School Talk

Eder and her colleagues spent a great deal of time with middle-school students. During that time they focused on observing and talking about the daily routines of the middle-schoolers life. Eder payed close attention to language and how it affected the attitudes and beliefs of the middle-schoolers within the study. The middle schoolers used slang (which is an informal type of speech) to communicate with their peers. Slang is also used as a medium through which students share and enforce rules in their world as they see it.

The assigned readings have shown how socialization in relation to age norms (especially in childhood) is also shaped by and connected to how we learn and display gender norms. The reading have shown the method of ethnographic research. Ethnographic research is the “qualitative approach that studies patterns (such as culture) and the perspectives of the individuals in a setting that is natural to them” (Class Notes).

The book “School Talk: Gender and Adolescent Culture” showed this ethnographic approach because the researchers worked to show people, through the means of writing the book, how the middle-schoolers behaved. In doing so they manage to analyze and interpret the culture of the middle-schoolers over a period of time (in this case in was over the course of three years), to help them better understand their beliefs, behaviors, and language.

Play to a child is meant to be a way to show their creativity. It is always spontaneous, also it is performative. Such to the affect that children are performing to an audience (class notes).

Children only have a partial autonomy form the adult world. They make their own form of the worlds from what they learn. When kids play house they are modeling what they see with in their own households (class notes)

Age-progression of gendered relations as children age was discussed in the book as well. More focus is put on girls and how they dress and look.

In class we have read the book “School Talk: Gender and Adolescent Culture. Over the course of 170 pages the author Donna Eder takes the reader through social norms of middle-school students dealing a variety of topics: the communication of students, gender differences and the division of social groups within the middle schools. We have also learned in class about symbolic interaction. Symbolic interaction is in reference to the subjective meanings that people impose on objects, events, and behaviors. Subjective meanings show that people behave based on what they believe and not just on what is objectively true (Class Lecture). Although the construct view of ageing strives to understand any part of the ageing point through their standpoint, which I understood to mean the subjects point of view I found it interesting to learn that the researchers tend to look at children through the views and standards of adults. Opening to the argument that society is socially constructed through human interpretation. Through the class discussion we have concluded that kids construct their own cultures.

Socialization seems to be a