Those evil pre-school teachers: The media's latest societal monster By Kay Hymowitz City Journal
Published Oct. 10, 2016
As the media picked over the carcass of Donald Trump's disastrous debate performance last week, Hillary Clinton's critics continued to eye one statement by the Democratic nominee. "I think implicit bias is a problem for everyone, not just police," she said in response to moderator Lester Holt's question about recent police shootings of black men. "I think, unfortunately, too many of us in our great country jump to conclusions about each other." She promised to fund implicit-bias training for police forces if she is elected.
By citing "implicit bias"-defined as unconsciously held "negative associations" about a group-the ever-studious Clinton introduced into the political conversation an academic term that has migrated from social-justice circles to the mainstream. A new paper by the Yale Child Study Center on implicit bias among preschool teachers gives us a chance to get a closer look at the concept in practice. The results are dismaying. Though endorsed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and gullibly covered in major media outlets, the study is a mess of contradictions and spin. If it proves anything other than the bias of both social scientists and the media on racial issues, it's that implicit bias-assuming there is such a thing, and that we know how to measure it-has no clear real-life consequences.
The Yale researchers' motivation was uncontroversial. They wanted to examine the "underlying causes" for the disproportionate number of black boys expelled from preschool. "Black preschoolers are 3.6 times as likely to receive one or more suspensions relative to White preschoolers," they note correctly. "Black children make up only 19% of preschool enrollment, but comprise 47% of preschoolers suspended one or more times. Similarly, boys are three times as likely as girls to be suspended one or more times."...
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