Stereotypes In High School

Stereotypes are something that has been around for years and they still exist today. Many people believe stereotypes don't have the power to bring down a high school student’s ability to succeed. There have been articles and movies about stereotypes. The article “How a Self Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down a Performance” by Shankar Vedantam has talked about how stereotypes can affect how people perform in school, work, and life. There are also movies that are based on true events that have happened like in “Stand and Deliver”. This movie was based on a teacher named Jaime Escalante. In this movie the majority of the students that attended Garfield high had to deal with people not believing in them. Stereotypes have the power to change …show more content…
How can this be true because if you just based someone on how they look you can't really get to know them. You can't stop people from thinking what they think, but you can help people to learn and understand how stereotypes can affect people when they are in school and in life. When high school students are faced with stereotypes they can do poorly academically and socially. They may feel threatened during a test and it can cause them to score lower, this was shown in the article “How a Self Fulfilling Stereotype Can Drag Down a Performance” when the test takers felt threatened with stereotypes they didn't perform their best. When students are always hearing the same stereotypes they start to believe them and that can affect them socially at school. Stereotypes are everyday things that people have to live with and they are more common than you think. At my own school, I interviewed a 9th grader named Roxy about stereotypes. I asked her “What are some stereotypes that you deal with”? She said that “People think I am weak because I am a girl and they think I am not good at sports”. Stereotypes have the power to affect students ability to succeed for example when they are trying to take a …show more content…
In the movie “Stand and deliver” after the students took the advanced placement test and when everyone thought they cheated on the test it made them have less confidence in themselves and they also feel bad about themselves. The students didn't cheat on the test, so “Why did everyone think they did”? It was because of the stereotypes that people had towards the students and when the investigators came to see how they cheated everyone had an idea of how they acted in school. That idea was they thought they were dumb so how could they go from dumb to smart with just one teacher's help. This movie was based on true story and these kids had to live thru people not believing in them. Luckily in the movie they re took the tests and still everyone passed. Then finally everyone believed them. Why is it that we should have to prove ourselves or show other people what we can