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Simple writing exercise helps break vicious cycle that holds back black students

A two-year study shows that a simple 15-minute writing exercise designed to boost a student’s sense of self-worth can make black students feel more confident about their abilites, and increase their grade point averages (particularly among the weakest students).

By Ed Yong

PUBLISHED April 16, 2009

In American high schools, black students typically perform worse than their white peers, which can damage their self-esteem and their future prospects. Studies have found that the fear of living up to this underachieving stereotype can cause so much stress that a child’s performance suffers. Their teachers may even write them off as lost causes, and spend less time on them.

With so many students caught in this vicious cycle, where the stereotype of poor performance strengthens itself, it might seem absurd to suggest that you could turn things round in less than an hour. But try telling that to Geoffrey Cohen from the University of Colorado.

In 2007, he showed that a simple 15-minute writing exercise at the start of a school year could boost the grades of black students by the end of the semester. The assignment was designed to boost the student’s sense of self-worth, and in doing so, it helped to narrow the typical performance gap that would normally separate them from white students. Now, Cohen returns with a new report of the same experiment two...

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Simple writing exercise helps break vicious cycle that holds back black students

A two-year study shows that a simple 15-minute writing exercise designed to boost a student’s sense of self-worth can make black students feel more confident about their abilites, and increase their grade point averages (particularly among the weakest students).

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