THE PROB LEMS OF EDUCATION ARE NOT GE NE TIC 323From this, they suggest, it is clear that “ bright” is a portmanteau word:
“Being ‘bright’ is not a single thing; it is woven together from a number
of separable developmental achievements, some social, some perceptual,
some cognitive and some linguistic.”^4
It seems likely that, because they have read some genetics—or at least
popu lar and media accounts— teachers will readily assume that those
pre- education diff erences are at least partly innate. So they will behave
toward children in diff er ent ways according to those preconceptions.
Children soon assimilate the subliminal messages to reinforce self- effi cacy
beliefs already obtained from preschool experiences in family and neigh-
borhood. So the early perceptions become self- fulfi lling. But the pro cess
continues throughout schooling and higher education.
Carol Dweck has shown in her research that teachers readily and eas-
ily transmit the idea to the children themselves that achievement is due
to being smart. Accordingly, children who fail tend to think that it is
because they lack learning ability. Vari ous studies have demonstrated
these subtle eff ects of rank ordering in schools, even among children pre-
viously assessed by other teachers as of equal ability. One of these showed
that students allocated to a higher rank have higher perceptions of their
intelligence, higher expectations about their future careers, and receive
more support from their current teachers. “If two students with the same
ability have a diff er ent rank in their respective cohort, the higher- ranked
student is signifi cantly more likely to fi nish high school, attend college,
and complete a 4- year college degree.”^5
As Jo Boaler similarly observed “Whenever ability grouping happens—
whether students are told about the grouping and its implications or
not— students’ beliefs about their own potential change in response to the
groups they are placed into.”^6
Th e self- fulfi lling prophecy hits math- related subjects— and females—
particularly. In one study, Donna K. Ginther and Shulamit Kahn concluded
that “the core reason that women do not enter math- intensive fi elds...
is the ste reo typical beliefs of the teachers and parents of younger children
that become part of the self- fulfi lling belief systems of the children them-
selves from a very early age.”^7
Th is appears to be compounded later, in that females’ entrance to mat h-
related careers is discouraged by the beliefs of tutors that “raw” innate
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