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May 02, 2024
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LAS 226 - Uncovering Ourselves: The Self as Other 3 hours
Implicit bias (automatic or unconscious stereotyping that guides our perception of and behavior toward social groups) is one of the fastest growing areas of human psychology. It also lies at the heart of one of the raging debates in American public schools: whether the teacher’s operation of unconscious gender, racial, religious, and other biases can affect student achievement. The course explores how scientific evidence on the human mind might help to explain why racial and gender equality is so elusive. This new evidence reveals how human mental machinery can be skewed by lurking stereotypes, often bending to accommodate hidden biases reinforced by years of social learning such as biases toward specific religious orientations. Through the lens of these powerful and pervasive implicit attitudes and stereotypes, the course examines both the continued subordination of historically disadvantaged groups and the educational system’s complicity in the subordination. Students will be introduced to cutting edge research that bears not only on the highly relevant substantive areas of discrimination and prejudice in American classrooms, but also on questions regarding gender gaps in science and math, affirmative action programs, teacher expectations, and the school-to-prison pipeline. Students will learn how implicit bias works, how to interpret and use empirical research findings, how to understand the major critiques of implicit bias research, and how to understand scholars’ use of implicit bias findings.
Prerequisite(s): Sophomore standing.
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