To think that teachers should be able to distinguish BAME students by name?

[maggiethecat]

I have 2 DDs at different secondary schools and we have recently been having animated table discussions arising from the BLM protests. Both girls separately experienced teachers repeatedly confusing their names with the handful of other BAME students in the class. 13 yo DD cannot understand why she is repeatedly confused with another BAME girl who is much taller than her and unlike DD wears glasses. Apparently the offending teachers do not have this memory deficit with white students in the class

The "cross race effect" is one of the most well replicated findings in psychological research. People find it more difficult to distinguish between faces of people from a different race. The same effect can be observed with accents - people find it more difficult to distinguish accents if they’re not a native speaker of the language.

"She only sees what she sees in her own class" There is also a whole other issue about seeing what you want to see which everyone is capable of doing in. Of course, you are much more likely to notice something like that that happens to you than to someone else. I always think teenagers are generally self-centred (I do have one of my own) so are going to be more fine-tuned to 'self' related stuff than what's going on with their classmates.

At the start of lockdown I noticed in Teams ds had another boys picture as his profile picture, looks nothing like him even has a different hair colour. The reason it is there is it is a joke because his teacher keeps get them confused, there are another couple of boys who have done the same. It is only boys this teacher confuses, but everyone including the teacher finds it funny.

Unless you have reasons to believe this teacher is doing it maliciously I would let of go.

People talking about white kids being mixed up, you are also saying that they are very similar. Tall and blonde, ginger with glasses. That’s understandable in a large class. It would be understandable with two BAME kids that looked very alike. What the op is talking about is two BAME students who look absolutely nothing alike being constantly mixed up. There’s really not much excuse for this. And it goes on into adulthood. What it shows is that for some people your defining feature is the fact that you are brown/black, and they notice that before any of your other physical characteristics.

I was one of 4 Asian girls in my year at secondary school, my teachers used to get us mixed up all the time - they weren't all old and forgetful and as OP said, this never happened with white students. One teacher in primary school used to love to take the piss out of my surname in front of the whole class - great confidence building there

I now work in a secondary school myself and dont mix up my students. However, there is a lot of research that shows people are more likely to remember have facial recognition of people of their own race than people of others. There was a ton of research around this for police ID's and how reliable they were when cross racial. Makes fascinating reading

and this is why no matter what people do it's never good enough ....you just can't win

Well, that depends on what the objective is and what 'winning' looks like.

Haven't they done studies that show that people have a more difficult time identifying facial features in those of a different ethnicity

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy/2011/aug/15/people-other-races-look-alike

I'm white and at school our white teachers often mixed names up. It's because they're overworked and identifying several hundred faces accurately every time is impossible. Have you never walked down the street and thought "Oh there's Dave/Sid/Bob/Emma/Catherine" before realising it was someone else entirely?

Oh just realised loads of people have spoken about this already - should have read the thread!

Strangely my Black DH who grew up in a mixed family with lots of diversity at school really struggles to distinguish many white actresses... It's a bit of a running joke as he always says you know that blonde one....

It's really shit that these teachers are making those mistakes - of course it's a race thing

If it's not happening to the white kids then yes it's racist, even if it's not intentional.

I went to school with a lot of kids from China 20 years ago and one of them rather sadly asked me if the white students really thought they all looked the same.

I don't think that much has changed.

If it's only with the BAME girls then yes, it's a racist thing.
And I'm a former teacher who was dreadful with names, but uniformly dreadful, and I did things to try to combat it. Seating plan, name stickers, trying to stick a funfact with the kids name. Like oh that's Bob who has a new puppy. When you teach over a hundred kids, as I did when I taught in the UK, it's pretty hard.
There were two girls in the same class whose names I used to routinely muddle, because they looked so similar, right down to their matching glasses and identical haircuts. It drove all of us nuts. How they couldn't see it I dont know. I often wondered if one of the mothers hadn't had an affair. They could've been sisters.

My child who has Down's Syndrome is often confused with another child who also has Down's.

At the beginning of my teaching career I could learn an entire class' names in a day. At the end I really struggled to learn them all and forgot them indiscriminately. I can't be held responsible for ageing.

Memory gets worse with age. Of course it isn't racist if you forget all race's name.

Do you think they should be able to distinguish all students by name or just BAME students?
When I was at school, there was a teacher who regularly confused the names in our friendship group. Despite the fact we were very different heights, weights, colourings and some wore glasses and some didn't. Teachers often confuse names.tbh families often confuse names too. There can be lots of underlying reasons including association as a PP said.
Your DDs' teachers might be racist but they might not. Mixing up names isn't enough to decide.

I once taught a group of friends called Tasneem, Tanjia, Taslim and Tahira who rarely separated from a little crowd of 4... then I struggled for a quite bit. But I’ve also middled Nigerian/ Irish friends Sharon/ Shannon up, or the Polish boys I taught around the same height with the same shaved haircuts. Jaydens and Kaydens got muddled at times . I could teach hundreds, it’s genuinely difficult sometimes if you don’t see kids that often, maybe an hour a week, to remember names over the years. Siblings in particular blur over the years to one child.
It’s no more than not having a super human memory. I’ve only really taught in majority BAME schools. My name is a long Eastern European one so we tend to find ourselves on the same footing with names getting middled in spelling. I rarely teach children with names I grew up in Eastern Europe with so it’s been a feat of memory remembering over the years.

My hope is that the curriculum is expanded to allow acknowledgement of and conversation about unconscious bias. Children should be brought up to have those uncomfortable discussions rather than just shutting down, as so many people on here are doing. Sometimes things are to do with race, whether we like it or not - they can be big things or seemingly trivial things like this, but it's still valid to discuss them.

Also, my sons photo on his scouting profile is another child with similar heritage. They are completely interchangeable who they are tagged as on Facebook, whereas apart from the blond hair and darker skin I can’t see much resemblance.

I teach University students. It takes me ages to learn names and I beg them to wear their name badges. It takes me much longer to remember names that are unusual to me. I can remember a James or an Annabel quite quickly but find it takes weeks for Arabic names to stick because they are often new to me. I try and it isn’t racism, just how my memory works!

I suspect that teachers who confuse pupils do it with all groups but people only notice when it affects them and decide its something specific like their skin colour or because they are quiet or whatever

I once had a form group with 50% the same surname and 5 of the boys had rhyming names. It was blindingly obvious that getting their names correct going to be hard but vital.
It’s not rocket science!
I also remember seeing a teacher’s register when I was a child where the teacher had made notes to help her know who was who. Getting people’s names right isn’t some new fangled concept and going “tinkly laugh, I have 600 students/ my mum got her own dcs mixed up” is an example of white fragility - it’s disingenuous and embarrassing.

Yanbu. Some people will be racist pigs. I've come across them in my time.

But others will just be bad at names. I can't remember same sex sibling names, total brain block about it. I fail to remember my own kids names at times tbh, boy / girl, they get an "oi!" some of the time, I'm menopausal.
And it will be partly muddled up categorisation, the really tall people, the people with crazy ties, blonde hair, northern accents, posh cars etc. I had to put people in little boxes when I was a receptionist for a huge company and sometimes got them mixed up.

@Etinox

I once had a form group with 50% the same surname and 5 of the boys had rhyming names. It was blindingly obvious that getting their names correct going to be hard but vital. It’s not rocket science! I also remember seeing a teacher’s register when I was a child where the teacher had made notes to help her know who was who. Getting people’s names right isn’t some new fangled concept and going “tinkly laugh, I have 600 students/ my mum got her own dcs mixed up” is an example of white fragility - it’s disingenuous and embarrassing.

Or, as I said, what happens as one's memory gets worse with age. Stupid too assume that it's always white fragility.

My daughter and another girl look very similar (both Irish) and she was forever called the other girls name - I used to get annoyed as they are very different children but with over 1000 children in the school I can only imagine it’s not easy!
But like someone else said if it’s just affecting BAME children in your school that needs addressing.

YANBU
It's racist behaviour.
Can't believe the people on here thinking it's anything else.

@Ihatemyseleffordoingthis

YANBU It's racist behaviour. Can't believe the people on here thinking it's anything else.

You don't believe the memory fades with age? Oh dear, you're in for a shock.