6 ms·
Not much comfort to people who suffer in school because all the teachers saw them as an actor in a system instead of a person.
by mkr-hn 4y ago
Not much comfort to people who suffer in school because all the teachers saw them as an actor in a system instead of a person.
- feet 4y agoWe are all actors in a system, but that has nothing to do with it
- throwaway290 4y agoAgain, literally the only way you correct for unconscious bias is conscious bias. Where did you get the mistaken impression that it's supposed to be comforting knowledge? If your target is X = 0, and you think or you've been told that you act as if X = -2, then you act as if X = 2 and hope for the best.
- mkr-hn 4y agoYou're talking about mistreating some children for the benefit of others. These are people, not an algebra problem. Do you hear yourself?
- throwaway290 4y agoCare to clarify who is mistreating who exactly and how, and who in your opinion benefits from this in the end? To go back, someone commented that boys are consciously graded lower, to which I wrote that conscious bias is the only way to correct for previous unconscious bias. Now you talk about teachers not seeing persons in students and mistreatment. I lost track of what point you are making and how it relates to anything. Are you still commenting on TFA and grading bias or venting your beef with quality of teaching and education system as a whole? If the latter then by all means join the club
- haneefmubarak 4y agoI think the point that folks are trying to make here is that by treating these boys as actors in a system ("conscious bias to correct unconscious bias") is essentially mistreatment via failure to see and treat them as individuals. Teachers should in theory be focusing on the betterment of all of their students as individuals and it is messed up if they are intentionally treating some students worse (lower grades for work of the same quality in this case) in pursuit of some higher goals.
- throwaway290 4y agoWait, are you saying education system in general is broken? Absolutely agreed. It's just not the topic in question. In a better system there would be no grades, but as long as we have a system centered around grades and discussing an article about gender bias in grading that's the topic. And within it it's bordering on deliberate, malevolent ignorance to say "oh no, boys are being mistreated by receiving slightly worse grades" without acknowledging that before that girls were discriminated against incomparably more strongly and while it's not ideal it would seem as if there are attempts to improve the system here. The original argument was that there was an unconscious bias against girls before, and I posit that conscious bias is the only way to correct for unconscious bias, and sometimes conscious bias overcompensates without any ill intent (because humans are complicated and your unconscious bias against a person is not something you can measure with a stick, my wild guess is the "unconscious" part might have something to do with that). Someone tell me this is wrong, I am yet to see a single argument how. Second, one of the guesses in the conclusions section of the paper explicitly states that it could all be simply the effect of teachers trying to use whatever they think is effective for the betterment of the students: they might think boys would be motivated to work harder if they are given lower grades while to girls failure is destructive and they need constant encouragement. Is the original intent good? Sure why not. Is this sexist though? Absolutely. Is withholding failure from girls only strengthens fear of failure in them, hurting them in the long run, while making boys more prepared for competitive environment outside the school system? Should this be more of concern than hurting boys by giving them slightly lower grades? I'd say so.
- mkr-hn 4y ago
- tpoacher 4y agoAlternatively, if your target is 0, and you've been told you act as -2 but you're really a 2, your bias correction will make you an extremist at 4. Which is a far more common outcome of "unconscious bias correction policies" than actual progress.
- throwaway290 4y agoYes, and this may very well be happening too. I believe the consensus has been established that the average was roughly -2 (meaning prior discrimination against girls in education), but individual teachers who were already better than average would be more liable to overcompensate.
- Handytinge 4y agoYes, creating more victims should help.