Various Stereotypes Associated with Students

Have you, or someone you may know, ever been a victim of stereotyping? Stereotypes present a considerable role in today’s society and especially in academic institutions. According to the Webster’s Dictionary, stereotyping is defined as a fixed conventional notion or conception of an individual or a group of people, held by a number of people. For as long as one can remember, stereotypes have existed in our everyday lives, through religion, politics and the “media”. Humans’ have the tendency to use stereotypes in their humor, their descriptions of others, and even in their beliefs. These are important forces that can influence and affect everyone, bringing change in behavior, attitudes, and one’s beliefs. Stereotyping negatively influences the rate of success and motivation of gifted students, below average students, and minority students, both as a group and individuals. Approximately three million students in the United States are classified as gifted. These students have considerably higher academic achievability than average students. Their exceptional abilities can cause anxiety, underachievement, and feeling of isolation from the majority of the other students. However, for many of these students, it is the stereotypes regarding intelligence that has brought about their struggles, or perpetuated them. However, these abilities are not only limited to academic aptitudes. Some of these are specific intellectual abilities, creative or productive thinking, leadership ability, and psychomotor ability. These strengths further translate into verbal intelligence, musical intelligence, logical intelligence, spatial intelligence, or artistic. Though the most widely stereotyped of these qualifications, is the academic ability. These students are assumed to do well in school, are neat and organized, and spend most of their time studying and doing homework. As well as these, they are thought to be ignorant of their appearance and completely disengaged of athletics and outdoor activities. However, this over-suggestive assumption is highly misrepresentative of students associated with this criterion, and often times completely fallacious. Conversely, not only one tends to discriminate against intelligent students but also ones with low average performance abilities. Our society not only stereotypes people of high performance abilities it also discriminates against one’s with poor or below average abilities. These students have considerably low academic achievability than average students. However, this does not mean a person of such will not be able to achieve higher values. It just simply states the fact that they will require more amount of studying to achieve equal or higher classifications. These students are assumed to perform not as well in school; they are thought to be more concerned about their appearance and athletics than their performance in their classes. Peers may view these students as negatively affective on their own performance and discard communication and group work with them. They are also falsely viewed as the students who leave all group work on other members of the group to complete. Stereotyping may cause students and teachers to view below average students on as inferior. This may cause some teachers or faculty members to believe that these below average students are not as capable of achieving the same quality of work as average students. Scholarships are sometimes given out to gifted and average students due to their academic background. I suppose this happens due to the stereotype of below average students not being capable of the educational work as that of other students. For as long as immigrants have migrated to the United States, we have stereotyped towards the minorities and the foreigners. The media often misrepresents stereotypes; however, people among the society significantly accept them. These are stereotypes that are observed by young children and are perceived as humorous; they apply this knowledge towards those they meet in real-life. Stereotypes may challenge the representation of teachers and students towards minority students on a non-minority campus as inferior. This may cause some teachers or faculty members to believe that these minority students are not as capable of achieving the same quality of work as non-minority students. I suppose this happens due to the stereotype of minority students not being capable of the educational work as that of other students. The Simpsons contains a large number of audiences that watch the show daily as it is broadcasted during primetime. Characters such as Apu are highly discriminated and stereotyped. On this show Apu is characterized as an Indian immigrant, who prays to Ganesh, and holds a highly noticeable and dissimilar accent. Viewers of such shows believe this information to be completely accurate for they hold little or no knowledge about that particular group. Though the stereotypes shown on television are usually misrepresented, they are quite well accepted by the audience as the truth. The viewers who watch these shows on a regular basis do not recognize the biased content, which is being presented. Media grabs the interests of their audience through comedy, drama, and action, which causes the viewers to disregard the immorality behind the content. Hence, the effectiveness of using such stereotypes contributes to the popularity of television shows. Stereotyping students both based on their ethnicity as minority and one’s academic abilities can cause malfunctioning in their mental and social behaviors. May it be at home, school, the work place, or everyday life, it will cause restrictions on learning the truth about one another and communicating. If people do not begin recognizing the negative impacts of stereotyping and discriminating soon enough secluded sub-groups of people will emerge. In addition human culture will be altered drastically by the lack of miscommunication. Also, the future generations will no longer be aware of what socializing with other meant. Hence, as surveys’ have shown, reductions in stereotyping have generated a more positive environment.