School Culture: Windows to Humanity, Essay Example

After being transferred to a new school, most students regard friendships and acceptance as an elusive, abstract concept. Yet these concerns are based upon cultural expressions of rebellion or civic duty, personal interests, various forms of expression, stereotypes of cliques (and the personality attributes therein), etc. Moving during middle school or high school requires an even greater adjustment as different competitions and more driver’s licenses bring larger groups of people into contact with one another. The cultural balance complicates the situation further, making the sought-after friendship and acceptance elusive at times. In short, an older student copes with enculturation even as norms and trends undergo cultural diffusion.

Upon arrival on the grounds, a new student faces unsettling uncertainty: where the main office, their classes, the cafeteria, the gym, and the locker are. Teachers sometimes refer to an educational campus as a learning culture, and, in a very literal sense, a new student’s first goal is to be surrounded by the new culture. Carrying out the basic functions of a culture allowed me to be a part of the school- rather than to be some weird kid standing in the hall. After a new student grasps the layout, they soon face two kinds of rules: administrative and social. In contrast to socialization, enculturation occurs as the student volunteers to learn some of these norms and the school system, parents, and peers exercise their influence over the student. A common example of this, which I experienced first-hand, is the school dining experience. While the peak of school society often had lunches brought in for them, the majority of the students, including myself, had to shuffle through the large crowds and locate a friendly face and somewhat-sheepishly request to sit with them. In addition, faculty monitored the lunch room, watching the physical contact of the students to ensure that it was no more violent or sexually-charged than usual. The students reinforced their culture through territorial separation into cliques or groups, and the faculty continued to enforce the large-scale rules which promote a large-scale uniformity.

One of the largest adjustments for me involved the new importance of status and race. In my previous (rural) school experiences, status was a product of social intelligence and the following of a few trends. In the fast-paced urban environment, status comprised family wealth, social establishment within the community, personal associations and connections, and many other such complicated factors. Personal attributes, such as beauty or the quality of a person’s character, were subjugated to status. A part of this status was race. This was altogether new to me and to speak of such things (which everyone knew) was taboo. In this school, Caucasian students were the elite, African American students the poor, Hispanic Americans the hard-working, and Asian and European students the intelligent. I never accepted these rigid borders, making me beloved but still a social pariah.

When I moved, I did not have older siblings willing to cart me and my friends around and did not yet drive myself. Students with less mobility, such as me, relied mainly upon observations to understand how our world was changing. Students with more mobility often introduced new slang and fashion into this school’s culture. The speed of these shifts rose quickly, especially with the rise of cable and satellite television and internet. Whether it concerns money, mobility, technology, social connections, or any other social asset, this rapid-fire cultural diffusion divided the learning culture into have and have-not, securing the permanency of the social stratification which I learned during enculturation. Although the specific assets of the upper echelon changed, everyone remained in their places. For me, it was not so bad, especially considering my newness and my resistance to accept racial and status boundaries; others were not so lucky. These unlucky few were dunked in toilets, covered in trash, targeted during athletic competition, tripped in the hallways, etc. The faculty never explicitly condoned such behaviors, but they frequently looked in the other direction.

Whether just or unjust, people frequently view rules as things to be accepted without question. New students typically learn these rules through experiences reinforcing what not to do. The education in norms may be harsh, and the cycle of changing expectations further illustrates that social power is underestimated, especially for students. Friends rebelled, retreated, and committed suicide under such pressure, and yet adults frequently underestimate the significance of adolescent socialization and underestimate its completeness as a whole and functioning world which they can never fully understand. The circumstances vary greatly in each school, as was noted in the earlier discussion of status and race. In our studies of Kottak’s Window on Humanity, culture is viewed as affecting great change; studying specific personal examples, such as that of entering a new learning culture, creates a narrow window on humanity which allows for smaller factors to be incorporated into an understanding of other societies and the world culture as a whole. These critical studies of small-scale culture prepared me to face the challenges of employment and interpersonal relationships as adults; this knowledge binds us as surely as social norms do.

Works Cited

Kottak, Phillip Conrad. 2011. Window on Humanity, 5^th ed. McGraw-Hill. Print.