All posts by Dave Rameau

The “Feelings” Class

Reaching Adolescents and How to Respond

“According to Kraft and Grace (2016), the structural transformations in the economy are increasingly compelling education systems to ‘prepare students with a broader and more complex set of fundamental skills than the traditional domains of reading writing and arithmetic.'”(Weston 2018).

The “fundamental skills”, outside of the three Rs (reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic), that the Weston article believes schools should help students to develop, are categorized as either intrapersonal and interpersonal. Intrapersonal skills have to do with “behavior and emotional management”, and interpersonal skills have to do with “communicating and collaborating with other individuals”.To that effect, schools are increasingly taking on the responsibilities of modern psychotherapists, many of whom treat patients with a style of therapy known as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT focuses on teaching the patient to manage their psychological issues with proven behavioral strategies. These strategies generally involve developing the patient’s intrapersonal and interpersonal skills up to the point that these skills can compensate for the mental health issues that the patient is suffering. We can conclude that modern school teachers and modern psychotherapists have a similar responsibility to explicitly teach students/patients the inter/intrapersonal skills necessary for them to thrive. Continue reading The “Feelings” Class →

What about Girls Friendships?

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality

F. G. Bonser, a psychologist working at the beginning of the twentieth century, called intimate friendships “the most potent in the development of man as a member of society.” William Bukowski, a developmental psychologist working at the end of the twentieth century, refers to close friendships as the “most enduring form of relationship across the life span.(Way 2011)

I liked that this article (The Hidden Landscapes of Boy’s Friendships) challenged the notion that all male friendships are simplistic and unemotional. Our culture views male friendships from a superficial, uncritical lens that does these kinds of relationships a disservice. It contributes to negative stereotypes about men as unfeeling, etc. Continue reading What about Girls Friendships? →

Bullying as Disobeying Gender Norms

Gender Socialization & Identities

Rather, what is identified as bullying (particularly in our site of inquiry, schools) tends to be that which transgresses normative gendered behaviour as this ‘intersects’ with other identity markers like class and race […] In addition, we trace how being labelled as bullies and/or victims at school can position boys and girls in various ways as ‘gender deviants’. What we mean by the notion of gender deviant is that young people transgress expected and normative ideals of femininity and masculinity. (Ringrose, Reynolds 2010)

At first, I had a lot of trouble understanding what was meant by these sentences. My initial (mis)understanding was heavily based on a gendered understanding of bullying – when girls bully they do it like this and when boys bully, they do it like that. Because we seem to have clearly defined genders for bullying, the idea of bullying transgressing normative gender behavior seemed strange. What’s actually going on is that “normative gendered” behavior is defined NOT to include such behaviors as bullying. For example, the Heroic Masculine archetype, which is discussed in the article, does not include harming weaker males in a way that is deemed “unmerited” by the other students. To do so would not only constitute bullying behavior for the do-er, but also cause them to be a violator of this Heroic Masculine gender norm – a gender deviant. In the same ways, girls who engage in bulling behavior are deemed as violators of the idealized feminine archetype, who is “friends with everyone”, and therefore gender deviants.

It’s very interesting that gender roles are used to police/obscure bullying behavior among students. What can we do to change that?

I accidentally didn’t title this post and I forgot what I had planned to title it

Newcomers & Perpetual Foreigners

Haitian families’ ambivalent relationship to U.S. schools also is not unique, and in particular, these families’ expectation that schools should provide an éducation, and not merely instruction, echoes the findings of […] research with Latino families […] revealed that parents believed the purpose of schooling was for the educación of children. (Doucet 2011)

As a 2nd generation Haitian-American, I can say that the notion that Haitian parents expect their children to get an éducation, as opposed to an “education”, was corroborated by my childhood experience. Growing up in a family of éducateurs Continue reading I accidentally didn’t title this post and I forgot what I had planned to title it →

Physics Reinforcing the Status Quo

Blurring the In-School Ouf-of-School Line

“In short, physics has traditionally been a discipline that reinforces the “second-class status” of low-income and minority youth in schools.(Basu 2007)”

In theory, education is supposed to provide at least comparable opportunities to all students, but each week we read a text about how that isn’t true at all. The education system seems like it’s built to do the opposite, in fact. Last week we read about how some students, whose test scores don’t measure up, are placed in classes where they’re discouraged from thinking critically, and making their own decisions. Continue reading Physics Reinforcing the Status Quo →