In your blog post, react to what you saw in the videos, reflect on your own interactions with educators throughout your school career, and discuss what, if any, changes to the school system based on the concepts in these videos could improve students’ performance in the classroom.

Were we born smart? Or do we learn and develop intelligence, constantly being shaped and supported by our environment and the people around us? In the three videos shown above, different aspects of effects are explored- showing how children can be impacted and grow according to how others interact and treat them.

In the first video called Pygmalion Effect and the Power of Positive Expectations, there was a study done where a test was done with school teachers- a list of students that were labeled “late bloomers” that they were treated differently and were transformed by teacher’s positive expectations. The Pygmalion Effect is the concept of a person having the potential to be transformed into something great. Teachers expectations actually had a huge impact on pupil’s intellectual performances. 4 factors of self fulfilling- teachers do these differently if they have favorable expectations: 1) warmer climate- nicer to them, 2) input factor- teachers teach more material to kids who they have better expectations for, 3) opportunity factor- call on those students more and allow to let them talk more and lastly, 4) feedback factor- favored kid is praised more and gets more positive reinforcement and also differentiated feedback when they get a wrong answer. If a “bad” answer is ignored then they might not favor those kids. I could really relate to this first video. Often, more than not, I have felt inferior to some of my peers and could feel differences in behaviors toward me by my school teachers. I envied students who got what I felt like was special treatment. Those kids were treated better, were taught more with more eye contact, (almost as if I was not there), were called to answer questions more often, and got the most praise and adulation. When I didn’t get called on even after raising my hand up, or when my answers didn’t get much feedback, positive or negative, I felt neglected and a little less confident in my abilities and I believe that this feeling has been carried down with me throughout high school and even up to now. It is great to see what these micro actions can do to a kid in a positive manner. At the same time, it is disheartening to know the kids who are left out of this potential growth and nourishment.

In the second video called Stereotype Threat – social psychology in action, threats of stereotypes are explored. An experiment of black and white students were told to be tested of athletic aptitude. When told one test was one of athletic ability, African Americans did better on scores than white students. When told that the test was of sport strategy, White American subjects did better on scores. Stereotypes here seem to have subconsciously got to the students, making them believe that they were less apt at either strategy or athleticism. This intimidating society made construct is regularly present in every day life and it is eye opening to see how even if we say we don’t believe in the stereotypes, we actually do.

My favorite video by far was the Jane Elliott Brown Eyes vs Blue Eyes. This video told of a study Jane Elliot, an elementary school teacher, who did a demonstration showing what discrimination was and really felt like. It showed that negative expectations could really shape students’ realities. Prejudice is easy to create and a new reality could be easily made on differences between students. The teacher Jane Elliot said that the blue eyed people were “better” and “smarter” than brown eyed people. She told of people in history and said that those with blue eyed people were better. She told the blue eyed people not to play with brown eyed people. The brown eyed students talked about not feeling like they belonged  and how they didn’t wish to participate in anything. Fighting actually occurred as a name that was used to call the kids in a derogatory manner was “brown eyes.” Children turned nasty, viscious and discriminating in just 15 minutes. When asked about the experience afterwards, the blue eyed said that they felt better than the brown eyed people. This was crazy to me. The lesson was that any cues of facial features could be basis of demonstrating and values could be added. 1- Any difference that is visible can be used by others to make people make worthless. 2- The brown eyed people when this flipped, kids didn’t learn compassion but learned about power and used it on the people who once tormented them. Revenge was more powerful than reconciliation. 3- inferior position set grades went down and superior position grades went up. Your intellect and performance is actually influenced by your attitude toward yourself. 4- All this can make people feel worthless. This was reminiscent to what I felt like was the German treatment of Jewish people in the Holocaust as well as pre- civil rights movement era.

With all this being said, I believe that schools should really take these factors into consideration and see how the way teachers treat their students really affect them. Also, for schools to note how stereotypes are very harmful and should be avoided being used in negative ways. Differences should be celebrated and appreciated. Lastly, telling kids that one was better than the other is never the right way to go as the kids may start to truly believe that they are worth “less” than others.

When we talk about intelligence my brain instantly triggers me to think of someone who is not “naturally smart”, to me intelligence represents someone who has been shaped by their experiences and has gained knowledge through their failure. I personally think that social experiences and our surroundings play a greater role in our intelligence than our genetics do. I have always thought that everyone has the ability to be intelligent if they work hard enough to achieve what they want. Some people become disappointed when they do not receive a high score on an exam even though they did not put in the effort to achieve a high score. I think that perception is very important because like the Pygmalion effect demonstrated, if others have high expectations of ourselves then that will influence how we also perceive ourselves, and it will trigger us to do what it takes to meet those standards. I think that this applies to me because I am a pre-med student. Even though, I chose my own career path I still work harder each day in order to “make my parents proud”, as a pre-med student they have really high expectations for me. At times these high standards do become overwhelming because when I get a low score on an exam it makes me question what they will think of my intelligence and it triggers me to reconsider if I am truly smart enough to be on this path.

Another way that social experiences shape our intelligence is through stereotypes and discrimination. In my point-of-view I think that the brown eye vs. blue eye experiment that Jane Elliot did with her students was highly unethical. In my point she did not have the need to put those children through all that hatred against one another, but her study did show that power is what drives discrimination. That need to feel superior and more intelligent is what has driven our country to be facing issues related to discrimination even now in 2017. feeling inferior can definitely take a toll on how we perceive ourselves. If others consider us to be inferior that can start causing us to worry less of our performance because there are no standards to be met. This also ties in with the stereotype threat. Sometimes people’s fear of failure and discrimination is what causes them to perform badly on a given task. I can relate to this because many times I am scared to answer out-loud in class when I am hesitant of an answer because I am scared of people laughing or making correlations between my ethnicity and my level of intelligence.

Even though genetics can play a role on how intelligent we are I think that humans are more widely defined/shaped by their social experiences and their interactions with their environment. In a way being seen as more intelligent will make us feel that way which in the long run can cause us to be more adapted to our surroundings.

In Jane Elliot’s classic brown eyes/blue eyes experiment, a third grade teacher convinced her class that people with blue eyes were superior to people with brown eyes. Soon enough, the children began teasing each other, and the children that were deemed superior discriminated against the children that were deemed inferior. After enough time had passed, the children’s test scores reflected what group they were placed in. The “inferior” children scored lower than the “superior” children. One can quickly see how this experiment ties into issues, like socioeconomic status.

The stereotype threat is the idea that the pressure negative stereotypes place on individuals is so great that it adversely affects their performance. The main fear is that one will fulfill, or be reduced to, a negative stereotype. This relates back to Jane Elliot’s idea of “if you are told you will perform poorly, you will believe in that statement and perform poorly”. This can even apply to good stereotypes too. Many times Asian Americans are expected to be gifted in STEM fields and classically trained in piano. Their hard work to attain a high level of achievement in these fields is often overlooked. These achievements are often attributed to their race, rather than their work ethic or goal-oriented mindset.

Finally, the Pygmalion effect describes a predictable pattern: students that are told by teachers that they will perform well often times do. Teachers allocate more time and energy to the students they feel are the most deserving of it. This can cause other students to feel as if they are of less value, ultimately hurting their performance.

I thought the videos all displayed the same general idea: your performance can be controlled by the expectations of others. Although we can teach students to talk kindly to one another, and we can educate teachers to not discriminate, we are only ignoring the root cause of the problem. We need to acknowledge that differences naturally exist between individuals, and many of them are arbitrary; they are not an indication of character or intelligence. Although I believe in this cause, there are few times where the Pygmalion effect and historical discrimination have negatively impacted how others have perceived me. As I’m sure with many other people at Austin College, I was told I was going to college from an early age. The idea of not going to college never crossed my mind. I had teachers and family members cheer me on as I worked to fulfill their expectations of me. I couldn’t imagine getting to where I am today without the help of a lot of people. It can be exhausting to be the only one that believes in yourself, which is why many people tire out and quit. Within the last century, America has made incredible amounts of progress, as far as tolerance of other people is concerned. No where else in the world can we find so many different people getting along so well. Change came quickly at first, but now it seems to be plateauing. We have to constantly feed the fire of change or else it dies out. We can’t become complacent with the progress we’ve made so far.

In the video for Brown Eyes vs Blue Eyes, Jane Elliot conducted an experiment dealing with the discrimination and how it affects others in society.For example, in the video she divided the class in two separate sections.One with brown eyes and the other with blue eyes. She told the kids that the children with blue eyes are more superior than the children with brown eyes. This caused a conflict with how the kids behaved in recess causing one of the kids to hurt another kid because he felt offended. The kids with brown eyes did not like the discrimination and when the kids grew up, they came to a reunion with their 3rd grade teacher. One of the students at the reunion felt hatred towards Jane Elliot because she did not like the idea of using discrimination for learning purposes. This experiment led for the student’s learning experience to be affected by how they are treated. When they are treated badly or hated by others it can cause low results in school grades but if they are treated as they are part of society they will have better grades. The self esteem affects the student’s behavior and learning abilities.I have not had that experience in school but if it did happen to me I would be disgusted. The students should learn in an environment where its not as discriminatory or full of hatred so they feel comfortable to focus in their education.

The Stereotype Threat video was about how stereotypes are used to show what advantages and disadvantages the people have. In the video it showed that the instructor of the test was going to test the athletes in their athletic abilities and the second test was about using strategy for sports. The African Americans did better in the athletic ability test than the white athletes but the white athletes did better in the second test dealing with strategies in sports. This stereotyped test showed intimidation on a person’s weakness making the test takers do bad on the test or good depending on their weaknesses. I believe stereotype threats are not a good idea because it can cause negative effects. The school can improve by mixing topics into one whole lecture.

The Pygmalion Effect and the Power of Expectations video explains the reason why children who have potential in learning do much better than those who don’t have the same potential.Children who are more knowledgeable receive more attention from the teachers because he or she is willing to learn the material.A kid with a low effort of learning doesn’t receive the same amount of attention than the kids who do learn more.In schools there are kids willing to learn and others that don’t want to learn. This could be improved by having tutorials and paying more attention in class when having trouble with a subject in class and motivating them to do better instead of putting them down.

In Jane Elliott’s classic blue eyes/brown eyes experiment, Elliot assigned students in her class to “superior” and “inferior” groups based on their eye color. Having blue eyes placed the student in the superior group and having brown eyes placed the student in the inferior group. Elliot was trying to explain to her all white classroom what racism feels like after Martin Luther King’s assassination. The blue-eyed students even had the opportunity to place a collar on the brown eyed students, so the students could tell what color eyes the students had from far away. Two students got in a fight after a student called another student “brown eyes”. I thought this was the saddest part of the video because in the short time of the experiment, the students could recognize a part of their physical complexion as negative. Elliot remarked that she learned more from the cruelty of the blue-eyed children as soon as they were told they were superior than from the brown-eyed children. Zimbardo noted that minimal cues can become the basis of discrimination when an authority imposes a negative attribute with the trait, that when brown-eyed students were placed in superior, they treated the blue-eyed students with the same cruelty, and that when in the inferior group, the math and spelling scores of the students went down. I think its incredibly sad that these students could foster discrimination so quickly and that the students were willing to turn on their friends for something like eye color. I think it is incredibly telling that students performed worse on tests after being told that they were more likely to perform poorly than other students.

The video of Claude Steele explaining stereotype threat asserts that the anxiety of possibly being seen as fitting a negative stereotype when taking a performance test. In a test of that was labeled as testing “athletic ability”, African American athletes performed better than white athletes, but in a test labeled as testing “sports strategy”, the white athletes performed better than the African American athletes. This shows how stereotypes impact performance based tests. It makes sense to me that stereotypes influence these tests, and I think it is upsetting that people underperform because of societal pressure. The Rosenthal & Jacobson’s discovery of the Pygmalion effect video showed how students can be transformed by a teacher’s positive perception of them. Rosenthal and Jacobson told teachers that randomly chosen students were going to increase their intelligence levels, and the kids who were chosen actually did show intellectual gains. The four factors that lead to this were climate, input, response opportunity, and feedback. I think it is very clear that teachers have favorites or students that they perceive as better, and it makes sense that these students would perform better. Personally, I have always done better in classes where I like the teacher and feel that the teacher likes me, so this form of self-fulfilling prophecy is very accurate.

I definitely was treated as a “gifted student” in elementary and middle school, and I completely believe that this expectation positively influenced me throughout my education. I think the way a teacher treats a student highly influences a student’s performance. In regard to changing the school system because of these videos, I would suggest a very strong anti-discrimination stance and an emphasis on teachers using positive encouragement to all students on a more equalized basis. If there was a way to decrease class sizes, it would help teachers give each student positive and individual attention. At the moment, I think the school system does have systemic issues that lead to discrimination influencing performance.