In an LCHC meeting today on classroom culture, one topic raised concerned
the construction of "good girls" and "bad girls" in classrooms. It has
often been observed that boys are encouraged and rewarded for certain
kinds of disruptiveness (asking questions that challenge ideas, as opposed
to physical violence), whereas girls are rewarded for a quiet conformity
that will probably not serve them well in the long run. But it seems to
me that this model neglects another dimension of girls' social skills,
namely social networking. The women who arrive in my college classes have
clearly learned very different social skills. Some of them are confident
masters at social networking, and have no problem talking to me or getting
help from other people. Others are not masters at social networking, and
might subscribe to a sort of individualistic perfectionism that produces
either B+ work or A- work and an ulcer.
Where do these social networking skills come from? In the discussion,
Katherine Brown suggested that they come from Junior League types of
theater groups involving mothers and daughters, in which the daughters are
on committees, running phone trees, and that sort of thing. I find this
very plausible. The point is that nobody is born into these practices,
and that they are part of a habitus.
I think that social networking skills are one important determinant of
people's chances in life, at least as important as math skills. I also
think that social networking skills are crucial to a democratic culture;
it is through social networking that the social capital arises to knit a
society together and provide the foundation for social organizing of any
type, whether in politics or business. How can children be assessed for
these skills? One problem is that we don't have much of a developmental
model for the skills of a democratic culture. What we *do* have is a
developmental model for individualistic conformity, so that children can
be labeled morally or cognitively backward if they don't pay attention
in class, but not if they fail to learn many other children's names, or
organize any parties, or whatever. Of course, speaking in terms of a
"developmental" model tends to suppress cultural and class differences,
and even runs the risk that children from individualist-conformist
households may be stigmatized as backward. But ignoring the issue
altogether isn't right either.
So, it seems like an important research question: if we want students
ended up in university able to build social networks, seek out help, move
in different social worlds, accumulate social capital, build consensus
in a group, and so forth, what stages do they need to move through along
the way? How about those students who arrive in my classes with these
skills -- what skills had they achieved by the first grade? The third
grade? The sixth grade? The tenth grade? What kinds of instructional
methods can cause these developmental attributes to become visible to
the teachers doing the assessments and give the students practice in the
skills? How can students who are falling behind in their social skills
be helped to catch up? How can this kind of instruction be sensitive to
cultural differences?
Margie Gallego pointed out that the bridge-building that multilingual
children often perform at home -- serving as cultural intermediaries
between mainstream/school culture and their homes and home cultures -- are
similar in many ways to networking skills. How far does this similiarity
extend? Perhaps those skills confined to particular relationships,
whereas the whole point of social networkings skills is to be generalized,
so that one can apply them to ever-new sets of people. How could
bridge-building skills be a point of departure for generalizing toward
social networking skills?
Phil