As the Washington Post reports, research psychologists are now investigating the effects of subtle cues on the performance of students in the classroom. One study in particular, planned and implemented by Jennifer Steele of Toronto’s York University and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University, determined to explain how seemingly innocuous influences such as random words could affect the outcome of, say, a test.
Steele and Nalini’s study involved flashing words on a screen for just a fraction of a second. Words usually associated with the feminine gender influenced students to flourish in the arts while words with a masculine connotation raised performance in math. While I have no doubt that there is a lot of truth to this, I also have no doubt that the PC crowd is already hard at work, dreaming up ways to claim discrimination for any group that can claim minority status.
In fact, the insanity has already begun! And a Florida State University graduate student in psychology, driven to action by a recently enacted Florida law that requires an American flag to be displayed in every classroom, is leading the charge. David Butz has recently concluded a study in which he claims that displaying an American flag in a classroom gives an unfair advantage to white students, who exhibit a significant increase in classroom performance over minority students. The minority students in fact, seem to be totally unfazed by the sight of the American flag, with no increase or decrease in performance.
The implication is, of course, that Florida needs to repeal that law and remove those nasty flags from state classrooms as soon as possible, before any more minority students are damaged. The true reason minorities don’t respond as strongly to the flag is more likely that American history is of late, no longer adequately taught, if it’s taught at all. Since so many minority students are newly arrived inhabitants, the meaning of the American flag is lost on them. The sane thing to do would be to require teachers to start teaching American history again in earnest. But given the general attitude within the teaching establishment that America is the root cause of the world’s problems, don’t expect to see anything sane happen any time soon.