Social Construction

An interesting example which Robin brought up was the naming and categorizing of a kid as "bad." This relates a lot to many aspects of my life growing up. I was always influenced by the people I grew up around and the neighborhood that I lived in. So I started having behavior issues earlier on in elementary school. It started off with simple consequences such as conduct reports and a short phone call home. As I entered middle school, the consequences turned into in-school-suspension and eventually out-of-school suspension. My friends and I were therefore always labeled as "bad kids," and as Robin mentions, categorizing kids as such greatly affects their lives. Kids believe what they are told, so if tell a kid that they are "bad" or "not smart" then they will grow up to be these things, and educational institutions play a large role in developing these types of individuals. Because of this, my friends truly believed that we were not smart, and that we wouldn't grow up to be successful students.

Nevertheless, we grew up and got in trouble with the law multiple times. While I was able to get my life together, my closest friends did not and are in jail today. I grew up with these guys, so I knew that they had high potential to be successful. But because of the institution which have defined them, they were not given the chance to live up to that potential.

The point that I'm making with this is that if it weren't for the social construction which occurs today, all students would have the chance to be equally successful. I met extremely intelligent students in high school who did not grow up with the same circumstances as me, but not all of them have made it as far as I have today. This shows that if social construction did not exist, then many more students would be successful.