13.4.1: The Rist Research

 13.4.1: The Rist Research Why do some people get tracked into college prep courses and others into vocational ones? There is no single answer, but sociologists have found a surprising one: Children’s early interaction in the classroom sets them on paths that last throughout their education (Calarco 2011; Kozlowski 2016). Let’s look at a classic study by sociologist Ray Rist (1970, 2007), who did participant observation in an African American grade school with an African American faculty. He found that after only eight days in the classroom, the kindergarten teacher felt that she knew the children’s abilities well enough to assign them to three separate worktables. To Table 1, Mrs. Caplow assigned those she considered to be “fast learners.” They sat at the front of the room, closest to her. Those whom she saw as “slow learners,” she assigned to Table 3, located at the back of the classroom. She placed “average” students at Table 2, in between the other tables. 427 This seemed strange to Rist. He knew that the children had not been tested for ability, yet their teacher was certain that she could identify the bright and slow children. Investigating further, Rist found that social class was the underlying basis for assigning the children to the different tables. Middle-class students were separated out for Table 1, and children from poorer homes were assigned to Tables 2 and 3. The teacher paid the most attention to the children at Table 1, who were closest to her, less to Table 2, and the least to Table 3. It didn’t take long for the children at Table 1 to perceive that they were treated better and came to see themselves as smarter. They became the leaders in class activities and even called children at the other tables “dumb.” Eventually, the children at Table 3 disengaged themselves from many classroom activities. At the end of the year, only the children at Table 1 had completed the lessons that prepared them for reading. This early tracking stuck. Their first-grade teacher looked at the work these students had done, and she placed students from Table 1 at her Table 1. She treated her tables much as the kindergarten teacher had, and the children at Table 1 again led the class. The children’s reputations continued to follow them. The second-grade teacher reviewed the children’s scores and also divided her class into three groups. The first she named the “Tigers” and, befitting their name, gave them challenging readers. Not surprisingly, the Tigers came from the original Table 1 in kindergarten. The second group she called the “Cardinals.” They came from the original Tables 2 and 3. Her third group consisted of children she had failed the previous year, whom she called the “Clowns.” The Cardinals and Clowns were given less advanced readers. Rist concluded that each child’s journey through school was determined by the eighth day of kindergarten! As we saw with the Saints and Roughnecks in Chapter 4, labels can be so powerful that they can set people on courses of action that affect the rest of their lives. What occurred was a self-fulfilling prophecy. This term, coined by sociologist Robert Merton (1949/1968), refers to a false assumption of something that is going to happen, which comes true simply because it was predicted. For example, if people believe an unfounded rumor that a credit union is going to fail because its officers have embezzled their money, they all rush to the credit union to demand their money. The prediction—although originally false—is now likely to come true.