Words are powerful.  Sticks and stones might lead to a scuffle, but a few words have launched wars.  A simple semantic shift from "Jew" to "dirty Jew" to "rat" can justify a Holocaust.  Likewise, the creation of the nuclear bomb can be named something as benevolent as "the Manhatten Project," the bombs themselves can have cute names like "little boy" and "fat man."  It was no accident when Americans changed the Department of War to the Department of Defense.

The issue at hand is framing.  In Wisdom of Crowds, the author (whose name I still can't spell) describes how the right words can frame the behaviors of a group.  For example, people respond differently to "buy one, get one half off" than "twenty-five percent off."  Yet, statistically, they are the same.  Similarly, Neil Postman described this process as a "semantic environment," where the words create the mood, the atmosphere, the ethos of the interaction.  In one study, students de-scrambled a group sentences that each had words like Bingo, death, gray hair, Florida in them.  The result was that students began thinking about aging and reported levels of depression. 

So, what does this have to do with teaching?  In the book Blink, Malcom Gladwell cites a study where African-American students had to mark their race on a standardized test form.  The result was a ten percent drop in test scores.  Similar tests have done with Latinos and the added level of seeing an "English as a Second Language" label dropped the scores by another ten percent - meaning a full twenty percent decrease.  When researchers ask the students, they always respond with "it was too hard," or "I just wasn't prepared."  Yet, subconciously, they respond to the negative racial stereotypes.

I have seen this in practice tests.  Last year, one of 140 students were able to complete a simple algebra problem about snow melting.  When I pressed for an an answer, they all gave great reasons.  Yet, I wonder if it had something to do with the fact that none of them had seen snow. Subconciously, they knew this problem was for someone else. Indeed, I noticed this last year on the AIMS test when I read through the reading samples and ninety percent of the people were white, without a passing referance to a Latino. 

You might think I am being oversensitive about race or that I am rationalizing.  I might be.  I might be looking for yet another reason to bash standardized testing.  But my snap judgment just might be right.  If that doesn't make any sense, you might want to read Blink.

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