When the Punishment Does Not Fit the Crime

Justice was not served, and no lessons have been learned.  Dharun Ravi was declared guilty of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation in the Tyler Clementi case, and was made to surrender his passport, even though he is a legal resident of the United States.

It is assumed that Tyler Clementi commit suicide because Ravi, his room-mate at the time at Rutgers University, had secretly videotaped him engaged in intimate relations with another young man, posted that video on the Internet, and obsessively Twittered about Clementi's sexual activity to friends.

There are a lot of missing pieces to this story, because Tyler could not speak for himself during the trial.  Other people spoke for him.  Things would have been easier, perhaps, if Tyler had not faced such sharp rejection from his mother when he came out to her.  Things would have been easier, perhaps, if Dharun Ravi--and other incoming students at Rutgers University--received some kind of harassment training during their orientation.

While Dharun Ravi did not do right, he had no reason to know that he did wrong.  American culture, to this day, glorifies the humiliation of awkward, weaker males who could be perceived as gay.  Dharun Ravi was behaving like an all-American guy, and may be sent back to India for it.  This is because, in American culture, people of color receive harsher sentences for their actions than whites do.  If a white frat boy on the college football team spied on Clementi and outed him to the world, the university administration might suspend or expel him, but jail time?  How many true human rights abuses have been committed with impunity by white upper middle class athletes, and even celebrated?  They have yet to serve their sentences.  A poor Indian immigrant, instead, is made a scapegoat, and people call this a victory in the war against bullying.

Does Prejudice Overthrow Empathy?

According to a recently published study, children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults.

I will have to read the actual study in order to capture the important details, which Pappas does not identify in her article.  As much as I am inclined to chuckle at this article, and smugly snort "Why yes, only stupid people could be prejudiced," the article goes so far to say that people with low intelligence would also be more likely to be politically conservative.

So here are my questions:

1. How is "intelligence" being defined and assessed by the researchers?

2. If people with Down's Syndrome or other developmental disabilities are also identified as people with "low intelligence", would people with Down's Syndrome or other developmental disabilities also be more likely to prejudiced or politically conservative?

3. Would Adolf Hitler be considered someone of low intelligence, considering that he was a white supremacist who believed in military dictatorship?

4.  Does being "liberal" make you more likely to be of "high intelligence" and/or less likely to be prejudiced?

5. Is there an assessment tool that defines and measures empathy?  Non-human animals are capable of empathy; non-human mammals will nurse baby animals outside of their species, and non-human animals raised with other species will get along with those different species (including humans).  Do humans operate differently than animals in this regard?

Please feel free to comment and discuss.

Why Some Children Learn To Hate School--Their Teachers Hate Them

Male African-American children more likely to receive harsh punishments in school for minor offenses than their peers, according to a report from the National Education Policy Center.  The "discipline" that these children receive does not instill "good" behavior, but often leads to more frequent disciplinary action as these students advance through their K-12 education, reduced academic performance, and early dropout rates.

A UCLA based study revealed that students were aware of ethnicity-based stigma as early as second grade.  Ethnicity-based stigma in school made students more likely to experience academic anxiety and not perform to their potential.  At the same time, ethnic minority children were more likely to be motivated learners in school than their white counterparts--in particular, young African-American students.  

A major human rights crisis exists in our K-12 environment.  No matter what federal and state laws say about providing equal opportunities for education to all children regardless of race, religion, etc etc etc in the United States, there is not one federal or state law which states that people must prove their cultural sensitivity before embarking on a career teaching children or adolescents.  While many state teacher certification programs may include a course or training session on multiculturalism, anyone can learn how to pass a class.  The question is, can someone apply cultural sensitivity and acceptance in their own classroom just because they learned about it in a class?

Fifty percent of new teachers in the United States leave the teaching profession after five years.  It is a difficult job to be sure, often for low pay.  Reasons for leaving the profession include difficult working conditions, lack of support and mentoring from senior colleagues, and a realization that teaching in "the real world" is not the same as student teaching.  What many of those former teachers do not mention is that they, too, may experience some form of prejudice from their colleagues, or may be disgusted by the acts of prejudice that they see their colleagues perform.  Some new teachers are asked specifically if "the black students" are giving them a hard time.  Some new teachers are told specifically to just send certain students (often students of color) to the principal's office if they as much as walk into the door of their classroom.  Many teachers believe that students who are seen and not heard do not hear them use ethnic, homophobic, and transphobic slurs on school grounds.  Even with a new generation of teachers arriving on the scene, a generation cited as more accepting of diversity than previous generations, blatant discrimination against certain children in K-12 schools has not decreased.