九年级学生谈老师的偏见：How Teachers are Biased and Why It’s Bad
九年级学生 10/24 4090
这是我家老大写的演讲稿，我画蛇添足讲讲背景。
阻击亚裔细分法，他和我一同前往8/10号州府的集会，目睹妈妈赶鸭子上架，在没有其它更好专业人选的情形下、斗胆和Bob Huff夫人何美湄一起做集会主持人，我们也有机会交流了亚裔孩子入学方面受到的歧视，及共和党人如何主张一视同仁，尤其是Catharine Baker如何帮助我们亚裔社区。
之后他应我邀请去了Baker助选办，倾倒于Baker的智慧和亲切，学会了打电话助选，和我肩并肩第一回打电话，一开始被人拒绝、呛声他非常不习惯，说之前人家对待他这个小朋友都是比较客气的。Scott（Baker办公室的负责人）安慰他说，没关系，"Kill them with kindness!" 这个关键时候的指点令我感慨，因为它画龙点睛出美国人文的大智慧，而这种为了助选他人而不卑不亢、百折不挠的精神也只有在实践中才学得会。 尝试了好几次之后，他终于自信满满，自称是电话助选专家，只要有空就欣然和我一起前往打电话。
关注美国大选，他常看Fox News。我很好奇他怎么会这样？他说只有Fox才有Trump，他想两边都观察一下。观察的结果就是他认为媒体一边倒。再后来听说Google搜索引擎的偏见，他一搜果然是偏。
下面这个演讲稿是英文课老师要他们选题，一堆题目里面，他选了这么一个艰难的题目，自己做了不少调研，周末忙了半天写讲稿。一开始不知道怎么写才不得罪人，迟迟无法下笔。深知他温厚天性的我鼓励他不要怕，先把想法都写出来再说。写出来后他还是很怕老师动怒，再次求助。我于是帮他把他自己的意见部分统统删掉。但原文还是太长啦，要超时：只能讲三分钟的，他的则需要五分钟讲完。我趁机问他要不要把同性恋婚姻那段去掉，因为觉得已经不属于有争议的话题了，也怕他惹不必要的麻烦，但他坚持放在上面。礼拜一演讲据说非常成功，小朋友都还蛮喜欢的。老师也给了个A。
最近看了一两篇左派精英学生写给父母的信，与此同时有不少父母无奈孩子和自己看法天差地别的感慨，我想说：不要担心，开诚布公的交流最重要，和孩子的关系与父母自身的示范是教育的根本，在这上面也不例外。
我家孩子的思想还在变化，对于他的未来我并不是很担心，一个有独立思考能力、不人云亦云的人是不会东倒西歪地随便被人误导、绑架思想的，这也是做父母能够给予他们的最好的礼物。
There is no doubt that teachers have always been a big part of your life. They are the ones who determine your grade and probably part of your future too. Teaching is a difficult job. Most teachers chose this career because they enjoy teaching and seeing kids grow in knowledge. They are not in for the money or fame or power. However, many teachers are also biased in some ways. Not only are they predisposed to being politically opinionated, which leads to the unavoidable indoctrination of students with their ideas and worldview, but they also make potentially questionable subconscious judgements that can have unintended effects on the students. Teachers should be aware of such things so that they will not impact the kids in bad ways that could be avoided.
Firstly, I will present research pointing to the fact that teachers make subconscious judgements. By this I mean that teachers may allow personal bias to cloud their judgement when it comes to treating students. In an article by The Telegraph written by an education correspondent named Julie Henry, there was a study conducted by the Department of Education to check on their teachers. External moderators checked the ways teachers grade their students’ essays; the results were not so pretty. In two out of three cases, the teacher’s grading was influenced by his or her feelings about that particular student and in 5% of cases the teacher would grade the work way too harshly. The results also stated that teachers will be more likely to give higher grades to students who had neater handwriting or wrote longer stories even if the content of the essays wasn’t that good.
Another example of when teachers make bad subconscious judgements is when they make microaggressions; by that I mean subconscious judgements based on stereotypes on race or gender. Teachers may accidentally assume a kid is poor because he is African American, or ask an Asian student to speak on behalf of the other Asians. “Interactions like these have been shown in hundreds of studies to trigger what's known as stereotype threat, the fear that one's actions could confirm a negative stereotype held about his or her group” (Sparks, Sarah par. 10). Teachers are not the only ones who make these mistakes nor are they any more racially biased than most people, but as important role models for students, they really have to be careful. Mistakes like these can also drastically affect a student’s learning.
Now this is when my speech gets political and I may get into trouble for saying the following. Most teachers can also be politically biased. According to a Washington Post poll, more than 75% of American teachers are democrats, not just those in California. George Leef wrote in a Forbes article,”Teaching is a political activity and (teachers) accordingly feel justified in using their classrooms as platforms for spreading their social, economic, and philosophical beliefs. They want to act as “change agents” who will improve the world” (paragraph 1). Many kids leave school with the same political ideas as their teacher. Many kids identify as democrat by default. From the time you were in elementary school you were taught that guns are bad and do not solve anything, that gay marriage is completely okay, and that unions and social welfare are good things. Things like history, social studies, politics, and sometimes science are often taught from the teacher’s point of view. I am not qualified to say that any of the things they teach are necessarily wrong, but the problem is that students are not exposed to the other side, or the other side is pushed aside. As we all know, teachers want the best for all of their students. For the sake of teaching though, shouldn’t teachers present facts and have the students arrive at their own conclusions instead of making the decisions for them? Chris Skidmore, an education committee member writes in his article, How many children leave school with their teacher's political opinions, “There is no doubt that politics teachers, who will often have passionately-held views of their own, have a difficult job. It’s much harder to be unbiased than it is to speak your mind” (paragraph 5).
To conclude, teachers are very important role models, educators, and influencers, but many are biased in some ways. To be able to recognize that and avoid doing it as much as they can, will help teachers as well as the kids get better education. As Rita Pierson, an educator, says in a TED Talk video called, “we come to work when we don’t feel like it and we listen to policies that dosen’t make sense. We teach anyway because that’s what we do. Teaching and learning should bring joy!”
Works Cited
Henry, Julie. "Teacher 'bias' Gives Better Marks to Favourite Pupils, Research Reveals." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 26 Jan. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.
