Middle school attitudes

[steuard]

Pitzer college and the Joint Science Department brought a bunch of middle school kids to campus today to give them a taste of college, and I ran an activity where they could experiment with various kinds of waves. To introduce the topic I asked the whole group to make a circle and link hands: we "did the wave" by raising and lowering our hands as the wave moved around the group. It's a nice hands-on introduction to the concept.

But I'd overlooked a crucial issue: these kids did NOT want to hold each others' hands. Most of them came around pretty quickly, but a few of the boys held out for ages against touching each other. (We even had a minor "teachable moment" when our wave reached a boy who had refused: the wave stopped, with everybody staring at him. He did link up after that.)

My best guess is that the boys were trying to avoid looking "gay". I'd honestly forgotten how pervasive homophobia is at that age, and I probably underestimate it in our culture in general. Most of the people I spend time with strongly favor gay rights: it's easy to forget about the others until they vote for Proposition 8. But as usual, the silent prejudices embedded in the culture become overt and magnified in kids: they've figured out what they're supposed to dislike but not that they're supposed to be subtle about it.

Along similar lines, it also failed to cross my mind that one of my student assistants for the day might strike the kids as a bit unusual: they probably don't see many guys wearing skirts (much less ex-military guys). I didn't notice their reactions myself, but the student commented that the second group of kids had been less mature about it than the first. Once again, I think that's a sign that I've acclimated to an awfully diverse crowd. I like to think that's a good thing, but it pays to be aware that campus communities are far from typical.

Comments

[stereotype441.livejournal.com]

Hands-on introduction, hee hee :)

I go about Portland (OR) in a skirt fairly frequently in the summer, and I'm fascinated by the bimodal distribution of reactions. People either aren't bothered at all, or they are flabbergasted. I once had an auto mechanic ask me, "what's with the dress?" And I thought, dress? Ok, I can understand some (most) guys not wanting to wear a skirt, but is "women's clothing" such a foreign thing to them that they don't even know what it's called?

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

Considering how common homophobia is across the world, and how young it starts, I am awfully suspicious of the claim that it is cultural as opposed to inborn.

[corpsefairy.livejournal.com]

I disagree entirely. Consider this sentence:

Considering how common misogyny is across the world, and how young it starts, I am awfully suspicious of the claim that it is cultural instead of inborn.

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Does misogyny really start young? Young boys making fun of other boys for being girly, that seems very widespread, but I dunno about misogyny. I think of gender relations in, say, hunter-gatherer tribes as being more "separate but equal", in terms of specializing in different economic roles.

[zathrus.livejournal.com]

You may be right about the homophobia. However, it's also possible that the explanation is a much more general one. Middle school is a really hard time. You aren't really a carefree kid anymore, able to do, say, and touch things and people without awareness of the consequences and implications. You aren't really an adult yet, able to reliably predict what the consequences and implications of your actions will be. Nor do you know for sure who you are, who your classmates are, and what things you therefore want to imply (socially and/or sexually). This is an age at which boys and girls will be exceedingly reluctant to touch, come near, or talk to people of the opposite sex they do like, for fear that someone will catch on and make fun of them for it. I'd chalk it up to a general middle school ambivalence towards all public physical contact.

The reaction to the guy wearing a skirt, I agree, is probably simply a reaction to a type of diversity you are far more accustomed to than they are. Campus communities are far from typical along a number of axes; there are types of diversity that college campuses tend to be low on that flourish in these kids' normal environments, and others that flourish on college campuses and almost nowhere else.

Newt

[jminnis.livejournal.com]

I'm not convinced that homophobia is the answer. I certainly wouldn't rule out the fact that middle school children are given anti-harassment training (i.e. touching without permission is bad) or the fact that people (especially parents) tend to be more germ-phobic than they were when we were that age.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I agree that, although homophobia may be (part of) the answer, it also might not be; there might also be an issue of people not wanting to have to touch people who belong to the wrong social group (middle schoolers are hypersensitive about social status), or feeling that holding hands is for little kids and they're older than that.

Middle schoolers are hypersensitive about a lot of things. If you're not used to working with them, I recommend running your lesson plans by someone who is (preferably someone who's used to working with those middle schoolers, or a similar population), because it's easy not to know what'll set them off. But yay for science outreach!

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

(In the (single-sex boys') school where I taught, homophobia was -- interestingly! -- less of a force than it had been at the coed high school I'd aided at; it was still definitely present, most notably in unthinking use of the word "gay", but I also saw male friends quite willing to touch one another in ways more reminiscent of female teenagers (I mean, in addition to the usual male expressions of love via running into one another really hard or whatever).)

I can't resist

[175560.livejournal.com]

usual male expressions of love ...

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAG! *THUMP*

[steuard.livejournal.com]

As it turns out, one of my student assistants had actually spent a little time as a teacher before coming to college and the other had been a camp counselor for a couple of years, so I'd hoped I was better prepared than usual to navigate the pitfalls of dealing with younger kids. (They gave some really good advice while we were setting up the activities.) But it's pretty clear that you're right: every group is different. The things you learn...