Brian Hare - Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity

It was 1971, seventeen years after Brown v. Board of Education declared that segregation in schools was unconstitutional, and schools all over the country were still in turmoil.

Minority children often had to catch buses from one side of town to another, which meant they had to get up two hours earlier than white children. If they could afford to, white families sent their children to private schools, leaving only the poorest white children in the public school system. In the classroom, there was so much hostility between racial groups that children had very little energy for learning. Educators, parents, policy makers, civil rights activists, and social workers watched in dismay.

Carlos was in the fifth grade at a public school in Austin, Texas. English was his second language. He answered questions with a stammer, and when the other children mocked him, he stammered even more. He became withdrawn, rarely speaking at all.

Many social scientists had predicted that school desegregation would be an unqualified success. It was assumed that once all children were on an equal footing in the classroom, white children would leave school less racist, not just toward people of color in their schools, but toward those they encountered throughout their lives. Minority children would receive a first-class education, which would set them up for successful careers.

However, when the psychologist Elliot Aronson looked in on Carlos and his classmates, he spotted a fundamental problem. The children in that classroom were not on an equal footing. The white children were better prepared, better equipped, and better rested. Many teachers were teaching minority children for the first time and were as bewildered by their new charges as their white students were. Carloss teacher, seeing how badly he was being teased and not wanting to put him on the spot, no longer called on him, inadvertently isolating him further. Other teachers did not want minority children in their classroom. If they did nothing to encourage the white childrens merciless taunting, neither did they do anything to stop it.

In a traditional classroom structure, children are in constant competition for their teachers approval. This inherent conflictin which the success of one child threatens the success of anothercan foster a toxic environment, and integration exacerbated this issue. Many of the white children had been at their school for years. They saw minority children as invaders, and inferior ones at that. The minority children understandably felt threatened by their hostility.

Aronson convinced Carloss teacher to try something new. Instead of the teacher holding court over the class, asking questions, singling out some students and neglecting others, Aronson suggested transferring a small portion of knowledge, and its associated power, to each student.

Carloss class was studying the journalist Joseph Pulitzer. Aronson broke the class into groups of six. Each member of Carloss group had to learn about one stage of Pulitzers story, and at the end of the exercise, the children were tested on his whole life. Carlos was in charge of Pulitzers middle years. When it was his turn to say what he had learned, he stammered as usual, and the other children made fun of him. Aronsons assistant casually remarked, You can say things like that if you want to, but its not going to help you learn about Joseph Pulitzers middle years, and youll have an exam on Pulitzers life in about twenty minutes.

The children quickly realized that they werent competing against Carlos, they needed him. Making Carlos nervous made it harder for him to explain what hed learned, so they became sympathetic interviewers, carefully drawing out what he knew. After several weeks of working like this on various projects, Carlos became more comfortable around the other children, and they grew friendlier.

Aaronson had introduced whats known as the jigsaw method, in which each child in a group has a piece of knowledge to contribute to a coherent lesson.