Students as Gentlemen

October 01, 2000

I have often been asked why I refer to our students as gentlemen whenever I speak to them in a group. The answer I give is simple: because it is what we want them to be as they grow up. But will simply calling them gentlemen help them to grow up as gentlemen? They would first need to know what being a gentleman is. I suggest you ask your son what he thinks the word means. I am sure it will lead to an interesting and fruitful discussion. Once a student has an idea of what a gentleman is, I believe that addressing him as one will add to the likelihood that he will be one. My confidence is rooted not only in experience, but also in some interesting research in the areas of self-fulfilling prophecies and attribution.

I believe one of the most important areas of psychological research for educators is in the area of expectations. In 1968, Robert Rosenthal conducted a study in a Boston elementary school which led to a series of studies that came to be labeled the Pygmalion effect. These studies were designed to look at how expectations actually influence the behavior of individuals, and later to try and understand what caused the effect. In the initial study, teachers were told that testing had revealed that some of their students were academic spurters who would show unusual gains during the academic year. In fact, the names of these spurters were chosen randomly. However, by the end of the year 30 percent of the spurters had gained an average of 22 IQ points, and almost all of them had gained at least 10. These gains were significantly greater than those of their control group classmates. This and further studies clearly demonstrate the power of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Research in the area of attribution tends to look at how people determine the causes of events and behavior. The research has resulted in some interesting observations, such as; the less we know a person the more likely that we will attribute their behavior to dispositional characteristics rather than situational ones. We may see someone stumble while walking and think oh, how clumsy, rather than must have been a crack in the sidewalk. In 1975 Richard Miller, Philip Brickman and Diana Bolan decided to look at whether attribution effects a change in behavior. Specifically, he and his colleagues looked at whether or not attribution could change the littering behavior of a group of elementary students. The results were fascinating in that a group that was reminded of how good they were and how important they knew that it was to not litter (attribution group) actually showed greater change than either the control group, or the group which was given the usual lecture and teaching about the harmful effects of littering on the environment (persuasion group). Apparently, attributions made about us effect change in our behavior if we accept them and they are within our ability.

With neither space nor time to discuss the research on labels, I hope it suffices for me to say that the power of a label is related to that of a self-fulfilling prophecy and attributions. I invite you to join me in the expectation that your son and all our students be gentlemen.