THE QUESTION IS: How can the labels that schools place on some students affect the students’ actual performance and the reactions of others?
Symbolic-interaction theory explains how we all build reality in our everyday interactions with others. When school officials define some students as “gifted,” for
example, we can expect teachers to treat them differently and expect the students themselves to behave differently as a result of having been labeled in this way. If students and
teachers come to believe that one race is academically superior to another, the behavior
that follows may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One limitation of this approach is that people do not just make up such beliefs
about superiority and inferiority. Rather, these beliefs are built into a society’s system
of social inequality, which brings us to social-conflict theory.
THE QUESTION IS: How can the labels that schools place on some students affect
the students’ actual performance and the reactions of others?
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