Well first off that guy you quoted sounds like an absolute idiot and isn't worth getting upset over. If anyone in my school ever said anything like that they'd be mobbed down quickly.

My 2 cents from my brief psychology training so far... I do think stereotypes are here to stay, and there isn't a whole lot we can do. On one hand I agree that we can prime children to not use stereotypes the same way we prime children to see stereotypes. But on the other hand, it's possible to hold stereotypes yet not be prejudiced. We all know the common stereotypes, just some of us choose not to act on them and some do. Also, stereotypes are just so ingrained in our culture and the media that I feel it's near impossible to eradicate it. Not to mention, the mind uses stereotypes as a 'shortcut' tool for making quick inferences about others, so it's sometimes beneficial in a cognitive sense (I'm using stereotypes in a very broad meaning here). I think we can change for the better though, but removing stereotypes altogether is a different story.

The more people post, and from what the kids in class said, I'm highly optimistic/hopeful. Something is backwards here.

This, actually, is very true. What you should take from the class is how to force consensus, rally opinion, read more critically than your instructor, reframe arguments, and flawlessly pretend to know how your argument is going to flow while you're having your ideas dismantled every time someone chimes in.

Anyways, back to Myrkr's post! Two parts, the guy and the stance.

The guy is easy fodder, and you should have crushed his ego. Really. Anyone who responds like that can't back up his idea (if he could, he would have attempted) and has a poor self-image (he used dismissive language to describe value-neutral characteristics to give himself a false high ground). The best part about crushing his ego is that you would have lowered his grade in the class by making him less likely to speak up and possibly made him rethink his college career, and the fewer people graduate, the more everyone else's degree is worth by creating scarcity. Generally speaking, if you run across someone who has no business being in college, help show them the door. If you want specifics on how that would flow, both with ego crushing and pretending that your idea anticipated his argument from the beginning, you'd say something like, "And that guy really just proved my point. We all know about the stereotypes of nerds and glasses, and you all heard him call me crazy, but you all know lots of people who wear glasses who aren't crazy or nerdy, and you all know nerds who really know their stuff. All he did right there was try to play off of a stereotype. You can even see that he doesn't understand the stereotype very well. The only thing he could come back with is 'some people are better than others,' and while I can't say if that is or isn't true, we all know that glasses don't make his case. People are better or worse in their individuality, not because they look a certain way or live in a certain place. This guy is using stereotypes as mental laziness. He heard from his friends that people with glasses aren't cool, and he thought he could use that as a cop-out for an argument, but he didn't even get started. Some people are better than others, so there are stereotypes? That doesn't even follow. We all have opportunity in our lives. Sure, some of us have to work harder for the same goals, some of us get a head start, but how many advantages do you think that guy over there had? Plenty! All he has though, is 'some people are better than others, so there are always stereotypes.' He's a perfect example of wasted opportunity. He's just like a lot of other people in this room, and you all know that it would be wrong to stereotype you all as wasted opportunity just because he couldn't make the best out of what he was given, just like you can't assume that every black man born in the ghetto wouldn't be able to push himself hard enough to make an honest living and move out into the suburbs without living a life of crime. You all know that there are successful black men who started off with disadvantages. If people weren't reinforcing these stereotypes from the time that we were little, we'd be better able to see people as individuals and judge their failures and successes based on what we know, rather than what we see."

So, exercise in BS aside, I think the majority of your class was right on this one. You're working off the false premise that stereotypes are taught, which couldn't be less true. All stereotypes are grounded in reality, and people use stereotypes to help make sense of the world. Severely retarded people are too simple to be stressed out by life the way that more intelligent people are, and so they're usually happy. Is it an unfair stereotype if applied universally? Yes. Is it a reasonable characterization of a large chunk of that population? Yes. You can do the same thing with race relations, crime rates, poverty, gender differences, sexual orientation--pretty much everything that has a major stereotype. The problem is that they're applied too liberally. Intelligent people generally compensate for their stereotypes and are quicker to acknowledge exceptions. The problem is with people who can't.

You're Xavius in real life aren't you? :/

Ego-crushing = less graduates = more job oppurtunities = more $$$!

Xavius and I differ on lots. Xavius would probably begrudgingly tolerate my presence in Glomdoring, but certainly not like me. We don't disagree on everything, though!

Besides, has nothing to do with money. More to do with making credentials matter.