From preschool to grad school, educators assume that students will ask for help if they need if. But what they don't realize is that students - especially students from less privileged backgrounds - may not feel entitled to help and may not trust educators enough to ask. https://twitter.com/EdwardLawsonJr/status/1276582003215937536

As I show in Negotiating Opportunities, affluent white kids have been raised to see teachers as "resources" for their own success, coached on how to ask and keep asking. And because of how schools rely on privileged families, educators feel compelled to give them what they seek.

Meanwhile, students from less privileged backgrounds worry, justifiably, about how educators might judge or punish them for seeking help. They know they'll be held to standards of "hard work" and "personal responsibility." So they do their best to get by without asking instead.

The problem with expecting students to ask for help is that it makes it too easy to blame the student who doesn't ask if they ultimately don't succeed. When in reality the educator should have done more to offer help and show that the student could trust them though to ask.

My new book, A Field Guide to Grad School, is aimed at helping students navigate the hidden curriculum that forces them to ask for help or figure it out alone. It also explains how all that hidden knowledge reinforces inequalities in academia as a whole. https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691201092/a-field-guide-to-grad-school