In Brown's Wake by Minow Martha

Author:Minow, Martha
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2010-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Promoting Perspective-taking, Reducing Stereotypes, and Improving Individual Experiences

Communities and the nation as a whole cannot wait for racial integration to be achieved before they pursue equal educational opportunities. But putting integration aside risks perpetuating the stereotypes and disadvantages that hamper too many African-American and Hispanic students. School reforms that do not involve racial mixing can work to boost academic achievement for African Americans and for Hispanics, but then they deprive students from different racial and ethnic backgrounds of access to one another. Segregation during childhood predicts segregation during adulthood in work and home, and discomfort with integrated settings.155 Societies that organize schooling to reproduce lines of social division risk exacerbating these divisions and also create the danger that students in substantially separate schools will come to hold very different views of their society and polity.156 The waves of research on contact hypothesis indicate the effectiveness of cooperation toward common goals, the development of a common affiliation to reduce the salience of subgroup identities, and equal participation in activities to overcome stereotypes based on subgroup membership.157

Decades of social science research since Brown have shown how schooling children from different groups together can prevent social stigma.158 In particular, improved relationships are associated with interdependence and shared goals rather than competition.159 Racially diverse classrooms organized into cooperative learning groups tend to increase friendships, empathy, and liking for others of different races.160 A review of 515 studies involving 250,000 participants in 38 nations found contact between members of an in-group and an out-group reduced prejudice by (1) enhancing knowledge among the in-group about the out-group, and (2) encouraging people to empathize with and take the perspective of others.161 One scholar reviewed studies testing the contact hypothesis and concluded that “the research suggests that the contact should be voluntary, non-superficial, interpersonally oriented, have a high potential for friendship development and provide opportunities for informal interaction,” while emphasizing overarching group membership and common goals.162 Yet proximity—sharing the same school and the same classes—remains both necessary to and associated with the development of cross-racial friendship and reductions of racial prejudice.163 Students attending schools using team-based learning reported significantly more friends of other races than students attending traditionally organized schools.164

Research showing generally positive effects from contact with others extends to ethnic minorities and immigrants,165 groups separated by language and culture,166 students with disabilities,167 gays and lesbians,168 and people with different religions.169 Still, larger social narratives may dominate people’s experiences so that negative views persist despite intergroup contact.170 Sophisticated research is attentive to the interactions among social narratives, political power, individual psychological experience, and student achievement and can help explain how prejudicial assumptions and behaviors often continue despite contact when there is failure to establish equal status relationships. This may illuminate the debate over whether coeducation combats gender hierarchy. The prevailing social narratives about gender may be too strong for any actual contact to subvert them. There is some evidence for this explanation in the finding that teachers need to impose structure on classroom collaborations to guard against the likelihood that male students will take the lead in discussion and suppress dissenting views.

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