My Personal Covid Experience

 As Covid was spreading last year, my parents tried to be careful but also refused to let it halt their lives.  They are both in their 80s and they felt that they only had so much time left to live so they wanted to continue going out to eat at restaurants, visiting with friends, going to church, etc...

On Saturday, December 5th 2020, my mom stopped by my house to say hi to my kids.  Here is a picture we took before a Santa Run 5K:

That's her on the right side.  She walked 3 miles that day with friends! She went to church and went to dinner.  She was full of activity.  Four days later, she was feeling sick, like she had a cold, but the next day she was so ill she went to an urgent care center.  She had a fever of 102.  She was nauseated.  She had no appetite and had headaches.  She tried to rest at home but we bought her a pulse oximeter and it was showing decreased levels on oxygen in her system.  And so, just 10 days after the picture above, she was admitted to the hospital.  

Just a couple days after admission, she could no longer breathe without oxygen.  She was more nauseated and had a fever that would go up and down.

We Facetimed each other to stay in touch:

Look at those 2 pictures.  Ten days apart.  And this was a healthy women, who ate lots of vegetables, exercised daily, drank lots of water, did not smoke or drink alcohol too much.  She was an upbeat and optimistic person with a genuine giant smile who made everyone around her feel good.  

Now, she was alone in the hospital.  No visitors. Only a cellphone for herself.  They admitted her with what she had on her and because of the contagious nature of the disease there was no visiting, no dropping off of magazines, or change of clothes.  She had an optimistic attitude that maybe she will be home by Christmas (Dec 25).  That would give her 10 days to recover.  But, in those ten days she did not get better, she got worse.  She was receiving fluids intravenously and receiving blood transfusions and remdesivir to try to control the virus.   After spending Christmas alone in the hospital, she set a new goal for returning home: the new year.  She thought that if she couldn't make it by Christmas, well then by New Year's Day.  

But Covid continued to destroy her lungs.  Her caregivers started taking blood almost daily to look for clotting.  After spending New Year's alone in the hospital she continued to get worse.  She said that she felt like she was drowning just not in water.  When she would try to get a breath, her lungs would convulse and she would go into coughing fits that she could not control.  She was now in bed 23 hours a day, barely able to walk, only able to survive with supplemental oxygen.  Simply going to the bathroom would drain her energy/oxygen and make her feel faint.  She said that this was far worse than she thought it would be.

She had survived colon cancer that required an invasive surgery that removed her colon and large intestine and breast cancer that required a double mastectomy.

 She said that Covid was far worse than any of that.  

In the meantime, the effects of covid went far beyond her own health.  Anxious and worried about her health, it was hard to concentrate on much else.  The emotions affected me as well as my kids (her grand daughters) and dozens of other people.  While I appreciated their thoughts, I was inundated with phone calls from her friends and other family members who wanted to know how she was.  It was exhausting.  I was simultaneously trying to communicate with her doctors and manage her care while also caring for my father who was not used to being alone and caring for himself.  The ripple effects of an illness like Covid are hard to quantify.  I was trying to manage her financial affairs and pay her bills because she was not able to do any of that.  

She was not sure that she was going to live.  She was scared and sad.  But then, after an experimental treatment of powerful immunosuppressants her condition started to stabilize.  She was no longer getting worse, but she was not getting better.  Her doctors had prevented her from dying but there was not much more that they could do in the hospital.  They hoped that with some physical therapy she could strengthen her lungs.  So, after 3 and a half weeks in the hospital, her doctors were transferring her to a rehabilitation facility.  She still was not able to have any visitors.  It would be over a month where she saw no one except doctors and nurses looking at her through masks, face shields and lab coats and other PPE. However, she continued to FaceTime me and she described her room at the rehab facility where was now.  I was able to figure out what room it was from the description and after not seeing her in person for over a month and thinking that I might never see her alive again, I drove to a back alley and said hello through her window.  We cried. I still would not be able to hug her or touch her for another 10 days or so.  

Although she did not make it home for Christmas or New Years that year, she did make it home for her 80th birthday.    On January 18th, I picked her up at the rehab facility and for the first time in 42 days I was able to hug my own mother.

This was a new chapter of worry and difficulty.  She could hardly walk upstairs and she required supplemental oxygen which meant being connected to a machine via air tubes.  We were worried about her using the shower and the toilet.  And the supplemental oxygen was an explosion risk so it could not be used in the kitchen but we also were not sure that in her diminished mental state that she would remember to not use the gas stove with the oxygen on.  There were all sorts of tripping hazards like coffee tables and rugs.  In short, yes she survived, but the experience was long, stressful and still an ongoing adjustment.  And we are now 7 months passed her return home and while she has resumed much of her previous activities she is not the same.  Her body has trouble regulating its blood sugar - possibly from damage to her pancreas, her lungs are not at full capacity and may never be - she requires a conscious effort to take deep breaths, and mentally she still has trouble remembering words.  

In short, she lived, but you don't want this disease, even if you survive it and you don't want to spread it to any of your own loved ones. 

Reviewing Unit 1: The Sociological Perspective

This first unit was about how sociologists examine the world; the unique perspective that illuminates our understanding of both society and how individuals in it are influenced.

Three Paradigms

There are three paradigms that helped start sociology as a discipline.  Each paradigm has a connection to a scholar who studied the huge dramatic changes that took place during the industrial revolution.  More important than either the scholar or what he studied, are what these founding paradigms influenced sociologists to focus on.

Three Theories

Besides these three paradigms that have influenced what sociology focuses on, there are also three sociological theories that I use to help understand the sociological perspective.  These three theories are in the center of the graphic organizer because they can be applied to everything we study.

What does Durkheim's Structural-Functional paradigm focus on?

What does Marx's Conflict paradigm focus on?

What does Weber's Symbolic Interaction paradigm focus on?

What is the Social Construction of Reality?

What is the Sociological Imagination?

What is Sociological Mindfulness?

Once you understand the paradigms and theories, practice applying them to your own life.  Be sure that when you apply them, you can be specific to your own experience.

• Being a teenager (and conflicts with parents - be specific about the details in your life; i.e. what conflicts?)
• Your name  (be specific, which of your names and how does it apply spcifically to the paradigm or theory?)
• covid
• college application process

1Soc Perspective 5: Hello, My Name is Max

While students show up please read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

Review from last lesson:  What does Marx's conflict paradigm focus on?

Apply to the Parent-Teen Conflict article:  How might the conflict paradigm be used to examine teens?

Max Weber and Symbolic Interaction Paradigm

Max Weber's contribution to the development of sociology during the  Industrial Revolution

Max Weber (pronounced VAY-ber) studied the development of capitalism in European countries.  He found that countries that became more Protestant also became more capitalist.  This is peculiar because religion and economics seem to be separate.  But Protestants held shared meaning with each other about their wealth and finance.  They saw living within their means and investing their money as signs that they were living righteously within their Christian beliefs.  This created an economy that was based on investment.  It led to the creation and expansion of capitalism, investing profit to make even more profit.   It might seem strange for religion to be connected to the economy, but in their interaction with each other, it was real for them.  


The development of the symbolic interactionist paradigm 

Building off of Weber's work, two sociologists created a third paradigm for which sociologists view the world.   Weber showed symbolic meaning in the Protestants' lives and in their everyday interaction with other people.  Stemming from Weber's work, George Mead and other sociologists focused on the shared meaning in everyday life between people.  This paradigm became known as symbolic interaction.  It is more focused on face-to-face interaction, or small groups, as opposed to large scale institutions.  Much of our interaction with each other holds symbolic meaning to us.  The words we chose, our body language, our clothes all hold symbolic meaning for us.  They convey an identity we have to the world. 

Let's add Weber and symbolic interaction to the sociology framework graphic organizer:

How might symbolic interaction paradigm connect to names?

A name isn’t just a random set of syllables.  It has meaning.  

And it can be interpreted by people differently.  Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from sociologists Cerulo and Ruane.

Here is the Google Form for this lesson.  Please open it in a new window and fill it out as you continue.

1.  According to the authors of Conventional Wisdom Tells Us..., what are some examples of the different meanings that names hold?  

2.  What are some ways that Cerulo and Ruane show these meanings affect people?

For more on names and symbolic meanings, you can listen to the Freakonomics podcast episode by Wells, Katharine.  How Much Does Your Name Matter? Freakonomics Radio Podcast. April 8, 2013.

The episode draws from a Freakonomics chapter called “A Roshanda By Any Other Name”and includes a good bit of new research on the power of names. It opens with a conversation with NYU sociologist Dalton Conley and his two children, E and Yo. Their names are a bit of an experiment.  Indeed, there is some evidence that a name can influence how a child performs in school and even her career opportunities. There’s also the fact that different groups of parents — blacks and whites, for instance — have different naming preferences. Stephen Dubner talks to Harvard professor Latanya Sweeney about a mysterious discrepancy in Google ads for Instant Checkmate, a company that sells public records. Sweeney found that searching for people with distinctively black names was 25% more likely to produce an ad suggesting the person had an arrest record – regardless of whether that person had ever been arrested.  Names do, however, reveal a lot about the people doing the naming. Eric Oliver, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, talks about his new research (with co-authors Thomas Wood and Alexandra Bass) that looks at how children’s names are influenced by their parents’ political ideology.

If names do affect their bearers' chance of success, it may not always be because of the reactions they cause in other people (the "looking-glass self"), they might also be because of "implicit egotism", the positive feelings we each have about ourselves.  Brett Pelham cites the concept in explaining his finding that individuals called Virginia, Mildred, Jack and Philip proliferate in Virginia, Milwaukee, Jacksonville and Philadelphia - he believes they are drawn to live there.  

Another intriguing 2007 paper, entitled Moniker Maladies, found that people's fondness for the initials of their names could get in the way of success. Leif Nelson and Joseph Simmons analysed almost a century of baseball strikeouts and found that hitters with the initial K had a higher strike-out rate ("K" denotes a strike-out in baseball). They also found that graduate students with the initials C and D had a slightly lower grade point average than A and B students, and A and B applicants to law school were more likely to go to better colleges.

Some students will say that their parents just chose the name because they liked it.  But closer research reveals that even this is not always the case.  The Social Security Administration Baby Names Database tracks all of the names babies are given each year.  You can view that data here: SSA Baby Name Database.   
Notice that the data shows that names go in and out of style, even if we don't notice it.  For example, my parents named me Christopher, but they just thought that they liked the name.  Looking at the data, it is now evident that Christopher was the second most popular name that year! 

Additionally, a respected sociologist from Harvard named Stanley Lieberson studied trends and fashions.  He used the Social Security Names database to study how names spread in popularity similar to how fashion spreads.  His research is an example of how the social institution of family creates stability.  The naming of new babies is not simply personal; families influence each other.  Read this NY Times[iii] article about Lieberson then try your own research with the data.  If you wish to markup this reading, download it here.  Lieberson found that:

• Name choices, like clothing choices, reflect the desire to be different, but not too different.
• Names branch off of each other with similar suffixes or prefixes 
• Names reflect societal patterns like Mexican immigrants
• Names are changing more frequently than they used to reflect a stronger desire to be different.

5.  (OPTIONAL) Search the SSA Baby Name Database.  

Can you find examples of any of Lieberson's finds in the social security database?  Give a specific example.

Parent-teen conflicts and Weber's symbolic interaction paradigm

Think about the teen-parent conflict reading.  

3.  What are the meanings that the label "teen" might hold for parents?  For society?  

4.  How might the label of "teen" affect the face-to-face interactions between teens and parents, teachers, peers?   How did this meaning come about?


5. Do you understand how the sociologists view the world through a symbolic interaction perspective?  Any questions about that paradigm?

1Soc Perspective 4: Hello My Name is Karl

 As students arrive:

Please open the Google Form for today's lesson.  Please open it in a new window and answer the questions as you read along below.  

Review and apply yesterday's lesson:  

1.  What does Durkheim's structural-functional paradigm focus on?

2. Try to apply that to teens - How can you apply the structural-functional paradigm to the Parent-Teen Conflict article?  What parts of the article would a structural-functional sociologist focus on?



Karl Marx's Conflict Paradigm

The second paradigm that emerged from the changes of the industrial revolution is called conflict paradigm which developed out of the influence of Karl Marx.  He studied the inequalities in industrial Europe and how those inequalities affected individuals.  For example, Marx found that a working-class person lived an average of 25 years less than a wealthy person.  Like Durkheim, Marx concluded that his findings were not just the result of individual choices.  Instead, people were forced to work in unhealthy conditions and forced to yield to the demands of the wealthy owners of the factories.  

Marx's Focus   

Marx's focus led sociologists to examine who had power in society and who did not.  The natural extension of that became the effects of power on groups of individuals and how those in power gained and maintained that power.  Initially, Marx's focus was on social class, especially in Europe, but early sociologists in the U.S. like W.E.B. Dubois applied the conflict paradigm to race, while others like Alice Paul applied it to gender in the U.S.   Oftentimes, the study of inequality and the fight for equal rights led to overlapping movements such as social class and gender led by Chicago's Jane Addams and other overlapping movements such as race and gender which was led by Chicago's Ida B. Wells.  In fact, the University of Chicago was the first sociology department in North America (1892) and Chicago was a leader in sociology for the next 50 years leading to what became known as "the Chicago school" of sociology.

Open your framework chart from yesterday, and add Marx's paradigm to the lower left:

Applying conflict paradigm to names

3. Hypothesize:  What are some ways that names might create power or inequality?


Small group discussion (based on this lesson from Rabow, et al...):
4.  Has your name ever been mispronounced?  By who? When? How often?


5.  Has anyone had their name changed or taken on a  nickname because of mispronunciation?  If so, were there any benefits to the new name?  Were there any negative consequences?


Race and names
These articles provide research-based evidence of the importance of conflict perspective in examining names and power:

Emily and Greg v. Lakisha and Jamal

In a study from 2003, called Are Emily And Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan sent nearly 5,000 CVs in response to job advertisements in Chicago and Boston newspapers. The CVs were the same, but half were given fake names that sounded like they belonged to white people, like Emily Walsh or Greg Baker, and the other half were given names that sounded African American, like Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones. The call-back rate from employers was 50% higher on the "white" names then the "black" names. The effects were noted even for federal contractors with "affirmative action" policies, and companies boasting they were "equal opportunities" employers.  The researchers inferred that employers were using first names to discriminate unfairly against black candidates, perhaps at an unconscious level. Those same prejudices might also come into play at the interviewing stage, but a black applicant called Greg Baker, who receives an invitation to an interview, has at least got his foot in the door.

Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan

There is also striking evidence of names triggering different outcomes for schoolchildren.

David Figlio, now at Northwestern University, analyzed the scores of some 55,000 children in a school district of Florida. Instead of just distinguishing between "white" and "black" names, he codified what aspects of names meant that they were more likely to belong to black children and children from low-income families. This allowed him to create a sliding scale, which went, for example, from Drew to Dwayne to Damarcus to Da'Quan. Figlio found that the further along this scale he went, the worse the school test scores and the less likely the student was to be recommended for the schools' program for "gifted" students. Strikingly, this held true for brothers within a family, and even - although the sample size was small - for twins. Figlio believes that the fault lies with the expectations of schoolteachers and administrators - at schools with more black teachers, the effects were less marked.  In separate research, Figlio used the Florida school data to show that black boys who are given names more common among girls are more likely to develop behavioral problems when they reach puberty. The problems increase significantly when there are girls in the same year group with the same name.

Both of the above is an example of how conflict sociologists view society and how inequality is created and maintained.  Read the following and look for how studying names can be viewed through a conflict paradigm.

Ethnicity, immigration and names

From American Immigrants and the Dilemma of the White Sounding Name in the Atlantic (2019),

A lot of research on immigration and names examines the subject from an economic perspective. A 2016 paper in the American Sociological Review looked at the first names given to the generation that came after the wave of immigration to the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. “Native-born sons of Irish, Italian, German, and Polish immigrant fathers who were given very ethnic names ended up in occupations that earned, on average, $50 to $100 less per year than sons who were given very ‘American’ names,” the researchers wrote. “This represented 2 to 5 percent of annual earnings.” (They determined the “ethnic-ness” or “American-ness” of a name based on how frequently it was given in each immigrant and native-born population at the time.) 

Some of this effect, the researchers estimated, was due to class differences among parents (which remain a strong determinant of a child’s future job prospects), but most of it had to do with the symbolism of the name itself. Interestingly, the economic advantage that came with having a “more American” name still applied to people with surnames that clearly indicated their parents’ foreign origins. The researchers surmised that American-sounding first names, then, functioned more as a signal of “an effort to assimilate” than a means of “hiding one’s origins.” 

Immigrants in that era frequently felt pressured to change their own first name. A separate study, also from 2016, found that “at any given time between 1900 and 1930,” about 77 percent of immigrants had an American-sounding first name, and it was the norm for them to have dropped their original name within a year of entering the U.S. There were economic overtones here too: Male immigrants were more likely to change their name if they lived in counties where other immigrants had trouble getting jobs.

School and Conflict Paradigm

From PBS's, Why Getting a Student's Name Right Matters

For more info, you might want to visit the My Name, My Identity website[vi].

For students, especially the children of immigrants or those who are English-language learners, a teacher who knows their name and can pronounce it correctly signals respect and marks a critical step in helping them adjust to school.  But for many ELLs, a mispronounced name is often the first of many slights they experience in classrooms; they’re already unlikely to see educators who are like them, teachers who speak their language, or a curriculum that reflects their culture.

It can also hinder academic progress.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

• Mispronunciation can hinder academic progress, and make students feel invisible.

...the dropout rate for foreign-born and immigrant students remains above 30 percent, three times that of U.S.-born white students.

Carmen Fariña, a native-Spanish speaker, had a teacher who marked her absent every day for weeks because she didn’t raise her hand during roll call. The teacher assumed Fariña was being defiant, but the future New York City schools chancellor never heard her name called; the teacher had repeatedly failed to pronounce it correctly, including rolling the r’s.

Mispronouncing a student’s name essentially renders that student invisible, Fariña said Teachers Please Learn Our Names! Racial Microaggressions and the K-12 Classroom, is littered with stories of students who endured shame, anxiety, or embarrassment, and sometimes a mix of all three, when their names were called in class.

There’s the tale of a Portland, Oregon-area student with a traditional Chinese name who had her name garbled by a vice principal during an honors ceremony. Set to present the student with an award, the principal laughed at his mistake, drawing chuckles from the audience.  To avoid embarrassment, the student slumped in her seat, refusing to rise to receive the prestigious award. She later skipped her graduation.  The mispronunciation wasn’t an isolated event. Having endured years of slights, she felt the need to become invisible long before the principal’s laughter marked the tipping point.  The woman, who went on to become an educator, changed her first name to ‘Anita.’ “If someone mispronounces your name once as a high school student, you might correct them,” said Kohli, whose parents immigrated to the United States from India. “But if this has been your entire existence in education, what do you do?”  Kohli’s own brother had a teacher mispronounce his traditional South Asian name, Sharad (‘shu-rudth’) as Sharub during a ninth grade class. The teacher and the students decided it was easier to call him Shrub, and it stuck for the rest of high school. The nickname forced him to check part of his identity at the door.

While the diversity of the nation’s public school student body has exploded in the last few decades, the number of African-American, Latino, and Asian teachers hasn’t kept pace. Gonzalez, a former teacher in school districts in Kentucky and Maryland, said she often observed a ‘these people’ attitude from her mostly white female colleagues. “They approached it like, ‘It’s your fault for having a weird name,'” Gonzalez said. To some degree, Gonzalez understands the struggle students face. She grew up with a Russian surname, Yurkosky, that befuddled teachers and classmates. She said it rhymes with “her-pots-ski,” minus the “t” sound in pots. “But I did not experience all the other stuff and other ways that a person can feel discriminated against,” said Gonzalez, who is white.

Butchered names are not just a problem for English learners and immigrants; students from a number of cultural backgrounds have their names garbled or ridiculed. Hawaiian and African-American students, with names that link to their ancestry, also shared stories of how constant mispronunciations made them feel uncomfortable with their names.

• Names can even lead to direct mocking of a student:

In an extreme case, a teacher in Wayne Township, New Jersey, lost her tenure status and job in 2015 for mocking a student’s name on Facebook. Several letters in the student’s name spelled out a profane word, legal documents show. More often, the mocking is more direct and reflexive: laughing off pronunciation, asking the student to take on a nickname, or making a spectacle of their name, Kohli said. “It matters what you do when you’re in front of a child and struggling with their name,” Kohli said. “Is it framed as my inability to say someone’s name or is it framed as the student doing something to make your life more difficult?”

The episode called "Substitute Teacher" from Key and Peele is a funny take on how student names can be messed up by a teacher and how that can affect students.

Applying conflict paradigm to teens

6.  Finally,  apply conflict paradigm to the teen-parent conflict article.  What are some ways that you can analyze Coontz's Teen-Parent Conflict excerpt through Marx's lens of inequality and power?  

HW (optional):  Read "Conventional Wisdom Tells Us...What's in a Name? That which we call a Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet" from Cerulo and Ruane.

Reading: Gang Leader for a Day

 HW:  Read Gang Leader for a Day Introduction by Sudhir Venkatesh

For this excerpt in a Word format you can click here.

Gang Leader For A Day is a book written for popular consumption by Sudhir Venkatesh.  Venkatesh went to the U of Chicago to study sociology. In his quest to conduct research that would help him make a name for himself, he naively put himself into harm’s way.  The excerpt below is from the book's introduction.  As you read, look for the different ways that Venkatesh tries to gather data for his research.  Also, think about what data he gathers is reliable or useful and in what ways.

NOTE: Venkatesh's original publication contained words, including racial epithets, that may be considered offensive by some today. These words were not included in a way meant to be offensive or inflammatory, but instead, the author, Venkatesh was trying to relay his conversations as accurately as possible to the reader.  Nevertheless, I have tried to redact the most offensive words in this excerpt.

For perspective, above is a picture of how the Lake Park Housing Projects looked before they were torn down.

For more info on the Chicago Housing Projects, see this multimedia presentation from UCLA about the Robert Taylor Homes.

Here is a history of high rise public housing from a UC Berkley professor.

Read this critique of Venkatesh's work and answer the question below.

For more info on Venkatesh's work:

• Gang Leader for a Day on Amazon. 
• Read an excerpt from the book and download Venkatesh reading and talking about his book from NPR. 
• Venkatesh speaking on the Colbert Report and he explains that there are important ways of doing research correctly.
• Venkatesh speaking about his book and the research he did.  
• An interview at slate.com between Venkatesh and Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here).

1Soc Perspective 2: Coontz's Teen-Parent Conflicts

As students arrive, please look over the reading for today, Stephanie Coontz's "Putting Teen-Parent Conflicts in Perspective". 

Syllabus questions?

Fired Up?

Listen for the Silence

Answer questions 1-5 on the Google Form for this lesson.

1. Be honest - did you read the whole article?

2. What reading strategies did you use? (mark all that apply)

PRO TIP: The best reading strategies are:

Look for claim/thesis and evidence

Annotate - forces active reading, marks info for finding quickly

Have a "conversation" with the author/reading 

3. What do you think Coontz’s claim/thesis is? Find a passage from the text that summarizes her claim or write your own thesis that summarizes her claim. 

4. What is some evidence she provides that supports her claim? 

5. How confident are you that you understood Coontz's claim and evidence?

Discussion of Coontz's Claim and Evidence

Below is a graph of the median age of first marriage in American history from the US Census Bureau:

6. After we discuss the reading, was your evaluation in number 5 accurate?

7. What do you think worked/didn't work for number 6? What should you continue to do or improve on?

The idea of a teenager has only been around since the 1940s.  Before that, individuals went more from childhood to adulthood very quickly and distinctly.  Now, the process of childhood has a long, drawn-out middle period.  This encompasses the "teenage years" but it also includes what sociologists call "young adulthood."  Sociologists estimate the average age of independence in the United States to be 27.  That is when (on average) individuals can be self-sustaining financially and emotionally and socially enough to have a family and residence of their own.  So this leaves a long middle period between the age of puberty (10) and independence (27).  And throughout that time, there are many mixed messages being given to young adults.  This results in "rolelessness," or a feeling of not knowing what is expected of you during those years.  One example was the lack of meaningful work.  Teens generally have jobs that society deems as unworthy or meaningless.  This can leave teens feeling like they don't matter.  Can you see how Coontz makes that point?  Do you see how that can be true?  

Large Group: Make a timeline of the milestones throughout an average American's life - What are the milestones?  

BIRTH ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 80

Small Group Discussion:

Which milestones are natural?  Which are social? How do these differ?

When is an American independent?  

What are the most important events that consider someone an adult?

For more on the difficulties of determining adulthood:

This 2004 article from Contexts magazine about research showing different routes to adulthood depending on one's race, social class and other factors. 

 

This 2016 brief, called Grownups, from Contexts magazine highlights,   

A new paper by Scott Eliason, Jeylan Mortimer, and Mike Vuolo in Social Psychology Quarterly that seeks to better understand individuals’ perceptions of having finally become grownups. 

Growing Up is Harder to Do.2 - After the Great Recession (Contexts November 2016 is a nice follow-up, highlighting both how sociology explores the ways that inequality shows up n society and how society is dynamic so follow-up research is necessary.

Discontinuous Society?

Small group discussion:  Think about the timeline of events as Americans grow up.  What are the ways that Americans are viewed opposite from childhood to adulthood?

Another way to look at the conflicts sociologically is what Ruth Benedict called continuous and discontinuous societies in her seminal work, Patterns of Culture.  Benedict said that some societies are continuous citing her own studies of indigenous cultures and Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa.  (The relationship and research of Mead and Benedict are detailed in this 2019 article in the Atlantic.)

However, Benedict argued, culture in the U.S. is discontinuous because culturally, children have such different/opposing expectations from adults, especially: 

• irresponsible   -   responsible
• asexual            -   sexual
• submissive      -   dominant
• dependent       -    independent

Kids Up Parents Down is a funny take from Jerry Seinfeld on the discontinuous nature of childhood and adulthood in the U.S.:

Hine's 13

Not the ketchup - that's Heinz 57.  This is Thomas Hine's examination of age 13 and the difficulties that come with being a teenager.

Thomas Hine's book, The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager examines how society has created teens and how it affects them. You can hear the author discussing his ideas here. According to Hine,

Our beliefs, about teenagers are deeply contradictory: They should be free to become themselves. They need many years of training and study. They know more about the future than adults do. They know hardly anything at all. They ought to know the value of a dollar. They should be protected from the world of work. They are frail, vulnerable creatures. They are children. They are sex fiends. They are the death of culture. They are the hope of us all.

Do you see these contradictions in your own life or in the teens around you?

1 A Sociological Introduction

Introducing...
YOU! (and Sociology!)

As students enter, please follow the instructions below:

1.  iPad and Blog

Take out your iPad, open  http://sociologysal.blogspot.com/ and bookmark it.  I will post lessons on the blog each day.  If you miss a class or, if you are simply not sure what the lesson was about, go to my blog page to review the lesson from that day.  

HW:  There are three items for homework posted at the bottom of this page.  The Teen-Parent conflict article is an important touchstone that we will use throughout this unit.  Please read it carefully!

2.  Student Demographics Survey 

I want to get to know each of you better as an individual, so please answer this demographic survey.  It is only for me.  Please share as much info as you are comfortable sharing.  

3. Syllabus

If you finished 1 and 2 above, please begin reading the syllabus which is one of your homework assignments.

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Fired Up?

Bell

I had you fill out the survey above because I wanted to get to know you as an individual.  My question now is, are you, in fact, an individual?  What makes you an individual?  Please answer individually for all of the numbered boldface questions below.  I will do this for each lesson of ours.  Click on the link below and open the Google Form in a new window.  Then read along with the blog and answer questions in the order that they come up.  

Here is the Google Form for today's lesson.  Please open it in a new window.  Answer numbers 1 and 2 and then return to this blog page.

1.  Do you think you are an individual?  Why or why not?

2.  What do you think it means to be an individual?

Sociology

Background:  The Creation of Sociology as an Academic Discipline

 

Sociology was created as a reaction to the profound changes during the late 16th and 17th centuries, especially: The Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution.  

The Scientific Revolution established the scientific method as a standard for understanding the world.

The Enlightenment put forth the concept of individuality and the nature of human beings.

And, The Industrial Revolution brought about changes from:

      Pre-industrial                                                             to  Post-industrial

• an agricultural                                                          to an industrial economy
• rural                                                                          to urban living
• a cottage system                                                       to a factory system method of production
• group identity (tribe, religion, nation, family)         to a belief in individualism

The conglomeration of these changes took hold during the 1800s in Europe.  Three important scholars used the scientific method to study the changes of the industrial revolution and challenge the assumptions about individuality and the Enlightenment.  This inspired the beginning of sociology as a social science discipline.  Each of the three scholars' theories led to the foundational structure that sociology still uses today.

The Western world in general, particularly Americans, like to believe that they are individual and unique.  This idea stemmed from the Enlightenment.   Many scholars at the time doted on the idea that each person is unique and each person is free to choose whoever they want to be.  

However, shortly after the Enlightenment, the industrial revolution changed the way people lived and it showed that individuals are shaped a great deal by their social circumstances and not just by their own free choice.  We will learn more about this in the lessons to come, but for today, see this idea exemplified in the student demographic sheet you filled out. 

People are shaped by structures of society and their place within the structure.   The place you were born and the culture you were born into will shape how you think, talk, and what opportunities you have.  Families, schools, jobs, politics and media all influence how you see the world and what you value and how you think.  Additionally, your race, gender, social class all shape how you see yourself and how others see you.  Sometimes that can result in others treating you differently based on those identities.  All of this is sociological.  Sociology is scientifically studying how these groups in society affect the individuals within them and the obstacles and opportunities they will face because of their group identities.

3.  Any questions about what sociology is?

Syllabus

Here is a link to the syllabus.  

4.  Any questions about the syllabus?

Teen-Parent Conflicts 

5.  Identify some conflicts you have with your parents.  What are they about?

Discuss as a group:

• Do you think these conflicts are personal?
• What is difficult about being a teen?

HW1:  IMPORTANT  Read Parent-teen Conflicts by Stephanie Coontz.  

This is an important reading for this first unit.  Please be sure to read and understand it thoroughly.  It will help make the rest of the lessons this unit easier.

Before you read, think about your answer to number 5 above.  As you read, think about what Coontz attributes the conflicts to.  What is her overall thesis? Can you apply Coontz's theory to your own parent conflicts?

HW2:  Read the full syllabus.

PRO TIP:  ALWAYS read your syllabus for college.  When asking your professors a question about the class, be sure to mention (and demonstrate) that you read the syllabus before asking them.

HW3:   Name Survey

For homework, please survey your family about why you were named the legal name that you have.  If you have a nickname, please ask about that as well.  How and why did you get these names?  Is there a symbolic meaning to your name or why you were named that?