In simple terms, humour can be described as that which makes people laugh. What makes people laugh, however, is not universal. Different people find humour in different things. We may not be able to articulate exactly which things make us laugh, or even why they do, but just by experiencing them we are able to distinguish between what is funny and what is not, at least for us, as individuals. That much is obvious.

What is perhaps not as obvious is that humour is not a fixed or static attribute located inside words, text or actions. It depends on the coming together in a favourable way of various elements, such as tonality and timing to create a specific scenario. More importantly, context is crucial. This is a lesson that sociologists learn early in their careers. Whether a particular comment makes us laugh depends on the context in which it is made. The exact same uttering may vary in its effect if its setting changes. The same remark that you overheard in a serious situation, which had you seriously struggling not to burst out laughing may come across to you as extremely bland if repeated in other circumstances. This may help explain why so many anecdotes fail to live up to their implied promise of hilarity, ending up with the anti-climactic excuse of ‘you had to be there’, a tendency cheekily pointed out by the Irish comedian Dara O’Briain in one of his routines.

The importance of context to humour drives home the idea that humour has an inherent social character. Humour happens in a social space, and this social space plays an important part in the creation of that same humour. A silly comment may sound much funnier uttered in class, where it is unexpected, than at the park where leisurely banter is normal. This is obviously not because of the physical differences between the classroom and the park, but because of the different social situations that they represent. Social sites are not neutral, but come riddled with their own rules of appropriate behaviour and expectations.

The same is true for social roles. A nation’s head of state telling a joke during times of national crises would cause different reactions to a comedian telling the same joke at a comedy show, irrespective of how impeccable the former’s delivery is. Humour is thus also social in terms of its regulation: there are appropriate places to laugh at, and inappropriate ones. There are things and people one can joke about, and others that are taboo. Above all, humour is social because it entails communication and interaction between people who share things in common.

This social dimension of humour is nowhere clearer than at stand-up comedy shows, which are basically halls full of strangers brought together by their desire to laugh. In delivering their routines stand-up comedians presuppose certain knowledge on the part of their audiences. The most fundamental and obvious one is that the audience understands the language of delivery. Nobody will laugh at a joke in a language they do not understand, no matter how objectively funny it may be. The second presupposition is that the audience is able to get the jokes, and can relate to the subject matter discussed by the comedian. This applies especially to observational comedy, which uses the most trivial and mundane aspects of everyday life as its subject matter. Put differently, the comedian and audience must have some level of cultural affinity.

Faced with a roomful of strangers, the observational comedian must dig into experiences that ordinary people can recognize. Without experiential knowledge, or at least a vicarious understanding of the topics discussed, the audience would find it difficult to appreciate the humour. This is why such comedians are more likely to discuss the daily difficulties faced by office workers as opposed to the problems encountered by astronauts during rocket launches.

Needless to say, talking about familiar things by itself does not make things funny. The skill of observational comedians lies in their ability to make the mundane interesting, to make the audience look at daily occurrences from a new angle, to see the funny side of everyday things. The observational comedian is able to make us look at our home town with tourist eyes. In doing this, observational comedians step into a zone that is also inhabited by sociologists.

Sociology is often described as the systematic study of society. Studying sociology is said to help us question what we take for granted, the things that escape our rumination, that common-sense knowledge we cultivate just by living in our society. In ‘Thinking sociologically’ Zygmunt Bauman explains that sociology is all about making the familiar strange.

If this is so, then the sociologist and the observational comedian depart from a similar place. Admittedly, their motivations, and intentions, are miles apart. Comedians care little for social theory, research or the creation of knowledge. They only want to make people laugh. Likewise, sociologists are definitely not renowned for accentuating the comical side of social reality. They are more likely to be concerned with such serious things as social cohesion, social solidarity, social action, power, conflict and social inequality. Nevertheless, both sociologists and observational comedians are interested in making us look at things we think we know well with fresh eyes.

This means that despite setting off in completely different directions, observational stand-up comics and sociologists begin their respective journeys in relative proximity. And while this may be inconsequential to the stand-up comedian, who may find little of benefit in sociology, it need not be so for the sociologist.

Unfortunately, a lot of sociological research and writing ends up lost in academic publications that few people read. As a discipline, sociology suffers the unfortunate condition of being often about people and their everyday lives, but seldom for everyday people and their lives.

In this regard, observational comedians fare better. Such comedians are able to command people’s attention and keep things relevant. They do not have much choice. The nature of their job entails keeping things grounded in experiences that people can relate to. More than that, laughter is easier to sell than social research, which makes the comparison between comedians and sociologists somewhat unfair on the latter. Indeed, observations made by comedians are intended to create laughter, not knowledge, and so the “truths” expressed by them remain largely inconsequential, told only for laughs.

Conversely, sociologists are not primarily interested in people’s amusement. For sociologists commanding the undivided attention of a general audience is less of a priority than understanding and explaining social matters. This is unfortunate because sociological writing often carries research findings and truths that are more useful shared than hidden behind walls of impenetrable jargon in academic hideouts. In this sense, making the familiar strange does not suffice. That strangeness must also be made intelligible and accessible.

This sketchy comparison of comedians and sociologists thus presents a scenario where those most likely to hold people’s attention with their questioning of taken for-granted knowledge have only light-hearted frivolities to offer, whereas those with more substantial things to say lack the mass audiences of the other.

This does not mean that sociologists should become comedians, or compromise their research integrity to appease a mainstream mass of non-sociologists. It does, however, remind us that the social world, which provides so much material for observational comedians, can indeed be a funny place. Way back in 1963 Peter Berger warned that sociology should not ignore the “buffoonery of the social spectacle” (p. 165). Sociologists would do well to remember this piece of advice. Indeed, if Berger’s plea is heeded, people may become more receptive to questions that challenge the structures of everyday life.

At the most basic level observational stand-up comedy can be an aide to sociology by serving a heuristic purpose, as a springboard from which everyday social reality is questioned and deconstructed. This is perhaps what drove Tim Delaney to write Seinology, a book that takes a sociological look at the comedy series Seinfeld, a show that is loosely based on the observational comedy of Jerry Seinfeld. The show was often described as being about nothing. As Delaney argues, however, in reality the show is about everything, with episodes made out of basic ordinary circumstances and social situations. Many issues that were tackled in the show have a direct sociological relevance.

What the above suggests is that although different, the worlds of sociology and observational comedy are in some sense proximate enough to make the building of casual bridges possible. Observational stand up comedy can help us appreciate that the way things are does not always make much sense, and convention can be rather funny, if not downright ridiculous. This is its potential contribution to sociology. Sociologists, on the other hand, can help us understand that these conventions, and the forces that create and re-create social life, are alterable. This knowledge is empowering and can be sociology’s contribution to society.

___________________________________________________________________

References

Bauman, Z. (1997). Thinking Sociologically. In A. Giddens (Ed.) Introductory readings (pp. 12-18). Cambridge: Polity Press.

Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to Sociology. New York: Anchor Books.

Delaney, T. (2006). Seinology. New York: Prometheus Books.

Symbolic Interactionists feel that behaviors are inherent based upon the social cues learned from those important figures in one’s life.  For example, the way we celebrate Christmas is a prime example of how we perpetuate behaviors, better known as traditions, during certain times of the year.  No matter how Scrooge-like I am, I still look forward to certain aspects of the Christmas season, aspects which have been commonplace in my family for more than three decades.

While the typical celebrations are no longer pertinent in our lives, we struggle to determine new norms for our social unit.  While we can no sooner revert back to past experiences and habits, except in memory, we must move forward to determine how we change our symbolic gestures toward one another for the future.

I am well aware of the fact that our family is not unique in the fact that we not only lost a loved one, but in our isolated state, it feels as if we have experienced an event of which others cannot relate.  The celebrations of holidays, a social expectation which encourages feelings of discontent by their very nature, take on a difficult and sadly dark tone when one must face them without an ever present force no longer with us.

My sister, of course, was this force. I would always consider her to be the architect of any celebration.  Any time, any place, anywhere, my sister would come to the rescue with a cake, a gift, and a decoration.  With her assistance, Christmas would see mountains of gifts, cookouts would see a virtual buffet of food, and birthdays would be made complete with cards and the expected ice-cream cake.

For more than 10 months, I have wondered how all of these situations would differ after her death.  Would life really go on without our Conni?  Would we find things to celebrate from now on?  The answer is yet to come, as we have not met the one-year mark since her passing. With only the memories to sustain us, my family has remained in a state of anomie for some time, unsure how to act, or how to re-craft our perceptions of holidays, togetherness and our interfamilial relationships.

I suppose this article could explore the differences between historical acceptance of death, and that of today.  However, it was not the intent.  While I started this article in hopes of discussing more about how we look at the holidays, it turned into a personal discussion of how I view them.  While I cannot apply the idea of our personal interactions to a general audience, I felt I could write a short article on how they can be interrupted on a personal level.  This article became less of an informative view of society and special occasions, and more of a tribute to a life cut short.

And, I must say, I’m ok with that.

Redefining reality generally begins when individuals notice a disjuncture between observable facts and established modes of explanation, e.g., a democratic system that is supposed to serve the people, but that instead caters to the whims of the powerful. Due to their devotion to established modes of thought, some observers might ignore anomalies, or contrive a convenient explanation that sustains their belief in what is already known, e.g., democracy in the United States may be imperfect, but it distributes power pluralistically through a convoluted representational system. Alternately, more independent thinkers might treat such a dilemma as an opportunity to transcend the socially-imposed barriers that constrain their understanding of observable reality.

The process of transcending socially imposed cognitive barriers often begins with a creative observation (e.g., “Hey! Why don’t politicians ever follow through on their campaign promises?”). In some cases, individuals who are determined to make sense of the anomaly in question might follow up their observations by developing an individual-level intellectual challenge to established modes of understanding (i.e., it appears as though the United States democratic system is primarily designed to serve the interests of power-brokers). Such acts of intellectual rebellion tend to further erode the foundations of conventional thinking (i.e., “Based upon what I have observed, I no longer believe democracy in the United States serves the will of the people.”). Finally, the culmination of the redefinition of reality process involves constructing an entirely new explanation that simultaneously explodes existing ideological boundaries while also advancing a more adequate description of the phenomena in question, i.e., the United States political system masquerades as a democracy, while functioning like an elite-centered oligarchy.

Thus, as the foregoing example illustrates, individuals occasionally demonstrate the requisite mental apparatus to make note of anomalies, develop creative new explanations for mysterious phenomena, and then overcome manifestations of social power that delimit their thought and action. Therefore, the thoughts and behaviors of individual social actors are not entirely determined by the invisible influences of social coercion. Instead, sometimes agents can creatively counteract the distorting influences of social coercion and, in so doing, generate moments of truth.

A moment of truth is an experience wherein individuals, via the process of redefining reality, are transported from an inadequate version of reality to a more satisfactory paradigm. These experiences may be considered relatively truthful in that they are generated through a process whereby agents systematically counteract the influences of invisible social power over their definitions of reality. Thus, Mills (1956) argues that people who confine their analysis of the US political system to the realm of the observable (i.e., the words and deeds of elected politicians), cannot help but fall prey to artfully calculated illusions. From Mills’ perspective, the observable activities of political actors in the United States are designed to provide a convincing impression that politics-as-usual lives up to the ideals of democracy. Yet, Mills argues that appearances are deceiving. While political representatives go through the motions of faithfully serving their constituents, shadowy operators work behind the scenes to ensure that politics-as-usual serves the interests not of the majority, but of a privileged minority of power elites. Consequently, the truth is not defined by facts alone, rather the truth can only emerge as a result of a deeper investigation into the manner in which perception is often cunningly distorted by the interventions of social power. Therefore, it is in the process of counteracting the distorting influences of social power that it becomes possible for agents to experience moments of truth.

References

McGettigan, Timothy, 2011. Good Science: The Pursuit of Truth and the Evolution of Reality. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956.

Popper, Karl, 1983. Realism and the Aim of Science. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

• Harry Reid Cancels Debate
• Largest Internet Protest in History is a game changer (really!)
• The numbers are impressive.

Now, if we could just mobilize that kind of sentiment to end poverty and world hunger, then I’d have something to tweet about.

Down the podcast.

The following is an exposure of the secret mind of humanity as an example of how what exists inside us, in and as mind-realities, is existing outside of us equally, manifested as the worldly reality we all share. We have as human beings compartmentalized ourselves within and as the mind, where some parts that ‘fit the bill’ of ‘civilization’ is allowed to be expressed out into the open, both within ourselves and in participation with others, were other ‘parts’ are keep securely hidden and suppressed, so to avoid being exposed.

Many probably know a few details about the North Korean regime or it’s absurd leadership with Kim Jun-Sun as the “father” of the country known as “the eternal president” and his son Kim-Jung-Il who is currently in the process of handing down the role of sole dictator to another son in the line of ill’s. According to Kim Il-sung, the way of living in North Korea is based on the Juche Idea which is based on the belief that “man is the master of everything and decides everything.” So how exactly is it that man is the master and what kind of master is he?

Let’s have a look at ‘who’ we, as North Korea, are:

There are not many secret places left on earth, and ironically, the one’s that are, are not the pretty rainforest Lagunas as one might imagine, but instead secret places of torture and suffering.

One of those places is now being exposed by Amnesty International:  The secret political prison work camps in North Korea.

Amnesty has gained access to satellite photos of the area, where they camps are situated in 2001 and again in 2011 and through analyzing the photos, they were able to see that more camps with more “political prisoners” had emerged in the ten years. The camps are believed to have been existing since the 1950’s. According to Amnesty’s Asia Pacific director, Sam Zarifi:“These are places out of sight of the rest of the world, where almost the entire range of human rights protections that international law has tried to set up for the last 60 years are ignored,”

Subsequently, Amnesty has released a detailed document describing the life in the camps as horrific, where torture, starvation and mass execution is everyday life for the, estimated, more than 200.000 inmates. The document is based on testimonies from over 15 North Koreans who have escaped the camps as well as guards working in the camps.

Life as a Prison

According to the Amnesty report, the people, arrested and incarcerated as criminals, are often people who have done nothing but tried to get out of the country, are exposed to torture and imprisonment, water-boarding, sleep deprivation, bamboo pieces placed under the fingernails and imprisonment – sometimes for months on end – inside a 4ft (1.22m) by 4ft cell. This is the stuff nightmares is made of, yet for the people of North Korea, it is a plausible every day scenario.

In the camps it is even custom that people are held as ‘guilty-by-association’, simply because one of their relatives has been arrested. Here the prisoners work from 4 in the morning to 8 at night, after which they are ‘educated’ in the North Korean military ideology.  But even ‘normal’ North Koreans who are not sentenced to live in the camps, share stories of brutality and abuse and are exposed to starvation and horrible living conditions. It is clear to see that the regime itself wants no one to leave and spends massive resources on keeping the population oppressed and indoctrinated.

Testimonials from with the secret regime

The following are testimonials from North Koreans that clearly describe the horrendous regime and expose the abuse that is accepted as every day living for millions of people.

A 70 year old woman who escaped last year says to BBC that:

“We don’t ask to wear good clothes, to dance or play. We only want full stomachs. But every day we wake up and our first thought is ‘How are we going to get some food for breakfast?’ Then ‘How are we going to get something for dinner?’,” she says.

“Living like that makes people go crazy. Just brush against someone in the street and they will start fighting you. In their hearts everyone knows we live like dogs. But no-one can say it out loud.”

The quote above shows a mentality that might be prominent in North Korea, because of the extreme conditions of fear for survival that people are living under, but it is actually something that most humans will recognize – the belief that we must fight others to exist and how we live accordingly in fear of not surviving.

The following is a letter written by Choi Hyok, a 12 year old boy, who escaped to China with his two siblings, a younger brother and an older sister. In bringing the point back to self, realizing that both sides of the abuse – the oppressor and the oppressed is existing within us, it is clear how we enslave ourselves within the abuse.  What is being revealed here is even further a clear exposure of the world society as a whole and where the bottom line is drawn, when it comes to survival. Money is only point standing between the three siblings and even the slightest notion of freedom, which in this case, is simply seen as surviving and not going to prison.

 “Dear Uncle, How are you? North Korea knows about us. North Koreans came to us for questioning and they made reports about us as they wished and took away all the reports with them. If you don’t help us, we will kill ourselves because we don’t want to go to North Korea. Because, if we go to North Korea, we will be imprisoned for the rest of our lives…Please rescue us. If you rescue us, I will repay it later. Really, really, I want to be free. Please help us. I pray for freedom, to Lord. I want to be free to study, freedom, freedom, freedom

In the evening, 6 April, 07
From Choi Hyok”

Realizing the North Korea within Self – A Personal Story. 

Below is a post I wrote on the Desteni forum, the first time I realized that there is a North Korea in me. It is almost two years ago and the realization still stands clear as day, yet unresolved in the world as a whole or in us as individuals – as states of secrecy still exists within and as the world and within human beings as secret mental realities, where we oppress and abuse ourselves as parts that dominate and subordinate, as autocratic delusions of grandeur, where a single desire, fantasy or fear is controlling our every move – and doing so, with the permission of us as a whole.

“In a video about North Korea I watched today, one of the North Koreans being interviewed said that they believed that the whole world was a prison, because they had never learned about or seen anything else than the prisons of North Korea. This guy had been born into the prison and they did not know they were in North Korea, who had put them there or why.
Just that they were the ones “making mistakes” while the guards were the ones “not making mistakes”.

They are being tortured, starved, isolated and working as slaves within the North Korean regime.
No one can get in and no one besides this guy escaping has seen these “camps”.
After escaping the guy went to china or South Korea, and he describes how he is not very impressed. All he cares about is food.

It got me wondering about the North Korea inside me, because in a way this utterly extreme country is actually showing me something about myself that I had not seen before. When the guy said; “We thought the whole world was a prison” he was in fact correct – it is. But they are the one´s experiencing it in it´s true brutality. Of course these people have no chance of getting out or realizing anything.

What I found within looking at myself within this, what happens in North Korea, can only happen because no one sees it. They make sure to keep everyone out, and no one probably really wants to deal with them anyway. In the video it is said that the government or the leaders are terrified to be invaded which is also why they have kept everyone out.

This is the same way suppression’s work. What ever is suppressed can only control and direct as long as I do not see them or know that I am actually allowing and creating them. In secret I have actually submitted to them from fear of realizing how I am actually allowing myself to exist.

They know what they are doing is fucked up – why else would they hide it?

I have started to look at the personality designs of other countries as well, and it is pretty clear that they are all based on fear of loosing themselves.”

Oppressive regimes within

Another Destonian, Garbrielle Goodrow, wrote a reply to my post and shared a different perspective on the North Korea of humanity

“I studied these brutality suppressive nations this semester, and for me i came to the conclusion that they are based in fear of loss. Fear of losing power, wealth, domination, control, themselves, ect. it is a real tragedy that so many people are driven and ruled by fear, and creating the misery with self here in this reality. I see this in me as well, as one and equal with theses oppressive regimes fear and abuse, and it will not change until i stop the abuse of accepting and allowing this to continue through honestly accepting responsibility for the abuse i participate in and the fear i allow. On a grander scale, the dominant countries, such as the US and Britain for example, let this continue through fear as well, fear of loss of wealth, power, and dominance, not having the slightest care of the human suffering, but only caring for the things they fear losing. It will stop when we/i, the Self, stops.”-

So what does this make us?

When looking at North Korea as an example of a manifested symbol of the mind, it is a dictatorship that is existent upon all members of the group submitting themselves to the belief that one man is god and that it is their duty to subordinate themselves to him – they do so, either brainwashed to submission or out of fear. In a single human, this could be how we exist with an addiction or a personality trait, believing that if we do not follow this ‘rule of living’, something bad will happen to us, exactly how the addiction or belief becomes the king of all our actions or the god we submit ourselves to.

Another aspect is how the rest of the world acts towards North Korea, which is by largely not doing anything at all. Several  sanctions has been made to send a signal to the North Koreans, with the result that the same people that were poor before, are starving now. In a human being’s mind, this could be when we decide to go on a diet and literally starve ourselves to stop an addiction to sugar or food, but where all that happens, is that we’re abusing our bodies, because the real problem was within the structure of ‘who’ we are and not what we do.

The World will not change until we each change who we are

As Garbrielle said: “It will stop when we/i, the Self, stops”

This is the pinnacle of all points of abuse and inequality in the world as well as within each of us  – that it only stops when self stops. And in doing so we stand self-responsible for what is here as ourselves and as this world in its entirety. We do, as all parts, make up the whole that is this world, just as we within ourselves as a whole, accept who and what we allow ourselves to exist as. If one part is allowed to dominate from a separate mind-reality of delusion, and we as a whole, abdicate self-responsibility and submit ourselves to this part or even ignore and suppress this part, we are accepting and allowing the abuse to continue. This is how the world in which we exist, creates such a manifestation as the secret regime of North Korea. It can only exist by our permission and acceptance of it, however that is made – through deliberate ignorance and abdication of self-responsibility of the world society as a whole, as each of us allow our own North Korea – be that fear, greed, submission or self-delusion, to dominate and control us.

The Secret of North Korea is within us

North Korea exists within us, as us, through our permission and therefore North Korea exists as an actual manifested regime. We’ve accepted and allowed parts, which we’ve separated ourselves into and as, to dominate, direct and control us, while we as a whole, in one way or another have accepted this – by turning our backs on ourselves, by suppressing parts of ourselves into secrecy and by living incognito in abdication of self-responsibility.

There is only one solution and that is to bring it back to self. To realize how we’ve been accepting inner North Korea’s, to admit this to ourselves as a first step that will enable us to eventually stand together, as whole to stop the abuse that we’ve allowed in humanity as a whole.

We require to expose, investigate and understand our inner mental realities, where we exist in separation from the actual real world that we all share and where addictions, fears and delusions are what directs us in our daily participation. We require to work within ourselves to stop and take self-responsibility so that we actually become able and capable of changing and directing ourselves, to stop existing in and as separation so that we may start living in self-dignity.

The purpose of an Equal Money System is equally to stop all abuse and separation so that we may live in equality and self-dignity – yet with the EMS, we are actually changing the whole as who we are, at a global scale.

Because just as we require to expose and stop the inner abuse as North Korean realities in our minds, we require to stop the actual manifestation of North Korea and all other regimes and institutions of abuse and inequality that exist in the world, because of who we are, as who and what we’ve accepted and allowed ourselves to be and become, as individuals and as a whole.  Furthermore, instead of money being the symbol of the acceptance of inequality as it currently exists, in the EMS the nature of money, just as the nature of man, will be changed into being the value of life – where all is considered and cared for equally.

 Sources: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13272198

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/n-korea-holding-200000-political-prisoners-amnesty-international/article2008725/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Asia-Pacific&utm_content=2008725

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13268857

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea

http://desteni.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?f=119&t=13912&hilit=North+Korea

The Dynamics of Capitalism Revealed

It’s true!

The priests were, for the most part,  working  for the nobility!

They helped the nobility ease their consciousness by providing “spiritual” justifications for wealth and privilege (“divine right of kings” it was called), but they also suppressed the anger and resentment of the peasants by saying “follow the king” because “God wants it that way.” The priests, it turned out, where in bed with the nobility, sometimes literally I imagine, and they served in the interests of wealth and privilege. Personally, I doubt it was always that way. I’m not a Catholic but I know enough about Jesus’s supposed life to know he wasn’t to fond of greedy people (he threw the money lenders out of the temple, didn’t he?). Based on his example people probably became “Christian” for the high moral standards and general compassion of its leader. But time passed and corruptions entered and eventually the Church was built (with the funding of the only people who had cash back in those days), inquisitors were appointed, and infidels and heretics where tortured and murdered…

But I digress…

The point is, the intellectual and emotional boundaries that had protected the opinions of the Church, that had made the words of the priest seem like the holy gospel of the Lord, and that had justified horrendous levels of torture and abuse were, during the “enlightenment” smashed and the modern scientists, champion of Truth and defender of all that is philosophical, empirical, and natural, was born.

Yay the scientist!

Taking the moral and intellectual road the scientists followed the example of Galileo and began searching after the Truth and nothing but. This new breed of person didn’t care that the priests said this, or the pope said that, or the bible said creation was only seven days long, they wanted to know the Truth and they set out to find it themselves!

And, if the technological world that surrounds you now is any indication…

If the spread of democracy (however flawed) in the world is any reflection…

The Truth did set them (and us) free.

And I think we should acknowledge that contribution.

But I also think we have to examine the limitations, and question the foundation, and admit to some error because frankly, from where I’m sitting, modern day science has become co-opted in service of wealth and privilege just like the ethical and emancipatory spirituality of Christ had been co-opted before.

Don’t believe me?

Watch this movie (GenerationRx).

From the atomic bomb to the dopamine droplet science now serves in the interests of power and privilege. And it’s not just that we serve in the interests of power and privilege, we justify it as well. We coin erroneous phrases (phrases used to justify the hierarchy and the domination of the weak as “natural”), develop erroneous indicators like “IQ” and the bell curve (which help “explain” why some people have more than others), and force people into irrelevant gender boxes. It is like we don’t understand the basic facts of life, and before you huff and puff, read this. Our entire North American culture is based on the erroneous concept of the alpha male, a concept used to justify male domination of women, corporate domination of peasants, and managerial domination of employees.

How embarrassing is that?

And while we do not torture people who do not submit and obey, we do medicate them.

Can’t sit in class?

Can’t follow the rules.

Don’t believe our truths?

Well Mr. “The problem is with you,” we have a pill that will help with that.

It is true.

We provide technology for the industrial  mill, armaments for the economic wars, justifications for the status quo (with more or less awareness of our role), and chemical straightjackets for those who don’t fit.

So what is a unsatisfied scientist to do?

Well, rather than participating in the the miscalculations, falsifications, and error, and rather than waiting for a new Galileo to come along and point out the steaming piles of horseshit we maintain, we can do what Galileo did and smash the boundaries that prevent us from seeing the truth. The communication-technology hammer is in place, and the writing is on the wall. The epistemological and ontological foundations are crumbling and rather than reinforcing the foundations, something that can only delay the inevitable, we should jump on the boat and do what needs to be done now before before somebody else comes along and embarrasses us to the point where we will never recover from the embarrassment. I don’t know about you but as a scientist the last thing I want to be reduced to is the lonely “you must have faith in us” lament of our spiritually discredited forefathers. I got into this to discover the Truth and I want to be known for that.  I want us to correct our errors, expose the ideology, undermine the justifications, and take  back the scholarly and scientific highroad. There are no excuses. Modern communication technologies have advanced to the point where we can now speak without mediation, outside of classrooms, and without worrying about the stodgy gatekeepers who police the boundaries of our discourse, and we should do so. I don’t think we should wait. If we do we just might find ourselves in the same boat as the priests before us, struggling to maintain legitimacy, and begging those who trusted us to “just have faith.”

Provocative and original, The Politics of Indigeneity explores the concept of indigeneity across the world – from the Americas to New Zealand, Africa to Asia – and the ways in which it intersects with local, national and international social and political realities. Taking on the role of critical interlocutors, the authors engage in extended dialogue with indigenous spokespersons and activists, as well as between each other. In doing so, they explore the possibilities of a ‘second-wave indigeneity’ – one that is alert to the challenges posed to indigenous aspirations by the neo-liberal agenda of nation-states and their concerns with sovereignty.

Timely and topical in its focus on global indigenous politics, and featuring a variety of first-hand indigenous voices – including those of indigenous activists, scholars, leaders and interviewees – this is a vital contribution to an often contentious topic.

 ‘This book is based on an engagement with indigenous peoples across the globe, which starts with listening to what they have to say on the subject. The authors do ask questions, occasionally challenge, but with respect and sensitivity and thus an attitude so different from underlying mainstream academic discourses in which the claim of objectivity too often is but a disguise for arrogance.’ Dr Christian Erni, Social Anthropologist, International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.

‘This path breaking volume exploring the exciting emergence of a new ”second wave” of indigeneity and activism is a must read for all those interested in contemporary indigenous politics.’ Jeff Sluka, Associate Professor, Social Anthropology Programme, Massey University

 

The Politics of Indigeneity:
Dialogues and Reflections on Indigenous Activism  

by Sita Venkateswar & Emma Hughes

is published by Zed Books,

priced £18.99/$34.95, ISBN 9781780321202.

For more information or to request a review copy please contact Ruvani de Silva on 020 7837 8466 or ruvani.de_silva@zedbooks.net.

Define first person. Define indigenous

The reason for our success?

Social context!

Despite what the psychologists want to tell you, we have found that the primary cause of most psychological distress is to be found in the toxic parental/social/work environments of the clients we treat, conditions that hurt the individual and that often require the development of pathological mechanisms of coping and defense. It is not pretty, and it is not simple, but it is, we have found, always treatable especially when the client is motivated, open, and willing to listen to advice and guidance.

So why am I telling you this? Well, for a couple reasons. Reason one is to point out one possible career path for people interested in Sociology. It is true that I have an undergraduate degree in psychology, but with my sociological expertise and insight I make an extremely effective psychological counselor. So if you are a Sociology student, or if you are interested in becoming one but have held back because you’ve also got an interest in psychology, never fear! You can combine both.

The other reason I’m telling you this is motivational. We often get people in our psychological practice who want more out of their life. They are working in this job or that job, find it oppressive and stultifying, want to get out and move up, would like to get post-secondary training of some sort, but can’t seem to find it within them to make the move forward. The are stuck not because they are stupid or incompetent, but because their developmental background has left them without the psychological foundations and self confidence to take on what (for them) are seemingly insurmountable goals. And it’s not just that they feel they can’t do a university course! They also feel they can’t handle the debt burden of the student loan, or the lost income, or the time away. From the absence of basic study skills to the black-emotional-pit of low self-esteem to the insurmountable walls of student finance, it’s just too much, too soon, too fast.

So what do we do? Well, I’d like to say treatment is simple but it is not.  Treatment involves a gentle process of undoing repressions, rebuilding self esteem, helping with study skills, even pointing out the financial, political, and social class realities of this planet that are oppressive and stultifying (for example, did you know that the education you get in K12 is different depending on the social class background of the school you are in?). It is one part career counseling, one part psychological counseling, one part sociological sophistication, one part parenting (to replace notable absence of good parents in their own life), and one part guidance and support. It does pay off, if the clients that we’ve had who have moved onto post-secondary work are any indication, but it does take work, effort, and trust.

And the biggest obstacle?

Not the abuse, not the damage, and not even the misconception. The biggest obstacle is the belief, instilled by parents and teachers, and perpetrated by our own popular culture, that it all comes down to genetics, karma, grace, or talent. Truth be told it has nothing to do with any of that and everything to do with you believing in yourself.

References

Anyon, Jean (1980). Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. Journal of Education, 163: 1. [hhttp://www.sociology.org/?p=680]

JEAN ANYON This essay first appeared in Journal of Education, Vol. 162, no. 1, Fall 1980.)

It’s no surprise that schools in wealthy communities are better than those in poor communities, or that they better prepare their students for desirable jobs. It may be shocking, however, to learn how vast the differences in schools are – not so much in resources as in teaching methods and philosophies of education. Jean Anyon observed five elementary schools over the course of a full school year and concluded that fifth-graders of different economic backgrounds are already being prepared to occupy particular rungs on the social ladder. In a sense, some whole schools are on the vocational education track, while others are geared to produce future doctors, lawyers, and business leaders. Anyon’s main audience is professional educators, so you may find her style and vocabulary challenging, but, once you’ve read her descriptions of specific classroom activities, the more analytic parts of the essay should prove easier to understand. Anyon is chairperson of the Department of Education at Rutgers University, Newark;
  

Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes. Bowles and Gintis¹ for example, have argued that students in different social-class backgrounds are rewarded for classroom behaviors that correspond to personality traits allegedly rewarded in the different occupational strata–the working classes for docility and obedience, the managerial classes for initiative and personal assertiveness. Basil Bernstein, Pierre Bourdieu, and Michael W. Apple focusing on school knowledge, have argued that knowledge and skills leading to social power and regard (medical, legal, managerial) are made available to the advantaged social groups but are withheld from the working classes to whom a more “practical” curriculum is offered (manual skills, clerical knowledge). While there has been considerable argumentation of these points regarding education in England, France, and North America, there has been little or no attempt to investigate these ideas empirically in elementary or secondary schools and classrooms in this country.³

This article offers tentative empirical support (and qualification) of the above arguments by providing illustrative examples of differences in student work in classrooms in contrasting social class communities. The examples were gathered as part of an ethnographical⁴ study of curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices in five elementary schools. The article attempts a theoretical contribution as well and assesses student work in the light of a theoretical approach to social-class analysis.. . It will be suggested that there is a “hidden curriculum” in schoolwork that has profound implications for the theory – and consequence – of everyday activity in education….
The Sample of Schools

… The social-class designation of each of the five schools will be identified, and the income, occupation, and other relevant available social characteristics of the students and their parents will be described. The first three schools are in a medium-sized city district in northern New Jersey, and the other two are in a nearby New Jersey suburb.

The first two schools I will call working class schools. Most of the parents have blue-collar jobs. Less than a third of the fathers are skilled, while the majority are in unskilled or semiskilled jobs. During the period of the study (1978-1979), approximately 15 percent of the fathers were unemployed. The large majority (85 percent) of the families are white. The following occupations are typical: platform, storeroom, and stockroom workers; foundry-men, pipe welders, and boilermakers; semiskilled and unskilled assembly-line operatives; gas station attendants, auto mechanics, maintenance workers, and security guards. Less than 30 percent of the women work, some part-time and some full-time, on assembly lines, in storerooms and stockrooms, as waitresses, barmaids, or sales clerks. Of the fifth-grade parents, none of the wives of the skilled workers had jobs. Approximately 15 percent of the families in each school are at or below the federal “poverty” level;⁵ most of the rest of the family incomes are at or below $12,000, except some of the skilled workers whose incomes are higher. The incomes of the majority of the families in these two schools (at or below $12,000) are typical of 38.6 percent of the families in the United States.⁶

The third school is called the middle-class school, although because of 5 neighborhood residence patterns, the population is a mixture of several social classes. The parents’ occupations can he divided into three groups: a small group of blue-collar “rich,” who are skilled, well-paid workers such as printers, carpenters, plumbers, and construction workers. The second group is composed of parents in working-class and middle-class white-collar jobs: women in office jobs, technicians, supervisors in industry, and parents employed by the city (such as firemen, policemen, and several of the school’s teachers). The third group is composed of occupations such as personnel directors in local firms, accountants, “middle management,” and a few small capitalists (owners of shops in the area). The children of several local doctors attend this school. Most family incomes are between $13,000 and $25,000, with a few higher. This income range is typical of 38.9 percent of the families in the United States.⁷

The fourth school has a parent population that is at the upper income level of the upper middle class and is predominantly professional. This school will be called the affluent professional school. Typical jobs are: cardiologist, interior designer, corporate lawyer or engineer, executive in advertising or television. There are some families who are not as affluent as the majority (the family of the superintendent of the district’s schools, and the one or two families in which the fathers are skilled workers). In addition, a few of the families are more affluent than the majority and can be classified in the capitalist class (a partner in a prestigious Wall Street stock brokerage firm). Approximately 90 percent of the children in this school are white. Most family incomes are between $40,000 and $80,000. This income span represents approximately 7 percent of the families in the United States.⁸

In the fifth school the majority of the families belong to the capitalist class. This school will be called the executive elite school because most of the fathers are top executives (for example, presidents and vice-presidents) in major United States-based multinational corporations – for example, AT&T, RCA, Citibank, American Express, U.S. Steel. A sizable group of fathers are top executives in financial firms in Wall Street. There are also a number of fathers who list their occupations as “general counsel” to a particular corporation, and these corporations are also among the large multi-nationals. Many of the mothers do volunteer work in the Junior League, Junior Fortnightly, or other service groups; some are intricately involved in town politics; and some are themselves in well-paid occupations. There are no minority children in the school. Almost all the family incomes are over $100,000 with some in the $500,000 range. The incomes in this school represent less than 1 percent of the families in the United States.⁹

Since each of the five schools is only one instance of elementary education in a particular social class context, I will not generalize beyond the sample. However, the examples of schoolwork which follow will suggest characteristics of education in each social setting that appear to have theoretical and social significance and to be worth investigation in a larger number of schools.
The Working Class Schools

In the two working-class schools, work is following the steps of a procedure. The procedure is usually mechanical, involving rote behavior and very little decision making or choice. The teachers rarely explain why the work is being assigned, how it might connect to other assignments, or what the idea is that lies behind the procedure or gives it coherence and perhaps meaning or significance. Available textbooks are not always used, and the teachers often prepare their own dittos or put work examples on the board. Most of the rules regarding work are designations of what the children are to do; the rules are steps to follow. These steps are told to the children by the teachers and are often written on the board. The children are usually told to copy the steps as notes. These notes are to be studied. Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.

The following examples illustrate these points. In math, when two-digit division was introduced, the teacher in one school gave a four-minute lecture on what the terms are called (which number is the divisor, dividend, quotient, and remainder). The children were told to copy these names in their notebooks. Then the teacher told them the steps to follow to do the problems, saying, “This is how you do them.” The teacher listed the steps on the board, and they appeared several days later as a chart hung in the middle of the front wall: “Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring Down.” The children often did examples of two-digit division. When the teacher went over the examples with them, he told them what the procedure was for each problem, rarely asking them to conceptualize or explain it themselves: “Three into twenty-two is seven; do your subtraction and one is left over.” During the week that two-digit division was introduced (or at any other time), the investigator did not observe any discussion of the idea of grouping involved in division, any use of manipulables, or any attempt to relate two-digit division to any other mathematical process. Nor was there any attempt to relate the steps to an actual or possible thought process of the children. The observer did not hear the terms dividend, quotient, and so on, used again. The math teacher in the other working-class school followed similar procedures regarding two-digit division and at one point her class seemed confused. She said, “You’re confusing yourselves. You’re tensing up. Remember, when you do this, it’s the same steps over and over again–and that’s the way division always is.” Several weeks later, after a test, a group of her children “still didn’t get it,” and she made no attempt to explain the concept of dividing things into groups or to give them manipulables for their own investigation. Rather, she went over the steps with them again and told them that they “needed more practice.”

In other areas of math, work is also carrying out often unexplained fragmented procedures. For example, one of the teachers led the children through a series of steps to make a 1-inch grid on their paper without telling them that they were making a 1-inch grid or that it would be used to study scale. She said, “Take your ruler. Put it across the top. Make a mark at every number. Then move your ruler down to the bottom. No, put it across the bottom. Now make a mark on top of every number. Now draw a line from…” At this point a girl said that she had a faster way to do it and the teacher said, “No, you don’t; you don’t even know what I’m making yet. Do it this way or it’s wrong.” After they had made the lines up and down and across, the teacher told them she wanted them to make a figure by connecting some dots and to measure that, using the scale of 1 inch equals 1 mile. Then they were to cut it out. She said, “Don’t cut it until I check it.”

In both working-class schools, work in language arts is mechanics of punctuation (commas, periods, question marks, exclamation points), capitalization, and the four kinds of sentences. One teacher explained to me, “Simple punctuation is all they’ll ever use.” Regarding punctuation, either a teacher or a ditto stated the rules for where, for example, to put commas. The investigator heard no classroom discussion of the aural context of punctuation (which, of course, is what gives each mark its meaning). Nor did the investigator hear any statement or inference that placing a punctuation mark could be a decision-making process, depending, for example, on one’s intended meaning. Rather, the children were told to follow the rules. Language arts did not involve creative writing. There were several writing assignments throughout the year but in each instance the children were given a ditto, and they wrote answers to questions on the sheet. For example, they wrote their “autobiography” by answering such questions as “Where were you born?” “What is your favorite animal?” on a sheet entitled “All About Me.”

In one of the working-class schools, the class had a science period several times a week. On the three occasions observed, the children were not called upon to set up experiments or to give explanations for facts or concepts. Rather, on each occasion the teacher told them in his own words what the book said. The children copied the teacher’s sentences from the board. Each day that preceded the day they were to do a science experiment, the teacher told them to copy the directions from the book for the procedure they would carry out the next day and to study the list at home that night. The day after each experiment, the teacher went over what they had “found” (they did the experiments as a class, and each was actually a class demonstration led by the teacher). Then the teacher wrote what they “found” on the board, and the children copied that in their notebooks. Once or twice a year there are science projects. The project is chosen and assigned by the teacher from a box of 3-by-5-inch cards. On the card the teacher has written the question to he answered, the books to use, and how much to write. Explaining the cards to the observer, the teacher said, “It tells them exactly what to do, or they couldn’t do it.”

Social studies in the working-class schools is also largely mechanical, rote work that was given little explanation or connection to larger contexts. In one school, for example, although there was a book available, social studies work was to copy the teacher’s notes from the board. Several times a week for a period of several months the children copied these notes. The fifth grades in the district were to study United States history. The teacher used a booklet she had purchased called “The Fabulous Fifty States.” Each day she put information from the booklet in outline form on the board and the children copied it. The type of information did not vary: the name of the state, its abbreviation, state capital, nickname of the state, its main products, main business, and a “Fabulous Fact” (“Idaho grew twenty-seven billion potatoes in one year. That’s enough potatoes for each man, woman, and…”) As the children finished copying the sentences, the teacher erased them and wrote more. Children would occasionally go to the front to pull down the wall map in order to locate the states they were copying, and the teacher did not dissuade them. But the observer never saw her refer to the map; nor did the observer ever hear her make other than perfunctory remarks concerning the information the children were copying. Occasionally the children colored in a ditto and cut it out to make a stand-up figure (representing, for example, a man roping a cow in the Southwest). These were referred to by the teacher as their social studies “projects.”

Rote behavior was often called for in classroom work. When going over 15 math and language art skills sheets, for example, as the teacher asked for the answer to each problem, he fired the questions rapidly, staccato, and the scene reminded the observer of a sergeant drilling recruits: above all, the questions demanded that you stay at attention: “The next one? What do I put here?. . . Here? Give us the next.” Or “How many commas in this sentence? Where do I put them . . . The next one?”

The four fifth grade teachers observed in the working-class schools attempted to control classroom time and space by making decisions without consulting the children and without explaining the basis for their decisions. The teacher’s control thus often seemed capricious. Teachers, for instance, very often ignored the bells to switch classes – deciding among themselves to keep the children after the period was officially over to continue with the work or for disciplinary reasons or so they (the teachers) could stand in the hall and talk. There were no clocks in the rooms in either school, and the children often asked, “What period is this?” “When do we go to gym?” The children had no access to materials. These were handed out by teachers and closely guarded. Things in the room “belonged” to the teacher: “Bob, bring me my garbage can.” The teachers continually gave the children orders. Only three times did the investigator hear a teacher in either working-class school preface a directive with an unsarcastic “please,” or “let’s” or “would you.” Instead, the teachers said, “Shut up,” “Shut your mouth,” “Open your books,” “Throw your gum away-if you want to rot your teeth, do it on your own time.” Teachers made every effort to control the movement of the children, and often shouted, “‘Why are you out of your seat??!!” If the children got permission to leave the room, they had to take a written pass with the date and time….
Middle-Class School

In the middle-class school, work is getting the right answer. If one accumulates enough right answers, one gets a good grade. One must follow the directions in order to get the right answers, but the directions often call for some figuring, some choice, some decision making. For example, the children must often figure out by themselves what the directions ask them to do and how to get the answer: what do you do first, second, and perhaps third? Answers are usually found in books or by listening to the teacher. Answers are usually words, sentences, numbers, or facts and dates; one writes them on paper, and one should be neat. Answers must be given in the right order, and one cannot make them up.

The following activities are illustrative. Math involves some choice: one may do two-digit division the long way or the short way, and there are some math problems that can be done “in your head.” When the teacher explains how to do two-digit division, there is recognition that a cognitive process is involved; she gives you several ways and says, “I want to make sure you understand what you’re doing-so you get it right”; and, when they go over the homework, she asks the children to tell how they did the problem and what answer they got.

In social studies the daily work is to read the assigned pages in the textbook and to answer the teacher’s questions. The questions are almost always designed to check on whether the students have read the assignment and understood it: who did so-and-so; what happened after that; when did it happen, where, and sometimes, why did it happen? The answers are in the book and in one’s understanding of the book; the teacher’s hints when one doesn’t know the answers are to “read it again” or to look at the picture or at the rest of the paragraph. One is to search for the answer in the “context,” in what is given.

Language arts is “simple grammar, what they need for everyday life.” The language arts teacher says, “They should learn to speak properly, to write business letters and thank-you letters, and to understand what nouns and verbs and simple subjects are.” Here, as well, actual work is to choose the right answers, to understand what is given. The teacher often says, “Please read the next sentence and then I’ll question you about it.” One teacher said in some exasperation to a boy who was fooling around in class, “If you don’t know the answers to the questions I ask, then you can’t stay in this class! [pause] You never know the answers to the questions I ask, and it’s not fair to me-and certainly not to you!”

Most lessons are based on the textbook. This does not involve a critical perspective on what is given there. For example, a critical perspective in social studies is perceived as dangerous by these teachers because it may lead to controversial topics; the parents might complain. The children, however, are often curious especially in social studies. Their questions are tolerated and usually answered perfunctorily. But after a few minutes the teacher will say, “All right, we’re not going any farther. Please open your social studies workbook.” While the teachers spend a lot of time explaining and expanding on what the textbooks say, there is little attempt to analyze how or why things happen, or to give thought to how pieces of a culture, or, say, a system of numbers or elements of a language fit together or can be analyzed. What has happened in the past and what exists now may not be equitable or fair, but (shrug) that is the way things are and one does not confront such matters in school. For example, in social studies after a child is called on to read a passage about the pilgrims, the teacher summarizes the paragraph and then says, “So you can see how strict they were about everything.” A child asks, “Why?” “Well, because they felt that if you weren’t busy you’d get into trouble.” Another child asks, “Is it true that they burned women at the stake?” The teacher says, “Yes, if a woman did anything strange, they hanged them. [sic] What would a woman do, do you think, to make them burn them? [sic] See if you can come up with better answers than my other [social studies] class.” Several children offer suggestions, to which the teacher nods but does not comment. Then she says, “Okay, good,” and calls on the next child to read.

Work tasks do not usually request creativity. Serious attention is rarely given in school work on how the children develop or express their own feelings and ideas, either linguistically or in graphic form. On the occasions when creativity or self-expression is requested, it is peripheral to the main activity or it is “enriched” or “for fun.” During a lesson on what similes are, for example, the teacher explains what they are, puts several on the board, gives some other examples herself, and then asks the children if they can “make some up.” She calls on three children who give similes, two of which are actually in the book they have open before them. The teacher does not comment on this and then asks several others to choose similes from the list of phrases in the book. Several do so correctly, and she says, “Oh good! You’re picking them out! See how good we are?” Their homework is to pick out the rest of the similes from the list.

Creativity is not often requested in social studies and science projects, either. Social studies projects, for example, are given with directions to “find information on your topic” and write it up. The children are not supposed to copy but to “put it in your own words.” Although a number of the projects subsequently went beyond the teacher’s direction to find information and had quite expressive covers and inside illustrations, the teacher’s evaluative comments had to do with the amount of information, whether they had “copied,” and if their work was neat.

The style of control of the three fifth-grade teachers observed in this school varied from somewhat easygoing to strict, but in contrast to the working-class schools, the teachers’ decisions were usually based on external rules and regulations–for example, on criteria that were known or available to the children. Thus, the teachers always honor the bells for changing classes, and they usually evaluate children’s work by what is in the textbooks and answer booklets.

There is little excitement in schoolwork for the children, and the assignments are perceived as having little to do with their interests and feelings. As one child said, what you do is “store facts up in your head like cold storage – until you need it later for a test or your job.” Thus, doing well is important because there are thought to be other likely rewards: a good job or college.¹⁰
Affluent Professional School

In the affluent professional school, work is creative activity carried out independently. The students are continually asked to express and apply ideas and concepts. Work involves individual thought and expressiveness, expansion and illustration of ideas, and choice of appropriate method and material. (The class is not considered an open classroom, and the principal explained that because of the large number of discipline problems in the fifth grade this year they did not departmentalize. The teacher who agreed to take part in the study said she is “more structured this year than she usually is.) The products of work in this class are often written stories, editorials and essays, or representations of ideas in mural, graph, or craft form. The products of work should not be like anybody else’s and should show individuality. They should exhibit good design, and (this is important) they must also fit empirical reality. The relatively few rules to be followed regarding work are usually criteria for, or limits on, individual activity. One’s product is usually evaluated for the quality of its expression and for the appropriateness of its conception to the task. In many cases, one’s own satisfaction with the product is an important criterion for its evaluation. When right answers are called for, as in commercial materials like SRA (Science Research Associates) and math, it is important that the children decide on an answer as a result of thinking about the idea involved in what they’re being asked to do. Teacher’s hints are to “think about it some more.”

The following activities are illustrative. The class takes home a sheet requesting each child’s parents to fill in the number of cars they have, the number of television sets, refrigerators, games, or rooms in the house, and so on. Each child is to figure the average number of a type of possession owned by the fifth grade. Each child must compile the “data” from all the sheets. A calculator is available in the classroom to do the mechanics of finding the average. Some children decide to send sheets to the fourth-grade families for comparison. Their work should be “verified” by a classmate before it is handed in.

Each child and his or her family has made a geoboard. The teacher asks the class to get their geoboards from the side cabinet, to take a handful of rubber bands, and then to listen to what she would like them to do. She says, “I would like you to design a figure and then find the perimeter and area. When you have it, check with your neighbor. After you’ve done that, please transfer it to graph paper and tomorrow I’ll ask you to make up a question about it for someone. When you hand it in, please let me know whose it is and who verified it. Then I have something else for you to do that’s really fun. [pause] Find the average number of chocolate chips in three cookies. I’ll give you three cookies, and you’ll have to eat your way through, I’m afraid!” Then she goes around the room and gives help, suggestions, praise, and admonitions that they are getting noisy. They work sitting, or standing up at their desks, at benches in the back, or on the floor. A child hands the teacher his paper and she comments, “I’m not accepting this paper. Do a better design.” To another child she says, “That’s fantastic! But you’ll never find the area. Why don’t you draw a figure inside [the big one] and subtract to get the area?”

The school district requires the fifth grade to study ancient civilization (in particular, Egypt, Athens, and Sumer). In this classroom, the emphasis is on illustrating and re-creating the culture of the people of ancient times. The following are typical activities: the children made an 8mm film on Egypt, which one of the parents edited. A girl in the class wrote the script, and the class acted it out. They put the sound on themselves. They read stories of those days. They wrote essays and stories depicting the lives of the people and the societal and occupational divisions. They chose from a list of projects, all of which involved graphical presentations of ideas: for example. “Make a mural depicting the division of labor in Egyptian society.”

Each wrote and exchanged a letter in hieroglyphics with a fifth grader in another class, and they also exchanged stories they wrote in cuneiform. They made a scroll and singed the edges so it looked authentic. They each chose an occupation and made an Egyptian plaque representing that occupation, simulating the appropriate Egyptian design. They carved their design on a cylinder of wax, pressed the wax into clay, and then baked the clay. Although one girl did not choose an occupation but carved instead a series of gods and slaves, the teacher said, “That’s all right, Amber, it’s beautiful.” As they were working the teacher said, “Don’t cut into your clay until you’re satisfied with your design.”

Social studies also involves almost daily presentation by the children of some event from the news. The teacher’s questions ask the children to expand what they say, to give more details, and to be more specific. Occasionally she adds some remarks to help them see connections between events.

The emphasis on expressing and illustrating ideas in social studies is accompanied in language arts by an emphasis on creative writing. Each child wrote a rebus story for a first grader whom they had interviewed to see what kind of story the child liked best. They wrote editorials on pending decisions by the school board and radio plays, some of which were read over the school intercom from the office and one of which was performed in the auditorium. There is no language arts textbook because, the teacher said, “The principal wants us to be creative.” There is not much grammar, but there is punctuation. One morning when the observer arrived, the class was doing a punctuation ditto. The teacher later apologized for using the ditto. “It’s just for review,” she said. “I don’t teach punctuation that way. We use their language.” The ditto had three unambiguous rules for where to put commas in a sentence. As the teacher was going around to help the children with the ditto, she repeated several times, “where you put commas depends on how you say the sentence; it depends on the situation and what you want to say. Several weeks later the observer saw another punctuation activity. The teacher had printed a five-paragraph story on an oak tag and then cut it into phrases. She read the whole story to the class from the book, then passed out the phrases. The group had to decide how the phrases could best be put together again. (They arranged the phrases on the floor.) The point was not to replicate the story, although that was not irrelevant, but to “decide what you think the best way is.” Punctuation marks on cardboard pieces were then handed out, and the children discussed and then decided what mark was best at each place they thought one was needed. At the end of each paragraph the teacher asked, “Are you satisfied with the way the paragraphs are now? Read it to yourself and see how it sounds.” Then she read the original story again, and they compared the two.

Describing her goals in science to the investigator, the teacher said, “We use ESS (Elementary Science Study). It’s very good because it gives a hands-on experience–so they can make sense out of it. It doesn’t matter whether it [what they find] is right or wrong. I bring them together and there’s value in discussing their ideas.”

The products of work in this class are often highly valued by the children and the teacher. In fact, this was the only school in which the investigator was not allowed to take original pieces of the children’s work for her files. If the work was small enough, however, and was on paper, the investigator could duplicate it on the copying machine in the office.

The teacher’s attempt to control the class involves constant negotiation. She does not give direct orders unless she is angry because the children have been too noisy. Normally, she tries to get them to foresee the consequences of their actions and to decide accordingly. For example, lining them up to go see a play written by the sixth graders, she says, “I presume you’re lined up by someone with whom you want to sit. I hope you’re lined up by someone you won’t get in trouble with.”…

One of the few rules governing the children’s movement is that no more than three children may be out of the room at once. There is a school rule that anyone can go to the library at any time to get a book. In the fifth grade I observed, they sign their name on the chalkboard and leave. There are no passes. Finally, the children have a fair amount of officially sanctioned say over what happens in the class. For example, they often negotiate what work is to be done. If the teacher wants to move on to the next subject, but the children say they are not ready, they want to work on their present projects some more, she very often lets them do it.
Executive Elite School

In the executive elite school, work is developing one’s analytical intellectual powers. Children are continually asked to reason through a problem, to produce intellectual products that are both logically sound and of top academic quality. A primary goal of thought is to conceptualize rules by which elements may fit together in systems and then to apply these rules in solving a problem. Schoolwork helps one to achieve, to excel, to prepare for life.

The following are illustrative. The math teacher teaches area and perimeter by having the children derive formulas for each. First she helps them, through discussion at the board, to arrive at A = W X L as a formula (not the formula) for area. After discussing several, she says, “Can anyone make up a formula for perimeter? Can you figure that out yourselves? [pause] Knowing what we know, can we think of a formula?” She works out three children’s suggestions at the board, saying to two, “Yes, that’s a good one,” and then asks the class if they can think of any more. No one volunteers. To prod them, she says, “If you use rules and good reasoning, you get many ways. Chris, can you think up a formula?”

She discusses two-digit division with the children as a decision-making process. Presenting a new type of problem to them, she asks, “What’s the first decision you’d make if presented with this kind of example? What is the first thing you’d think? Craig?” Craig says, “To find my first partial quotient.” She responds, “Yes, that would be your first decision. How would you do that?” Craig explains, and then the teacher says, “OK, we’ll see how that works for you.” The class tries his way. Subsequently, she comments on the merits and shortcomings of several other children’s decisions. Later, she tells the investigator that her goals in math are to develop their reasoning and mathematical thinking and that, unfortunately, “there’s no time for manipulables.”

While right answers are important in math, they are not “given” by the book or by the teacher but may be challenged by the children. Going over some problems in late September the teacher says, “Raise your hand if you do not agree.” A child says, “I don’t agree with sixty-four.” The teacher responds, “OK, there’s a question about sixty-four. [to class] Please check it. Owen, they’re disagreeing with you. Kristen, they’re checking yours.” The teacher emphasized this repeatedly during September and October with statements like “Don’t be afraid to say you disagree. In the last [math] class, somebody disagreed, and they were right. Before you disagree, check yours, and if you still think we’re wrong, then we’ll check it out.” By Thanksgiving, the children did not often speak in terms of right and wrong math problems but of whether they agreed with the answer that had been given.

There are complicated math mimeos with many word problems. Whenever they go over the examples, they discuss how each child has set up the problem. The children must explain it precisely. On one occasion the teacher said, “I’m more–just as interested in how you set up the problem as in what answer you find. If you set up a problem in a good way, the answer is easy to find.

Social studies work is most often reading and discussion of concepts and independent research. There are only occasional artistic, expressive, or illustrative projects. Ancient Athens and Sumer are, rather, societies to analyze. The following questions are typical of those that guide the children’s independent research. “What mistakes did Pericles make after the war?” “What mistakes did the citizens of Athens make?” “What are the elements of a civilization?” “How did Greece build an economic empire?” “Compare the way Athens chose its leaders with the way we choose ours.” Occasionally the children are asked to make up sample questions for their social studies tests. On an occasion when the investigator was present, the social studies teacher rejected a child’s question by saying, “That’s just fact. If I asked you that question on a test, you’d complain it was just memory! Good questions ask for concepts.”

In social studies–but also in reading, science, and health–the teachers initiate classroom discussions of current social issues and problems. These discussions occurred on every one of the investigator’s visits, and a teacher told me, “These children’s opinions are important – it’s important that they learn to reason things through.” The classroom discussions always struck the observer as quite realistic and analytical, dealing with concrete social issues like the following: “Why do workers strike?” “Is that right or wrong?” “Why do we have inflation, and what can be done to stop it?” “Why do companies put chemicals in food when the natural ingredients are available?” and so on. Usually the children did not have to be prodded to give their opinions. In fact, their statements and the interchanges between them struck the observer as quite sophisticated conceptually and verbally, and well-informed. Occasionally the teachers would prod with statements such as, “Even if you don’t know [the answers], if you think logically about it, you can figure it out.” And “I’m asking you [these] questions to help you think this through.”

Language arts emphasizes language as a complex system, one that should be mastered. The children are asked to diagram sentences of complex grammatical construction, to memorize irregular verb conjugations (he lay, he has lain, and so on …), and to use the proper participles, conjunctions, and interjections in their speech. The teacher (the same one who teaches social studies) told them, “It is not enough to get these right on tests; you must use what you learn [in grammar classes] in your written and oral work. I will grade you on that.”

Most writing assignments are either research reports and essays for social studies or experiment analyses and write-ups for science. There is only an occasional story or other “creative writing” assignment. On the occasion observed by the investigator (the writing of a Halloween story), the points the teacher stressed in preparing the children to write involved the structural aspects of a story rather than the expression of feelings or other ideas. The teacher showed them a filmstrip, “The Seven Parts of a Story,” and lectured them on plot development, mood setting, character development, consistency, and the use of a logical or appropriate ending. The stories they subsequently wrote were, in fact, well-structured, but many were also personal and expressive. The teacher’s evaluative comments, however, did not refer to the expressiveness or artistry but were all directed toward whether they had “developed” the story well.

Language arts work also involved a large amount of practice in presentation of the self and in managing situations where the child was expected to be in charge. For example, there was a series of assignments in which each child had to be a “student teacher.” The child had to plan a lesson in grammar, outlining, punctuation, or other language arts topic and explain the concept to the class. Each child was to prepare a worksheet or game and a homework assignment as well. After each presentation, the teacher and other children gave a critical appraisal of the “student teacher’s” performance. Their criteria were: whether the student spoke clearly, whether the lesson was interesting, whether the student made any mistakes, and whether he or she kept control of the class. On an occasion when a child did not maintain control, the teacher said, “When you’re up there, you have authority and you have to use it. I’ll back you up.”

The executive elite school is the only school where bells do not demarcate the periods of time. The two fifth-grade teachers were very strict about changing classes on schedule, however, as specific plans for each session had been made. The teachers attempted to keep tight control over the children during lessons, and the children were sometimes flippant, boisterous, and occasionally rude. However, the children may be brought into line by reminding them that “It is up to you.” “You must control yourself,” “you are responsible for your work,” you must “set your own priorities.” One teacher told a child, “You are the only driver of your car-and only you can regulate your speed.” A new teacher complained to the observer that she had thought “these children” would have more control.

While strict attention to the lesson at hand is required, the teachers make relatively little attempt to regulate the movement of the children at other times. For example, except for the kindergartners the children in this school do not have to wait for the bell to ring in the morning; they may go to their classroom when they arrive at school. Fifth graders often came early to read, to finish work, or to catch up. After the first two months of school, the fifth-grade teachers did not line the children up to change classes or to go to gym, and so on, but, when the children were ready and quiet, they were told they could go–sometimes without the teachers.

In the classroom, the children could get materials when they needed them and took what they needed from closets and from the teacher’s desk. They were in charge of the office at lunchtime. During class they did not have to sign out or ask permission to leave the room; they just got up and left. Because of the pressure to get work done, however, they did not leave the room very often. The teachers were very polite to the children, and the investigator heard no sarcasm, no nasty remarks, and few direct orders. The teachers never called the children “honey” or “dear” but always called them by name. The teachers were expected to be available before school, after school, and for part of their lunchtime to provide extra help if needed.
The foregoing analysis of differences in schoolwork in contrasting social class contexts suggests the following conclusion: the “hidden curriculum” of schoolwork is tacit preparation for relating to the process of production in a particular way. Differing curricular, pedagogical, and pupil evaluation practices emphasize different cognitive and behavioral skills in each social setting and thus contribute to the development in the children of certain potential relationships to physical and symbolic capital,¹¹ to authority, and to the process of work. School experience, in the sample of schools discussed here, differed qualitatively by social class. These differences may not only contribute to the development in the children in each social class of certain types of economically significant relationships and not others but would thereby help to reproduce this system of relations in society. In the contribution to the reproduction of unequal social relations lies a theoretical meaning and social consequence of classroom practice.

The identification of different emphases in classrooms in a sample of contrasting social class contexts implies that further research should be conducted in a large number of schools to investigate the types of work tasks and interactions in each to see if they differ in the ways discussed here and to see if similar potential relationships are uncovered. Such research could have as a product the further elucidation of complex but not readily apparent connections between everyday activity in schools and classrooms and the unequal structure of economic relationships in which we work and live.

NOTES

1. S. Bowles and H. Gintes, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976). [Author's note]
2. B. Bernstein, Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 3. Towards a Theory of Educational Transmission, 2d ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); P. Bourdieu and J. Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1977); M.W. Apple, Ideology and Curriculum (Boston: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1979). [Author's note]
3. But see, in a related vein, M.W. Apple and N. King, “What Do Schools Teach?”Curriculum Inquiry 6 (1977); 341-58; R.C. Rist, The Urban School: A Factory for Failure (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1973). [Author's note]
4. ethnographical: Based on an anthropological study of cultures or subcultures-the “cultures” in this case being the five schools being observed.
5. The U.S. Bureau of the Census defines poverty for a nonfarm family of four as a yearly income of $6,191 a year or less. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1978 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), p. 465 ,table 754. [Author's note]
6. U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Money Income in 1977 of Families and Persons in the United States,” Current Population Reports Series P-60, no. 118 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1978), p. 2 ,table A. [Author's note]
7. Ibid. [Author's note]
8. This figure is an estimate. According to the Bureau of the Census, only 2.6 percent of families in the United States have money income of $50,000 or over. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Current Population Reports Series P-60. For figures on income at these higher levels, see J.D. Smith and S. Franklin, “The Concentration of Personal Wealth, 1922-1969,” American Economic Review 64 (1974): 162-67. [Author's note]
9. Smith and Franklin, “The Concentration of Personal Wealth.” [Author's note]
10. A dominant feeling expressed directly and indirectly by teachers in this school, was boredom with their work. They did, however, in contrast to the working-class schools, almost always carry out lessons during class times. [Author's note]
11. physical and symbolic capital: Elsewhere Anyon defines capital as “property that is used to produce profit, interest, or rent”: she defines symbolic capital as the knowledge and skills that “may yield social and cultural power.”