At my high school/middle school in grade nine, students from a nearby reserve to switch over to our school. I had never had any First Nations students in my class so it was very different seeing people that weren’t white in my class. During my classes with these students I noticed most of them struggled with math and science. Therefore I lead myself to the conclusion that they should be considered unintelligent. This was something I came to by myself, simply based on the fact that our school was very math and science based and if you were struggling in these subjects you were not smart. For some reason my mom and I started talking about this. She explained to me that the school that the First Nations students attended prior to ours was more based around art and English. Therefore if you compared their marks to the students that have constantly been at our school the majority of the time their marks will be higher.
I had this bias not only about First Nations students being not as smart as non-Indigenous students, but also that math and science should be prioritized rather than arts and English. This is something I find very surprising because I really enjoyed art and English. This is defiantly a bias I have since overcome, because I understand that being strong in a more number based subject does not relate back to your intelligence level. My mom’s point about them learning in a different environment defiantly helped me unlearn this bias. One way I plan on helping unlearn any other bias I come across will be going to someone who sees differently than me, to hear their ideas which will help me understand their thinking on the subject.