Self-Concept and Education :: Education Learning Educational Essays

Self-Concept and EducationAn attractive dark-skinned black child with a tall and slender body, Jewel inhabits her third-grade universe of discourse with the energetic self-assuredness of most star who is eager for the next lesson, the next week, the next grade, her future. Shes eight years old-going on nine, not nineteen, and you wouldnt guess that her mother died of a drug dose a couple of years ago. You dont have to guess because her teacher will freely share the information with you a st reachingr--accompanied by an expression filed with smugness about self-fulfilling prophecies--if you observe even casually about Jewels good attendance and punctuality record, praise her consistently neat home and class work admire her excellent handwriting, one of the best cursives in the class. In a classroom of thirty third-graders, Jewel is one of two black children. The other child is racially mixed with some African-American parentage but her physical features and color blend in seamles sly and nearly anonymously with all of the other tan, tawny, golden Latino, Filipino, white, and Asian children in the class. This is a restless bunch of third- graders, except for those half-dozen who are usually too sleepy or enervated by 900 or 1000 a.rn. to do either more than put their heads down on the desk when they can. Five or six students are always extremely quiet in the class, but the behaviors of the majority range from the docile but talkative to the intensely and continually disruptive and unmanageable. Jewel is talkative but is also wary and sensitive she watches the others, watches the teacher, and desists when necessary. She has reasonable self-control, does not bug out to be incorrigible, is cooperative and tractable most of thc time, is appropriately silent and focused for stretches of time, and is considered a good student by the usual everyday measurements. On this day, Jewel is talking and laughing, almost dancing--so absorbed and delighted with her classma tes topic or the moment--with the enviable childhood balloon of rising silliness and laughter that no brow-wrinkling, big division problem can easily burst--Jewel gets louder and forgets to be watchful, but it is too late. The teacher looks toward Jewel from the other side of the room, and I can tell from teachers expression--her mean-curved lips, the tapered of her wide blue eyes, her reddening cheeks--that Jewel is toast. From across the room teacher yells, Jewel, sit down and be quiet--youre acting like an animal