Educator Bias

I see a study from the Journal of Educational Psychology, reported on in Science Daily, that shows that educators might be doing minority students a disservice by failing to challenge them.

A major study, led by Rutgers-Newark psychology professor Kent D. Harber, indicates that public school teachers under-challenge minority students by providing them more positive feedback than they give to white students, for work of equal merit.

Whenever you challenge a person, they either rise to the challenge or they fail.  That's what school is about, rising to the challenge.  You can't educate anyone without lessons and tests and assessment.  All those things require challenges to be met.  Those teachers that challenge students and fail the ones that won't rise to the challenge are the best teachers in the profession.  It doesn't matter what the race of the student might be, minority students can fail just like white kids.  Let 'em fail, then challenge them to improve.

Most of the problems in the current educational system is that the system is horrified when someone fails.  I think that we do students a great disservice by letting them believe that they won't fail.