Stereotypes In High School

In his article “College Students Need to Toughen Up, Quit Their Grade Whining”, Robert Schlesingner addresses the emerging issue of grade inflation, and more specifically, the greater sense of entitlement that seems to prevail in the modern scholastic realm. Mr. Schlesingner begins his address by presenting his background and what standards and expectations were common during his time through both lower-level education and college. During his time [time in what?], a grade of C represented “adequate” or average work, B correlated with “an above average job”, and obtaining an A required “spectacular” performance by the student. [more concise] However, as cited by Mr. Schlesingner, an investigation by the University of California-Irvine seems to indicate that the values of each letter grade has changed, at least in the mind of the modern student with more students now believing that A’s and B’s should be more easily obtained and that the amount of effort put into a task should be considered when grading. Next, Mr. Schlesingner presents his opinions on this topic of grade inflation and the proper influence of student effort on grade. To conclude,

Whether we realize it or not, test scores play a vital role in many people’s self esteem. A person who frequently scores high will be confident that they are very intelligent and will expect others to see them that way. Asimov attested to this when he stated, “All my life I’ve been registering scores like that, so that I have the complacent feeling that I’m highly intelligent, and I expect other people to think that too.” (Asimov, 536). On the other hand, those who score low on tests often write themselves off to be unintelligent. Emphasis on the importance of the ACT or SAT test scores can lead an adolescent to conclude that he or she is not capable of succeeding in college and lead them to not pursue higher education. The tragedy is that we may pass on opportunities because we have labelled ourselves unintelligent based on a test score which is not a true refelection of our

Historically, letter grades have served as a tool to rate educational intelligence. By looking at the progression of a student’s grades over time, people are able to determine whether or not the students are developing skills in certain areas. Using a one letter grade to determine progress has received many critiques as a common system used in America’s education. Critics claim letter grades cause students motivation and creativity to decrease because grades shift students focus from learning the material to obtaining a good grade.

Albert Einstein once said, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” I’ve seen this today, where students are these fish, and these standardized tests that we take are the judges at how well we climb up the tree.

Would you consider yourself as a grade junkie? Do you always strive for an A and take nothing less? In his essay “A Young Person’s Guide to the Grading System,” Jerry Farber argues that the grading system is not a good way of evaluating students academically. He believes that with the grading system the way it is, students’ do not try to learn; they only push towards getting a good letter grade. Though some may disagree, Farber's view on the grading system is true.

Kids in middle school, are enduring a time period in their life where they're becoming teens, who are becoming adults. Kids going into middle school are at a point where boys being friends with girls was somewhat acceptable, to adults thinking if two 11 year olds of the opposite genders are gonna have sex with each other if they're left alone together for 5 minutes.

According to Alfie Kohn's essay "The dangerous myth of grade inflation," one of the most commonly-cited truisms in education today is that higher education is 'easier' than it was in the past. Critics contend that grades have become puffed up while student performance has actually weakened. Kohn believes this is a culturally-produced myth rather than a statistically justified reality. In fact, the notion that grades were less generously bestowed to students is a durable cliché which extends back to the 19th century, and is not merely relegated to our own era. Today, the perpetrators cited as the worst offenders are liberal professors from the 1960s who have lapped up a generally permissive attitude from that era. But "a report released just this year by the National Center for Education Statistics revealed that fully 33.5 percent of American undergraduates had a grade-point average of C or below in 1999-2000" (Kohn 2002: B7). Kohn sees the anxieties about grade inflation as indicative of a larger cultural anxiety of what it means to be an educated person, and believes that a fixation on grades is a fundamentally misguided way to improve the American educational system.

Alfie Kohn discussed many fabulous points in his article, “Degrading to De-Grading”. The author suggests more effective ways to assess students’ progress other than numerical or letter grades such as, portfolios or narratives. Kohn goes into detail about why our current grading system is flawed. Grades can cause students to lose interest in learning, this causes them to stop taking challenges. If students are not engaged and interested than they are not retaining the information they are being taught. The grading system can also cause students to develop unhealthy competition with one another for instance, “I got a better grade than you!”. Indeed, grades are a wonderful concept, but they tend to be more hurtful than helpful. In some cases,

The media portrays high schools being full of identity stereotypes, whether it is in movies, TV shows, or sometimes music. Each school has the group of star athletes, the kids bound for broadway, and the kids who could become the next Einstein. Every show or movie has the same supporting character who each belonged to different cliques.

Have you ever been judged before for the smallest and unimportant things you can imagine? Or maybe you have seen others getting judged for the way they act or dress. On September 16, at James Giles School 7th and 8th graders were having lunch and recess. The students were having a good time talking playing games and eating lunch naturally having a good time. A group of 7th grade girls were talking and suddenly another girls joined them. The girls that joined them was their friend because they would go to the park together and walk together after school. The girls didn't like the idea of joining them. The girls started being mean and judging her of what she wore to school. People that judge others in a mean way know that its mean and hurtful

Our class does research on the way stereotypes affect people in our school. We have interviewed 165 students. 79% of the people we interviewed were in 9th grade. The rest were evenly spread between 10th 11th and 12th grade. only 42% of our participants were female, while 58% were male. The majority of our interviewees identified themselves as white at 46%. 33% were hispanic or latino 7% were african american 4% were asian american 10% were other and 1% were native american. A majority of our participants also identified themselves as student athletes and teenagers. Our participants most noticed their stereotype at school but outside of class. A majority of our participants responded by ignoring them at 46% prove them wrong was 11% turn it into a joke was 16% confront them was 7% play the part was 5% and other was 15%.

Among the greatest examples of stereotype inequality are women’s rights and racism, however, recent history has both made light of the situations and has drastically ameliorated them. Consequently, stereotypes are gradually slipping out of the view of the general public. However, is it safe to assume that stereotypes are no longer a major problem? Furthermore, how is our high school youth affected by stereotyping? While some may say that this matter is no longer a major issue, it seems quite the contrary.

A stereotype is a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing. There are both negative and positive connotations to stereotypes, but most of them are negative. These negative stereotypes have a great impact on certain individuals or groups of people and can effect them in many aspects of their lives. Throughout my entire life and especially in elementary school people have always labeled me as a “nerd” or “geek”. In spite of this stereotype that has molded me into the person that I fully accept today, there were many unfavorable repercussions that came along with this stereotype.

A student can be excluded from their peer groups because they have a bad grade. Being left out can make a student not want to improve academically. If they get bad grades others will see them as a poor student and will expect them to do poor in life. The process most schools use to evaluate student performance is grade point average and class rank. The academic recognition programs that exist in the United States are driven by a student’s grade point average and class rank. Those measures serve as the primary method in establishing student recognition. If this ranking is not the sole factor in the recognition program, it is always included in the student’s assessment. The school culture recognizes individuals that are in the top one-third of the school’s class rank

In education today, schools prioritize grades. This often leads students to believe that grades define success. But there is a recurring issue involving grades that constantly comes to mind. Education’s emphasis on grades has lead students to believe that their grades are much more valuable to them rather than their learning which in the end is not beneficial in any way.