This is a continuation from the last post. Don't read this until you read the previous post.
In 1993, my family moved to France. I wasn’t too worried about the move because I had already changed schools many times, and everyone told me that I made friends quickly and easily. My nine year old psyche had learned the rules for making friends in America: exchange names, agree and find common ground, then invite them over. I was very surprised when the same formula didn’t work in France. The code for social power has different rules in France. People who always agree and look for common ground are seen as weak, dependant, and un-interesting. In France, in order to make a friend, you don’t give your name first, or find a common interest, you talk about an idea, preferably one on which the two interlocutors have differing opinions. Once you show your independent thinking, then an exchange of names takes place, etc.
It took me some time to adjust to this change of rules; no one ever told me that the code of societal power was different in France, nor how it was different. I had to figure it out blindly. So do thousands of American tourists and ex-pats who leave France feeling the French are rude. They are wrong; the French take manners much more seriously than we do, but a Frenchman who disagrees with you is probably trying to befriend you.
Similarly to my own difficulties in code switching many students in urban school districts must learn to code switch when interacting with their scholastic and future professional environments. Their native codes, whether they are the code of a mother country, a gang, or a certain neighborhood, are often notably different from mainstream America’s culture of power. Simple gestures like a handshake, eye-contact, or a hug have significant meaning in our culture of power – meanings that are often significantly different in other cultures.
Some of my students who never look me in the eye do so because they have been taught deference to authority means not looking an authority figure in the eye. Imagine the impact this could have on their first interview… any interviewer would assume they were either lying about everything they said or too shy to function normally. Handshakes are similar. For many of my students a certain handshake is a symbol of gang membership. Gang members (this might not be true of all gangs, but it is with those I deal with) don’t just shake anyone’s hand, only those they know belong to their group. In a society where a handshake is a gesture of greeting and simple acquaintanceship refusing a handshake is almost never permissible.
These simple physical examples are a metonymy for the greater malaise that many students have as they attempt to learn both the codes of their native culture, or neighborhood along side the culture of power taught, or at least demonstrated, at school. Differences in interactions, exchanges, and all types of relationships abound between various codes. Students who fail to learn the codes of the culture of power close doors to their own futures, doors that open with the passwords that everyone around them seems to know, but no one bothered to tell them about explicitly.
Direct instruction in code switching helps students significantly. Just as I would have appreciated someone telling me explicitly how to make friends on a French playground, my students need someone to tell them explicitly the differences and similarities between the codes they have learned at home and the codes that prevail in the greater American society.
5 comments:
sorry i let you down on that 'code switching' code. i should have coded you when you were codable with a decoder ring...but i couldn't code so didn't do it. you're the best: write a book. dad
D'accord, Adam! I found that to be really true in my French experience and think the applications to "normal" inner-city American life explain why it's so hard for those kids to grow out of their situation. Interesting. We should talk sometime!
Do you think it matters who teaches these kids the rules of code-switching? Does is make a difference if the teacher's native code is the prevailing code of power, or if it is the native code of the child being taught?
How would you show kids that the can actually get what they want by following a foreign code? What I mean is, how do you teach kids who want to be rappers and NBA stars that what they really want is probably respect and wealth, and then how do you convince them that your way of getting respect and wealth is better than their way of getting it?
Excellent questions, all very relevant to the current discussion on how to address this issue in schools.
I do think the culture and race of the teacher matters. I think that kids naturally trust and relate to teachers of their own race, culture, and gender more than other teachers. Statistical research demonstrates that this is true at least for test scores. Anecdotally, this has also held true in my classroom. My male students relate to me, trust me, and accept the things I teach more readily than my female ones. My Latino students seem to place more weight on the cultural comments of my Latino TA. Thus in answer to your second question, I think that it is helpful if the teacher's native code matches the native code of the child, as long as the teacher is competent in the prevailing culture of power. Having said this, I don't think that a white female teacher should neglect teaching the culture of power to her black male students -- it may be more difficult for her than it would be for a black male teacher, but only marginally. In the long run most students will accept true teachings that they see reflected in the world around them regardless of who teaches them.
Your second question is more difficult... I tried several things this year with varying degrees of success.
Very successful were "the more your learn the more your earn" graphs as were the frank talks about the differences in lifestyle between a college grad and a HS drop out. Most powerful were the role-models from the community invited to come in to speak.
I am feeling a fun numbers game for a math lesson next year: we add up the total number of professional athletes in America --around 10,000 as an estimate. Then we estimate the number of those athletes who grew up in urban areas in the types of conditions my students live in -- 25% is a generous estimate. Next we look up the number of children growing up in urban areas 10,000,000. Now find the percentage: .025%. Now convert to a ratio 1:4000 so in any given middle school there won't be any professional athletes, and in a given HS there might be one... even then only a tiny fraction of athletes make astronomical salaries.
As we discussed a little in person last week, I feel that this discussion is important, but merely the tip of a much larger iceberg. It is my observation that nearly everyone labors under ignorance of what aspects of their behavior and appearance are generating reactions in those around them.
A few examples of cases not directly related to power:
• The way people move their head while walking through open areas tells others how they are planning to move for the next few steps of their journey (to test this, try tilting your head to the right while passing them to the left, and vice versa: most often, this leads to a collision).
• I have a friend who uses muscles at the corner of her eyes when she is frustrated; most people use those muscles when amused, causing most people to think she is feigning frustration as a kind of joke, a source of unending frustration to her.
• Another friend's timing is off: he grins before telling the joke, begins responding before processing the last few seconds of the conversation, makes introductions before beginning the handshake, etc, giving the impression of a maladjusted geek even though in every other material respect he is a well-adjusted and interesting fellow.
I fully approve of your efforts; the culture of power is important and easier to teach to the masses than these often individual quirks. I wonder to what degree we can teach the larger problem of understanding the vast set of nonverbal cues expected by the culture we inhabit, and help when other's cues violate that mold.
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