping. A Stanford psychologist from Stanford, Claude Steele, actually came up with the term, "stereotype threat."(Steele has an article in the Atlantic that describes his research. It's really worth reading.) Stereotype threat is the feeling when people are "judged or treated in terms of negative stereotype or they could do something that would confirm that stereotype" among those around them (quoted from p. 69, What the Best College Teachers Do, Bain, 2004). A few pages later Bain speaks about Uri Treisman of U.C. Berkeley and his theorizing on teaching Math. Instead of placing minority students who weren't doing well in Math in remedial classes, he suggested putting them into honors workshops, showing how expectations and "creating opportunities" are key.

This next point is what I am getting at. "If these students were performing poorly because they suffered from stereotype vulnerability--which they apparently did--a remedial program would only make matters worse, reinforcing the notion that society thought they couldn't make the grade in regular classes." (Bain, 81)  Other research along this line has been done over the past 10 years or so.

We are faced with data that begs the question--how do we help our students? Let's seriously consider this idea! If we have so-called remedial programs, let's move on and give our students a better experience at college. They come here to learn, not to be treated as if they had problems and deficits.

If you have about an hour, it's worth listening to this lecture on "developmental Math" by Uri Treisman on YouTube.

One of my favorite experiences as a K-12 substitute teacher before I became a community college instructor was watching a Math teacher who came into my 5th grade class just for the Math. He came in and immediately and enthusiastically started the students working on very advanced problems. They were rushing up to the board to answer the questions. Even the student who the homeroom teacher had warned me was "a troublemaker" was excelling! I remember the math teacher shouting at me across the room like a sargeant: "Did you do math like this when you were in 5th grade, Ms. Franeta?" No I didn't, I shouted back. I will never forget the faith, the trust, and high expectations for those students he conveyed in that class.