A Focus on Learning

Suppose you ask a question to a classroom full of math students. Two students raise their hand. One is a little black boy, the other a little white girl. Which one do you call on? If you call on the boy, you may be accused of discrimination for not allowing the minorities to have their voice. If you call on the girl, you may be accused of being sexist, not allowing women to have their voice. Now say you choose the girl, and she gets the answer wrong. Students could then use that to support the false idea that woman cannot do math. The same is true for the boy; if he gets the answer wrong, one could use that as evidence to support the false idea that minorities are stupid and cannot do math.

Now suppose you ask a question to a classroom full of students. Two students raise their hand. Now which one do you choose to answer the question? By stripping the question of all the racial and gender information, one can think about alternative factors. Which student is more likely to have the correct answer? Which student offers to answer more questions? Which student is more eager to answer it?

Now it doesn’t matter what race, creed, sex, religion, ethnicity, nation of origin, sexuality, age or any other factor that does not affect intelligence the student identifies with. All that matters is learning, and whatever factors go along with that. It is important to be aware of these differences, but by obsessing over them and telling everyone not to notice [insert long list of differences here], people automatically start to look for the differences then tell themselves not to see them. Why don’t we focus on learning how to teach, rather than focusing on all the differences our students have? This will lead to a greater America.