you don't know me!

I don't know how it all started, but one of my friends that I work with started the phrase "you don't know me!! You don't know my life!!!!" which we jokingly exclaim on a regular basis (you have to entertain yourself at work somehow, right?).  While I have always had an awareness of how prevalent judgment is in our society, I have been noticing an increase in the ignorance of children, especially over the course of my thesis research and feel compelled to address it. 

It irks me when people associate intelligence/level of education or lack thereof with deviance and/or crime. While reviewing another honors thesis (I know -- a thesis as a source for a thesis is a little unorthodox) on classroom misbehavior and home environment processes with court-involved youth, the author cites supporting research to her argument regarding the correlation between IQ and deviant behavior.  

"Youths with a lower IQ score have a harder time in school; this can be a predictor for frustration within the classroom leading to deviant behavior . . . As school failure prevails, inappropriate classroom behavior succeeds leading to suspension, expulsion, or dropping out. Recent court statistics found that of the current juvenile offenders in a sample of one hundred and four children, 43% were two years behind grade level, 70% were barely passing or failing, 23% were in special education, 45% had been held back, and 55% had been suspended up to twenty times" (Finn, Scott, Zarichny, 1998; as cited in Cooperkline, 2009).

Okay I know I'm a little (but actually probably incredibly) biased based on my intern experience at a juvenile courthouse and a juvenile resource center -- finding that many of them were quite intelligent and scored well on standardized testing (a stark contrast to the stigma that seems to follow juvenile delinquents), but WHY?????/ Why do people always attribute deviant behavior to lack of intelligence and/or poverty? Granted I admit that failure in school is often paired with inappropriate behavior in school, but almost all of the sources I have read use "deviance" and "low IQ" or "low socioeconomic status" in the same sentence. I feel as though research should be open to findings without underlying themes of stereotypes and stigmas. In fact, that is probably why so many people perceive juvenile delinquents as uneducated and/or poor. I can't even begin to describe all of the times adults (ADULTS..) have been condescending about the field I want to pursue (even though it encompasses juveniles.. meaning any child under the age of 18, not just delinquents). Although I don't want to elaborate on the internet, I really hope my thesis ultimately proves that there are many other factors behind juvenile delinquency that are often undermined. Aside from my thesis research, I have come to discover over the course of my college career (as you may have noticed in previous blog posts) the ignorant rationale that

 poverty = bad

uneducated = bad

delinquents = bad 

mediocre schools = bad

therefore, most, if not all low academic- performing students are poor, uneducated, and usually deviant. 

Hmmm.... No.

And going back to my previous blog post regarding the assumption that elite private schools and pricier = better, that is most certainly not true and it has been shown that a pricier education does NOT equal smarter kids. Being smarter has everything to do with what both students, teachers and parents do with their investment in education (The Smartest Kids in the World, Ripley, 19). In other words, a hard working, intelligent student (Student A) who attends a public school that performs below an intelligent student (Student B) who attends a private school only speaks for a  deficit of support and/or resources from either Student A's parents/family or specific teachers.. or both. 

When people wonder why reform of the education system or the court system fails to improve anything, it's because of reasoning of this nature.