Just Mercy and Socialization/Gender

Review:
For the test, review the first two pages of the notes packet:

Unit 3: Social Structure:  (Chapter 4-8)

67 how institutions reproduce culture.

68 how institutions like Supreme Court can change culture.

70 culture of death penalty in AL and the institution of politics

71 cultural values (usefulness, practicality, self-help, individualism) create norms of intolerance

77-79 real culture vs. ideal culture

pg 90-91 “…we would never think it was humane to pay someone to rape people convicted of rape or assault and abuse someone guilty of assault or abuse.  Yet we are comfortable killing people who kill, in part because we think we can do it in a manner that doesn’t implicate our own humanity, the way that raping or abusing someone would.  I couldn’t stop thinking that we don’t spend much time contemplating the details of what killing someone actually involves.”

74-75 (chapter 4) How does war act as an agent of socialization? 

89-90 Herbert’s socialization from childhood through his return from war.

How do parents of poor black kids socialize their children?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coryt8IZ-DE

Here is a link to Marsha Colbey.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/inside-the-heartbreaking-talk-black-parents-must-have-with-their-kids_us_581ca092e4b0d9ce6fbb465b

101 W.E.B. Dubois

Chapter VIII Of The Coming of John

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/408/408-h/408-h.htm

A whole community was invested in John (like Stevenson) but John was lynched and it devastated the community similar to how Walter’s conviction had.

Background on Dubois:  https://contexts.org/articles/scholar-denied/

Chapter 6

115 “Only a handful of countries permitted the death penalty for children-and the United States was one of them….Many states had changed their laws to make it easier o prosecute children as adults, and my clients were getting younger and younger.  Alabama had more juveniles sentenced to death per capita than any other state – or any other country in the world.”

How does Charlie’s story exemplify what we learned about socialization?

“If we don’t expect more from each other, hope better for one another, and recover from the hurt we experience, we are surely doomed.”

Peers/Friends as an Agent of Socialization

Friends/Peer Groups

Peer influence starts especially because of school and cohort groups, and becomes significant by adolescence, possibly more intense and more influential than family.  Adolescents spend more time with each other than with parents or anyone else. This leads to adolescent subculture.  Studies have shown that the most important factor in statistically predicting whether a teen will take up a particular deviant behavior is the presence or absence of peers who also engage in that behavior.

Here is some evidence for the importance of peers as agents of socialization:

This article from Contexts called "Friends with Academic Benefits" is about how the social network structure that you have can affect your academic achievement.

• Can you identify your own social network structure based on the models in the article?

This article from the Journal of Health and Behavior examines whether college roommates will influence each other to be more aggressive, smoke, or be sexually active.

• Read the abstract and discussion/conclusion.  How did the researchers conduct their research?  What did the researchers conclude?

This article from the journal Sociology of Education shows that your friends will influence the likelihood of you being in STEM classes or not.

• Read the abstract and discussion/conclusion.  How did the researchers conduct their research?  What did the researchers conclude?  
• Are you in STEM?  Are your friends? Is this article's conclusion true for you?

Patricia and Peter Adler are very well-published in the area of adolescent peer socialization.   

Their book called Peer Power is an extensive exploration into the world of adolescents and their affect on each other.  From Google books, 

 Based on eight years of intensive insider participant observation in their own children's community, Peter and Patti Adler discuss the vital components of the lives of preadolescents, popularity, friendships, cliques, social status, social isolation, loyalty, bullying, boy-girl relationships, and afterschool activities. They describe how friendships shift and change, how people are drawn into groups and excluded from them, how clique leaders maintain their power and popularity, and how individuals' social experiences and feelings about themselves differ from the top of the pecking order to the bottom. In so doing, the Adlers focus their attention on the peer culture of the children themselves and the way this culture extracts and modifies elements from adult culture. Children's peer culture, as it is nourished in those spaces where grown ups cannot penetrate, stands between individual children and the larger adult society.  As such, it is a mediator and shaper, influencing the way children collectively interpret their surroundings and deal with the common problems they face.


Friend Sources
Where do Americans find their friends?

School As Agent of Socialization

Sociologists publishing about school show research that details how schools teach manifest lessons like reading and writing and latent lessons like patriotism, obedience and consumption.


School Values, From Sociology of Education

Teacher socialize students to embrace certain values and behaviors.  Brint, Contreras and Matthews (2001, Sociology of Education) observed elementary school teachers and they coded the messages that teachers relayed to students.  They observed over 1000 interactions between teachers and students.

For student discussion:

What do you think the messages were that teachers relayed?


After we discuss the messages.



This research highlights what socialization messages elementary school teachers convey to students.



Obedience
Obedience is illustrated in this rhetorical piece called Beavis vs. Barbie, also available here:
https://mathprojectsjournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/beavisandbarbie.pdf


Consumption
Consumption in schools is illustrated by Murray J. Milner, in his book,  Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids.  The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture explains that Milner,

...argues that the teenage behaviors that annoy adults do not arise from hormones, bad parenting, poor teaching, or the media, but from adolescents’ lack of power over the central features of their lives: they must attend school; they have no control over the curriculum; they can’t choose who their classmates are. What teenagers do have is the power to create status systems and symbols that not only exasperate adults, but also impede learning and maturing. Ironically, parents, educators, and businesses are inadvertently major contributors to these outcomes.
An absorbing journey that stirs up a mixture of nostalgia and dismay, Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids shows how high school distills the worst features of American consumer society and shapes how we relate to our neighbors, partners, and coworkers. It also provides insight into how our schools and the lives of teenagers might be transformed.

School Culture Socializes the Students Within it

Lisa Nunn researched how school cultures shape the students that attend each school.  Her findings are published in her book, Defining Student Success.


Read a preview from Google books here.


And a detailed review from Dr. Judson Everitt of Loyola University Chicago, available on JSTOR here or from U of Chicago Press here.



From Rutgers University Press, also available through JSTOR here.

The key to success, our culture tells us, is a combination of talent and hard work. Why then, do high schools that supposedly subscribe to this view send students to college at such dramatically different rates? Why do students from one school succeed while students from another struggle? To the usual answer—an imbalance in resources—this book adds a far more subtle and complicated explanation. Defining Student Success shows how different schools foster dissimilar and sometimes conflicting ideas about what it takes to succeed—ideas that do more to preserve the status quo than to promote upward mobility.
Lisa Nunn’s study of three public high schools reveals how students’ beliefs about their own success are shaped by their particular school environment and reinforced by curriculum and teaching practices. While American culture broadly defines success as a product of hard work or talent (at school, intelligence is the talent that matters most), Nunn shows that each school refines and adapts this American cultural wisdom in its own distinct way—reflecting the sensibilities and concerns of the people who inhabit each school. While one school fosters the belief that effort is all it takes to succeed, another fosters the belief that hard work will only get you so far because you have to be smart enough to master course concepts. Ultimately, Nunn argues that these school-level adaptations of cultural ideas about success become invisible advantages and disadvantages for students’ college-going futures. Some schools’ definitions of success match seamlessly with elite college admissions’ definition of the ideal college applicant, while others more closely align with the expectations of middle or low-tier institutions of higher education.
With its insights into the transmission of ideas of success from society to school to student, this provocative work should prompt a reevaluation of the culture of secondary education. Only with a thorough understanding of this process will we ever find more consistent means of inculcating success, by any measure.

Religion and School
Success in school is also shaped by religious affiliation.

DC reg. SVS, and JM

Last chance for dual credit registration.  

Here is a message from the Loyola Dual Credit program director Brigid Schulz, available at bschul1@luc.edu:

I have created a late registration window for any student who may have forgotten to register or faced challenges when registering. The final registration deadline will be Monday, October 21st. Please share this with your students.

Please check the roster to the right.   If you feel that you should be on the roster, but tyou are not listed, please contact the Loyola Dual Credit program director Brigid Schulz, available at bschul1@luc.edu.

For paying tuition, students will not see their tuition posted until the 15th of the month.

To pay tuition see this post.




Student Voice Survey

Today, you are being asked to reflect on yourself. To do this, we ask you to fill out a survey that focuses on helping you and your teachers learn more about your social, emotional, and academic experiences.

You may be asked to complete this survey in several classes over the course of the next two weeks. This survey will ask about your skills in life and in school, which are critical aspects of your high school education. Please be as honest as possible, as we will review the feedback to continually assess how we can continually improve and learn from your listening to your perspective..

The information collected in the survey will not be graded and your responses will be reported back to us anonymously, so teachers will not be able to see your names attached to your responses. So, please answer honestly.

Please raise your hand if you need any help, or if you have any questions. I can help you with any words or directions you don’t understand. 

Are there any questions?

Just Mercy

Please be reading Just Mercy chapters 4-8.  You should be ready to discuss it by Thursday.  As you read, look for examples of how the people in the book are shaped by culture and their socialization, especially from family and community but also school, media, peers.

A qualitative study of culture and the sociological imagination.

HW: Read Buettner's Thrive for mon.
Also - Reminders to:

• READ Just Mercy
• Enroll in Dual Credit (if interested)

Here is the handout for today's lesson.

Today we are conducting a qualitative study of culture and the sociological imagination using yearbooks as data.  Look at the qualitative study of current SHS culture that you did yesterday.  Today, choose a yearbook and look for similarities and differences compared to SHS culture today.

Similarities – What components of culture have stayed the same over time?
Can you see how culture creates stability over time? How does it shape people’s experiences?

Differences – What components of culture have changed over time?

Can you see how living in a different culture might shape individuals’ life chances?  What are the ways individuals might be different by living in a different culture?

Here is a sociology research article that is a qualitative study of high school yearbooks and inclusivity/diversity.

The Case For Teaching High School Sociology

The Value of Sociology

In my opinion, sociology encompasses the best of what high schools call social studies.   It is relevant to students' lives.  It helps them to have a better understanding of who they are as people and it helps the understand their peers.  Students find the discipline timely and interesting.  As a social science, it addresses some of the most valuable lessons from that department, such as: cultural awareness and understanding global society, understanding stereotypes and prejudice and how to not discriminate, how to make sense of data, create a claim with evidence and be a critical thinker, how to understand people who are not like you and how to avoid outgroup homogeneity, especially in gender and race.

You might also make the case for sociology in a number of other ways:

1.  Sociology providesvaluable STEM training in the form of social science.  Students who may avoid math and science learn scientific method, the importance and different types of research, and statistics.  Additionally, for students who might gravitate to traditional STEM classes, sociology provides a practical and interpersonal class that those students might benefit from.  There has been a real emphasis on STEM lately and sociology can be a great part of that. The National Science Foundation endorses sociology as a STEM discipline.

2.  There is much emphasis on Social Emotional Learning (SEL), and sociology provides wonderful opportunity to directly address SEL lessons in the classroom.  I use sociology to talk about how culture, families, schools, media and peers affect how we think about ourselves.  For example, some topics we learn about are how we are shaped to accept (or not) our own bodies and body image, how males are socialized to see violence as a way of demonstrating masculinity and the risks that entails, and how students develop a mindset about their own abilities.  These socialization messages all affect students personally.

3.  There has been a national emphasis on "civics" in high school and sociology helps address this.  In a pluralistic democracy, sociology provides understanding for different groups.  It also addresses which groups have power and how they use it and sustain.  Sociology also addresses social change and social movements.  It can also be an examination of policy.  This is especially valuable to schools looking to create more inquiry-based learning which is the direction that social studies has been evolving toward. The Brookings Institute provides ways that civics should be incorporated into high school classes, many of which fit neatly into sociology classes.  This is part of the C3 Framework by the National Council for Social Studies (NCSS).  The C3 Framework contains a connection to sociology in the appendix. 

4.  On a very practical level, sociology has remained free from the suffocating constraintsof the College Board.  This has allowed dual credit sociology programs to grow with partnerships from local (and not-so-local) colleges.  Students can earn college credit without having to take a national test.  Myriad research shows the benefits of students earning college credit in high school.  Sociology is a terrific vehicle to do that.  Indiana U and Loyola U Chicago are just a couple of examples of universities working with local schools to provide these benefits.  Here is an explanation of benefits from The Public School Review:

Dual-enrollment programs have been linked to higher high school graduation rates and increase the likelihood that students will enroll in an institution of higher education.


In addition, students who completed dual-enrollment programs in high school tended to have higher cumulative GPAs during their first three years in college. These benefits held true both for the high-achieving students and students from other subsets. Advantages were also seen in the population of male and low-income students, two subsets that often struggle academically in high school and beyond. The study urged states to continue expanding dual-enrollment opportunities to students across the board, particularly those that do not typically see themselves as college-bound.

5.  For school districts that are concerned with subject matter and curriculum, the ASA has created National Standards for High School to guide school districts about what a sociology curriculum should look like. These standards are available on the ASA website along with other resources.

6.  Finally, sociology is so broad that it is easily applicable to the interest of varying student populations.  With local school districts having very different student demographics, sociology can be a discipline that appeals to very different populations such as minority groups, schools with urban or rural issues, immigrant groups, etc...  Sociology can also be applied to demographics that are seeking preparation for pre-med (sociology is on the MCAT), data and programming (from Stanford and also Medium), business operations and management, business and marketing, criminal justice, public policy.

A cross-cultural qualitative study of Babies

Today, we watched the 2010 documentary, Babies.  Here is the guide that I handed out.


Building off our last lesson, we saw that:

• Culture is made up of material and non-material culture.
• The components of non-material culture include: norms, language, symbols and values.
• These components shape individuals in ways they don’t notice, especially their opportunities and obstacles (life chances).
• Cultural components that remain steady over time can create stability and continuity within a culture.

As you watch the documentary Babies, use your sociological imagination to think about how individuals might be shaped by the culture they are born into. To explore this, we will do a qualitative study of sorts by exploring the culture that babies are born into and how culture shapes a baby from the moment they are born. Fortunately, the data has been collected for us already. We will use the data gathered from the 2010 documentary Babies as an existing source to do a cross-cultural study of how babies are affected by their nurture.




About the documentary Babies (2010):
From the producer,

The adventure of a lifetime begins...Directed by award-winning filmmaker Thomas Balm`es, from an original idea by producer Alain Chabat, Babies simultaneously follows four babies around the world - from birth to first steps. The children are, respectively, in order of on-screen introduction: Ponijao, who lives with her family near Opuwo, Namibia; Bayarjargal, who resides with his family in Mongolia, near Bayanchandmani; Mari, who lives with her family in Tokyo, Japan; and Hattie, who resides with her family in the United States, in San Francisco.  Re-defining the nonfiction art form, Babies joyfully captures on film the earliest stages of the journey of humanity that are at once unique and universal to us all. 

The movie is rated PG, however, there are scenes of babies breastfeeding. If you have an issue with this, please let me know.
Babies and their birth country:
Ponijao Namibia
Bayarjargal Mongolia
Mari Japan
Hattie United States

As you watch, look for:
Cultural universals (cultural components found all over the world). If all humans exhibit these, they might be considered human nature.

Cultural differences. What are the ways that these babies are influenced differently by their culture (socialization)? These differences if they are external and socially constructed by society, they are considered human nurture.

TEST DAY - Unit 2

Let's get some 4s!

• Please use Test to cover scantrons.
• Use your Just Mercy book for the short answer.  You do not have to cite specific pages, but you must use details from the text to support your answer.
• Do not use electronic devices until after the period is over.

Just Mercy Chapters 2-3; Research

How does the lesson of Bryan’s grandma in “getting close” make him a more sociologically mindful person?

Getting close as research?

Page 37- a real issue similar to Sandra Bland

Here is a video from an Ohio Walmart where John Crawford III was holding a bb gun that he picked up off the shelf at Walmart.  It should be noted that Ohio allows citizens to walk around with firearms.  It should also be noted that this was a toy bb gun.  Someone in the store called police and they arrived on the scene and shot the man in less than 30 seconds.  There was no indictment.  See the story from the Washington Post here.



Also:
Here is another incident from South Carolina where an officer tells a man to get his driver's license and when the man reaches into his car to get it, the officer shoots him.  The man then asks, "why did you shoot me?"

Tamir Rice was a 12-year old boy who was killed by police.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2014/nov/26/cleveland-video-tamir-rice-shooting-police

Charles Kinsey, a social worker was trying to help his autistic patient when he was shot by police. 
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jury-hung-north-miami-officer-who-shot-unarmed-caretaker-autistic-n983926
These events are all examples of events similar to the one Stevenson describes on page 37.  How can you relate these events to status and group membership?

How does Bryan’s status and group membership affect his treatment?

How are Bryan’s thoughts about the incident an example of microsociology?

How are Bryan’s concerns about policing an example of macrosociology?

How can the policing be analyzed from a micro and macrosociological perspective?

What are the qualitative and quantitative ways that you can analyze the death row?

What are the macro and microsociological evidence that capital punishment is unjust? 

How is this chapter an example of ingroup-outgroup dynamics?

How is this chapter an example of stereotypes and categories?

Here is Bryan Stevenson describing these dynamics:

For more sociological info. and additional research on police stops and race, three sociology professors published about this in Contexts magazine.  Rory Kramer and Brianna Remster are in the department of sociology and criminology Villanova University. Kramer studies the physical and social boundaries between races in the U.S., and Remster studies inequality, crime, and formal social control and Camille Z. Charles is in the departments of sociology and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She studies U.S. racial attitudes.  SHS students can click here to access the article.

The authors use NYPD data that was ordered by a judge to be made public.  The data show that even when controlling for crime rates and other info like age and behavior, blacks are more likely to be stopped by police and more likely to experience force.

Civic Duty Calls!

Today I am serving my civic duty as a juror.  Although I am happy to be participating in democracy, I am sad to be gone on 9/11.  See my 9/11 post here if you are interested.


While I am gone, please read Joel Best's Damned Lies and Statistics (page 32-38 of your packet).  When finished, please answer the questions that follow (page 39).  Mostly, I want you to be critical of statistics.  I want you to think carefully about the stats you read.  For starters, I want you to apply this to the research you found.  Look through the article you found and look for stats the author uses.  Which ones seem significant?  What are some ways that you can apply the reading by Best to your research article?


For HOMEWORK:
Please read Charon's "Should We Generalize" in your packet for friday.  Be ready to discuss it.