Be 聪明 (smart) it's Chineasy

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GpI1fNSk8m0

One year ago I began learning Chinese also known as my first step to becoming a polyglot. While it is certainly challenging it is far from impossible. When beginning to learn many people would comment "oh that's so hard, why would you learn Chinese?," Well cause I want to go to Taiwan and teach English. Also learning this language will help me to much more entirely understand the culture. When thinking of this it makes me wish I would have begun learning the language much sooner than I did.  This video gives great reasons to learn a second language. While never impossible studies have shown that it is much easier to learn multiple languages if you start young. Also as a future educator I see the impact this could have in learning. Knowing these languages would help expand groups allowing for inclusion of those that would previously have not been understood. It also may get kids interested in learning and other cultures from an early age, which would help promote tolerance and understanding. Finally this would be a great opportunity for students. With such a competitive job market students who know a second language are invaluable to our current global economy. As stated in the video only around 24000 people are studying a second language!  These are all reasons why I hope to see language become a larger part of adolescent and youth curriculum.

Classless Cats

When I first heard the title of this book I immediately thought of how many in America believe that they live in a classless society. Clearly this is not accurate. This is also exemplified in the book. Bettie discusses how, often, upper class students are much less aware of their and their classmates socio-economic status and thus often disregard their many advantages such as high cultural capital. This in turn causes strife between these groups. Like when girls think kids from "bad families", seeming to nearly be synonymous with poor, are determined to be less apt or to have less desire to succeed, when in fact they may be working extra hard to succeed along with supporting themselves. By disregarding this advantages and disadvantages we blind ourselves to class and in turn further disadvantage those who are already in the worst of situations, instead of working to equalize them and give them fair and equitable opportunities.

Interesting Intersectionality

In early childhood I did not have much contact with people of other ethnicities because I lived in incredibly small towns from kindergarten through senior year of high school. This does not mean that I didn't experience intersectionality. I am a white, lower-middle-class, male.  A big result of this is that before college I had little contract and experience with people of other classes and races. This gave me less perspective intro other people and their life experiences. I think this prevented me from understanding how other people view the world. This could have played a role in the low number of friends from other social classes. This may be also do to habits of varying parts intersectionality. As discussed in "Women Without Class" this intersectionality can lead to a division of physical space for use by varying groups. I think this leads to acquisition of friends of similar social groups due to common interests and shared space such as how many of my friends smoke cigarettes and this are often ostracized by passers by thus when they meet a fellow smoker they often quickly make friends. This seems to lead to greater division along intersections of society.

Emerging Adulthood, and Expanding Adolecence

When I think of the emerging adulthood essay I just always end up thinking that we have to stop being so prescriptive. While I certainly understand that this will happen and many kids go through similar patterns. However, I also think that if we focused in children as individuals, not some abstract idea that is entirely uniform. Certainly kids will mature at different rates, but this idea ofmaturing is also somewhat of a socially constructed idea. Like many points in sociology it seems that the potential problem may be that our society chooses to define its ideal person much to narrowly to be realistic, much less a broad consensus.

Too Much Tech?

After reading Electronic Media Use, Reading, and Academic Distractibility in College Youth, and having our subsequent discussion in class I began to think more about how closely intertwined our society is with technology, more specifically youth.  I remember when I was in junior high and maybe even slightly before that people I knew began to get cellphones.  Old Nokias that you could build a house with.  I remember wanting one to some degree though I think I would have much rather my mom bought me an Xbox 360, though that probably wouldn't have done me much more good than the phone.  While the study focuses on "Iming", a phrase not as prevalent as it used to be, however I think that the data still seems accurate.  It is surprising to me that we get as much accomplished as we do seeing as how distracted everyone seems to be.  We are getting less sleep, no where near the 9 1/2 one of the films we watched in class recommended, and seem to cram every last free second with a hodgepodge board of bright multi-colored screens.  While I am not an advocate for the complete abandonment of technology, because it has massive opportunity for good, I do think we need to strongly reconsider how we are using it and attempt to be as purposeful as possible when accessing it.

The "Glorious" White City

An issue topic that is discussed by Lesko in Act Your Age is the ego of the White American Male.  This is clearly illustrated early on when Lesko gives a portrayal of the 1893 opening of the World's Colombian Exchange in Chicago, and its subsequent "White City".  While I was born in a moderately diverse town in Texas and later lived in Omaha, Nebraska for a time before I started Kindergarten, after that time I was living in relative cultural isolation.  After living in Omaha, and until I moved to Columbia to begin my College career, I lived in a myriad of small towns, the largest being around 1,200 residents.  I did have a few African American friends in Omaha and worked for an Indian family in High School, however, these were essentially the only two instances of my experience with those outside WASP culture.  This, to a moderate degree, effected my relationship with people of color, or perhaps more of just a lack of cultural understanding.  I was used to being around people more or less the same as me, when coming to college I met many new people with vastly differing heritage and cultre.  After some time at college I have come to relish this situation and long for more instances to learn about others ideas and ways of life.

Stage Presence of a Skater

When discussing identity in children it is important to think of how individuals present their identity.  Until discussing this in recent classes I had not thought much about my own "presentation of self", especially in my youth.  Goffman discusses the importance of shared symbols.  Examples I can remember from my childhood the relate to the use of symbols are many.  One such example was was both my friends and my essential obsession regarding skateboarding, and "action sports" more generally.  During most of elementary school my friends and I would skateboard or ride our bikes outside, inside we would watch the X Games or play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater.  We would build our own ramps and design unique games to play with various tools of the trade: wood planks, rails, skateboards, bikes, roller skates, and the like.  Not only did our play revolve around these things, our dialogue reflected it.  Aside from the common "dude" and "rad", we delved deep into "Action Sports" culture and jargon discussing such intricacies as lazer flips and the superfluousness of risers.  This knowledge allowed us, in some cases, to verbalize our thoughts with more ease by using the aforementioned genre as a may hodgepodge of metaphors and comparisons to the world we were discovering.  Along with that I had to assume some personas, similar to Goffman's idea of performers on a stage.  

Prepubescent Politics

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-offenses-that-can-land-kids-but-not-adults-in-jail-20140324
People often refuse to associate their fluffy version of children with the cold, and many times brutal, world of politics.  However, children do tend to have a generous pull within the sphere of politics.  From prompting their parents to move into a neighboring school district to influencing policy maneuvers, it "all for the children".  I think it slightly unfortunate then that children have little to no influence over the political landscape.  I believe it even more disheartening that children are generally denied information in regards to politics, even though they might show great interest.  Politics is often seen as too complicated or too mature for young individuals.  As the attached article shows this is highly unfair because children are often far more restricted than adults.  While I do not think that kids should share all rights with adults, I do think that they should at least be informed on why the system is and must be set up this way.  Perhaps even let kids review and lobby against it if they feel it unjust enough a cause.  Regardless of the actual implementation of children into the political system, I certainly feel that they should be thoroughly educated on how it works and why it is constructed they way it is.  This would hopefully give kids a head start for when they are old enough to vote, and may even allow them to change things they see as unjust.

Boredom a Newly Evolving Problem

In Chapter 6 of Coining For Capital Kapur discusses how being "bored" is a relatively new issue.  Before the spread of wealth and general prosperity in the U.S., children were often destined to work from a young age.  This lack of free time and long list of tasks prevented a absence of tasks to conquer.  With new found wealth, and a fresh market for children, Americans began consuming at high rates.  More recently, as Kapur discusses, parents now feel as though they must outright combat boredom in their children (p. 129).  http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/nyregion/teenager-tells-police-boredom-led-him-to-start-fire-that-injured-2-officers.html?_r=0.  As this article makes clear, bored children can be very dangerous.  Not only may they fall in with the wrong crowd, they might just set a mattress on fire.  Just as Kapur relates with Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, children's minds are dangerous when left to their own devices, unstimulated by consumer goods.  This seems to hold true even for young children.  Recently there have been many reincarnations of videos alleging to make babies more intelligent.  Thus, to keep our children intelligent and at the forefront of their age group, not to mentions out of gangs, we must buy goods and force our infants to lay motionless in front of a television screen.  Perhaps if we can manage to keep kids busy enough they won't get into any trouble.

Nailing Down the Niche

When beginning to think about Coining For Capital, as a History major, I often think to the milieu of the point in time which is being discussed.  The early works discussed by Kapur, such as the original version of The Little Princess, were first distributed around the time of the second World War.  This was a time, especially after the war, when Americans, and America itself, found their lot for the most part improved.  With this came not only faith in they system of capitalism, but also, due to the general increase in money, children could attend more school.  Also individuals, perhaps more significantly children, wielded much larger purchasing power.  As companies began to notice this they often began to specifically target children, attempting to shape individuals from childhood into rabid consumers, this would only be exacerbated by subsequent improvements in advertising.  Ideas about what children should be and act like grew more and and more concise.  Similarly, it seems companies would stretch further and further to sell their version of reality to kids and adults alike.  An example of this is the complete lack of historical accuracy in Pocahontas.  As Kapur points out, their was no love interest between John Smith and Pocahontas in real life, they were many years apart in age.  This among things like the seeming agreement of Native Americans and English Colonizers to live in peace and harmony.  While I understand that everyone is entitled to poetic licensing, I feel that we must not allow History to be whitewashed by sweet sounding falsehoods.  

Comic Books... A Great Threat To Us All.

We can often get so caught up in current media storms as to forget that this is not a recent phenomenon.  Though crime is a common culprit many others have arisen.  One that first came to my mind was Comic Books.  In the 1930s and 40s amid a rise in the so-called "Crime" comic books, along with a erroneous suspicion that crime was on the rise, all comic books came under scrutiny.  At the time comic books were a unregulated market, due to the fact that it was in its infancy.  Soon parent groups and politicians, hungry for votes and issues not revolving around the war, began attacking the comic book industry.  While press coverage may not have been as vast as today, the media of the time certainly kept the public up to date on the horrors of these little books.  This scenario was similar to what Sternhiemer discusses in regard to child abductions.  As with the abductions the number of truly obscene comics was far inferior to the average comics that were just attempting to tell an interesting story to youngsters.  Soon the industry would become regulated with the birthing of the Comics Code Authority in 1954.  After this time almost all comic books began to adhere to the code which hurt the sales for many distributors.  Comic Books are simply another example of how those "in charge of children" often attempt to shape them by prohibiting certain activities perceived to undermine society.

Working Class Children Must Learn to be Middle Class to Get on in Life (2/18-20)

Working class children must learn to be middle class to get on in life

When thinking of poor and working class individuals in light of Unequal Childhoods a serious institution to consider in the socialization of children is the school. When thinking on this subject I happened across the article I have attached. In this article the Education Secretary of Great Brittain, Michael Gove, argues in a pretty similar line of reasoning to Annette Lareau. Both insist that the lower classes lack cultural capital. Lareau offers examples of shaking the hand of an adult male and Gove discusses the fact that lower class children are as comfortable in common business settings such as restaurants. Both the article and the book both address the fact that often people are unappreciative of how and why these inequalities are taking place. As the article discusses near the end this unawareness can lead to false assumptions on how to deal with the problem.  These factors culminate in unsuccessful policies and prejudice views of the lower classes, not to mention severe inequality.  To seriously address these problems, we as a society must further study these inequalities and push for implementation to amend them as swiftly as possible.

My Unequal Childhood (2/11-13)

Annette Lareau's "Unequal Childhoods" presents many ideas on how individual's socioeconomic status effects their socialization process.  Lareau argues that children from the poor and working classes practice what she has termed "Accomplishment of Natural Growth" this is where children have more control over the structuring of their free time, and a more plentiful supply of free time for that matter.  Lareau found in her research that these families also often had closer ties and stronger bonds with relatives, such as cousins.  Though these things may be good in general for children Lareau says that they do not line up with the ideas of greater society, especially its various institutions into which children are to be assimilated.  In Unequal Childhoods it is contended that middle class families offer a form of child rearing that is more parallel to these institutions ideal way of operating.  Lareau dubbed this parenting style "Concerted Cultivation".  This way of rearing children is comprised of a rigid structure consisting of a (un)healthy amount of extracurricular activities, from soccer to piano lessons.  Lareau asserts that by associating children with these institutions and subjecting them to a rigid structure they will be better prepared for grappling with institutions later in life, a major part of the socialization  process.  Along with this children also learn to interact with adults in many situations and to have open dialogue with them.  In addition they learn important social cues such as eye contact and shaking hands.

When I attempt to overlay my childhood with that of this book I can see some similarities and some differences.  While I don't necessarily disagree with Lareau's statements I would be apprehensive to say that they apply perfectly in every situation.  I can think of instances where I obtained many elements of both of these styles of socialization.  From when I was in 5th grade to when I graduated high school I was involved in band, multiple sports (football, basketball, golf), academic bowl, when I turned 16 I began working.  So I have had many structures associated with "Concerted Cultivation".  Another example of this is my frequent contact and discussion with adults.  This was due in large part because my Dad is a pastor and often I would be approached  by adults wanting to talk to me and was of course obliged to act "like a model child", I learned to shake hands and use eye contact.  This is where my flirtation with "Concerted Cultivation" ended however.  As I mentioned my Dad was a pastor, I didn't mention that for most of that time we lived in a town of around 150 people, my dad would say "including cats and dogs", and after we lived in a town of around 350.  These two facets of my reality resulted in a lower income family.  This is not to say that we were excessively wanting, in many ways we lived as a middle class family, though we did live in a "double-wide" for some time (I was going to post a picture of this but you cannot get a street view in the town because apparently Google refused to drive through), we generally had two cars and presents on Christmas.  We also did not have much connection with our relatives, again this is not to say that there was no connection, just more of a Christmas and Thanksgiving get together thing due to great distances separating all of us.  In addition, especially in elementary school, I had a lot of free time after school and was pretty much allowed to do as I pleased as long as I told my parents where I was going, or a rough idea.  This allowed me time to explore and create different games with my friends.  I can see Lareau's point in her book about how these ideas come to influence children's socialization process.  I do think however that we must realize that often, as in my case, children are subjected to varying degrees of these strategies, with differing results.

Socializing the Sexes (2/4-6)

From our earliest memories, most people could probably remember a time when they had gender roles imparted on them.  I would bet that if we could go back to our birth their would almost certainly be some article displaying gendered language, such as "It's a girl!".  It seems at birth an individual has no worthwhile characteristics, at least in societies minds, besides gender, in fact some individuals have not even been named yet.  Unfortunately, farther reaching memories such as ones birth and early childhood are often irretrievable or murky at best.  An easy and common experience that was part of my childhood was Disney movies.  The movie video attached shows a plethora of examples of gendered terms, attire, cultural expectations, gender roles, to name a few.  The dialogue focuses on men which, as a male both in biological sex and how I recognize myself, resonates with me more.  However, even just looking at the clips it can be seen that women are the "damsels in distress" or must be unrealistically attractive, or else as the Emperor says "Let me guess, you must have a great personality.".  When watching this video for the first time one clip of the films used as an example that struck a memorial nerve was Hercules.  I remember watching that movie in the theater as a young child with my mom.  I also distinctly remember that in the parking lot after the movie she explained to me that this was just a movie and was not reality.  I think she helped me to open up my thinking in some ways by doing this and showing me that not everything that I saw on TV was reality.  I think this is important for children to understand.  Another thing that came to mind when watching this clip was in relation to Thorne.  Both the clip and Thorne discuss the role of aggression, in regards to boys.  I think that the profuse male violence with male characters young males learn that this is normal behavior for their gender and should act accordingly.  As Thorne points out this behavior is often aggravated by authority figures passiveness, offering responses such as "Boys will be boys" and "The kids were just teasing".  Exposing youth to such stringent roles and ideas and encouraging such with adult indifference or outright endorsement causes misunderstanding and confusion for youth in our society and I believe we need to begin to be honest and educate them.

[Self Titled] (1/28-30)

When meditating on the word "child", or "childhood", from a sociological perspective many initial emotions and questions arise.  Not the least of these is,"Why were children been marginalized for years of sociological research and thought?".  Its seems people before me such as William Corsaro and Jens Qvortrup have thought about this exact question.  Corsaro even answers this question by stating that "Children are marginalized in sociology because of their subordinate position in societies and in theoretical conceptualizations of childhood and socialization.".  When a group is bound within a rigid structure and defined withing acute parameters their voice and potential impact on society is greatly limited.  This can be seen in a hodgepodge of differing situations children find themselves in.  From defining strict gender roles onto children from birth, to limiting their knowledge on subjects, and even legally restricting them in some instances, children are certainly prevented from participating in a lot of common activities in society.  Their voice, when not in accordance with strict ideas of what a child should think or be allowed to know, is often unnoticed or rejected as "childish", but almost certainly will be seen as less important than an adults, or even a young adult.  While I wouldn't argue that no barriers should be placed on children, however I do think that children should be consulted and considered much more in our day and age.  

One way I think we could begin to become a more inclusive society for children would be to not only simply consult them as to their thoughts on their involvement in society, but they should also be included in research regarding themselves.  This point is touched on by Michael Wyness.  While, as he says, children have been involved with creating and carrying out some sociological studies, their involvement has been too limited in my opinion.  Children should feel more free to create their own studies and should be not only verbally encouraged, but also assisted in funding their projects so they can create real research and express their honest voice to society.  I believe this is a big step in allowing children to both claim and create their space in society.