Of Wristbands, Collars, and Stereotypes

In my in-box the title read, "Fla High School Uses Wristbands to Encourage Students."

It should really have read, "Fla High School Opts for Extrinsic Motivation, Stereotype Threat."

The gist of the article, printed in the Tampa Bay Times and reposted via ASCD SmartBrief, is that a Tampa high school has instituted an incentive program featuring color-coded wristbands: Yellow says "On Track" and Blue says "Highly On Track." (Whatever that means - in my experience trains are either on or off their track. Is speed being conflated with directionality here?) 

Now, normally I might have been saddened by yet another extrinsic reward system; disturbed by the creepy Orwellian sense of some students being more equal (or on-track) than others; or skeptical that actual teenagers would find these motivating for more than 5 minutes. But last night I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Stanford professor, Dr. Claude Steele, on Stereotype Threat. So I clicked the "Mad" icon at the end of the article. Here's why:

Steele has described Stereotype Threat in numerous academic papers as well as his highly readable book, Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. It is the mechanism by which otherwise well prepared and skillful people for whom a negative stereotype exists find themselves psyched out of their peak performance. 

The ingredients of this unholy cocktail are: 
1) Wanting to excel at something, 
2) Being aware that your group is stereotyped as less able at this same thing, and 
3) Experiencing frustration in the performance of it. 

When all three of these things happen, it's as though the psychological threat of confirming all those negatives "takes up bandwidth" that could otherwise be used to solve the frustrating problem before you. It explains many types of predictable cognitive performance gaps, be it the Gender-Math & Science imbalance, the Racial-Academic disparity, or even the "White with a Mic" Rap gap (of which Steele showed this Eminem Video Clip - language NSFW). In all of these cases, the more skilled at and passionate about something you are, the less likely you'll be able to demonstrate it when the stakes are high. 

Steele reminded us last night of the classic blue-eyes/brown-eyes study documented by PBS as A Class Divided - you remember, the one where the teacher taught her all-white class a lesson in stereotyping and bigotry by telling them that all the brown eyed children were inferior in every way: ugly, stupid, lazy, smelly, etc. etc. The next day she switched and told them that she'd been wrong, actually the brown eyed kids were superior and the blue-eyes had all those negative traits. A detail I had forgotten was that the teacher made blue or brown collars for the "inferior" group to wear (see the blue one in this photo).

What's amazing is that she creates Stereotype Threat in a single day by issuing an onslaught of social cues! And, though they didn't yet have the term back in 1968, these third graders perfectly describe the concept in just over a minute (13:10 - 14:25 in the documentary).

She asks small groups of the students to do a timed reading task. In each case the students considered "inferior" that day have stunningly low times; on the day they are considered "superior" they breeze through the problems. On day two of the simulation, she confronts the students with their times over the two days and asks them what the difference was. For the group that had come up in social standing there was some giggling as they offered, "We were brown eyes, we had collars!" and, "We just kept thinkin' about those collars!" 

But the heartbreaking responses are those from the children who had done so much better just one day earlier, and who respond from within their low status. One child blurts out, "I knew we weren't going to make it." 
"Neither did I," another chimes in.
"What happened?" the teacher asks. 
Silence. . . 
"What were you thinking of?" she prompts.
"These," says a boy, pointing to the collar in shame.

Fast forward to this week. Students who could be the grandkids of those original 3rd graders with their blue or brown collars are walking down the halls of a Tampa high school, voluntarily sporting blue or yellow wristbands, fitting in with the "on track" kids. Or wishing they could. Really wanting to attain that "On Track" status but perhaps looking around and becoming aware that the kids who share an identity with them don't have those bracelets. And then, perhaps encountering some frustration in upper level coursework or high-stakes testing that triggers Stereotype Threat and renders them unable to keep "On Track."

So, OK, Tampa if you want to go down the shallow and competitive road of extrinsic rewards, fine. If you want to have doublespeak about your "tracking," whatever. But do you really want to create visual castes with your blue and yellow wristbands? Do you need to stack one more self-fulfilling social cue on the tower of ability messages our culture has already built? 

Next time we'll look into white liberal inaction as a function of Stereotype Threat. . .