At County School I see a lot of peer pressure and kids doing things just because the other kids are doing it, or not doing things because the other kids are not doing it. As part of a community there the kids feel safest by doing what everyone else there is doing. “Non-participation is actually a form of resistance.” (p 155) When the student I work with often, Mariella is in class without her friends she is willing and excited to do what the teacher and I ask her to do. She will sit down and complete her work with no fight at all. When Mariella is sitting next to her friends she will talk to them and goof around instead of work on the class work. Also, whenever I see her coming to class, she comes alone. When she has skipped school I see her outside of school grounds hanging out with her friends. If she were to not participate in the side conversations her classmates have during class or not participate in skipping school, she would be resisting peer pressure; which I wish she would. In this case not participating is harder than participating.
Non-thinking really pops out to me as an issue in every part of my life. What the kids at County are doing is “non-thinking” when they adhere to the rules of their community. Their governing body is not their teachers, but the other kids that go to school there. The rule is, “hate your teacher and hate learning,” and to go against that is showing some personal thought on the part of the student. I am so happy when a student actually works to learn something or listens to what the teacher says because they are breaking away from the rules. “By shielding people against the dangers of examination, it teaches them to hold fast to whatever the prescribed rules of conduct may be at a given time in a society.” (p 178) Several times during a class period I see kids break away from the non-thinking peer pressure of the school and look forward toward learning and an educational future.
Well connected--and interesting how you identify the ruling authority as being that of the peer group not the school/teachers. So you add a very interesting twist in that we have to think about what we are conforming to, thoughtlessly--it may be the powers that be, the external authority, but perhaps as you note, Jen, it is really the informal authority of our group identity which has the stronger pull--because when we question that identity, we weaken it, don't we? So, for County students, who really need that identity and sense of belonging, this group code has more power than the institution. . .
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