Society and its Ideals on how Children ought to be in Natureor not

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Lecture 4

• Society and its Ideals on how Children ought to
  be in Nature---or not

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ThingsMid-term papers handouts on
guidelinesOffice Hour Tues. 230-330 Burke
215, by arrangement, emailOther handoutsThis
term is based on the IDEALS behind how gender,
sex, and sexuality are implicated with ideals of
nature and what is considered natural. This will
prepare us for next months discussions on how
those ideals are represented in concrete
(material) forms.Final ExamLast years final
exam will be available to review during the month
of November at the Soc/Crim Department
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Writing a creative research paper

• Organize those bits of information on pieces of
  paper. Move those ideas around. You will begin
  to think of your topic in new waysnew questions
  will arise. Pick only a few ideas to work with.
  Although everything seems important, let most of
  it go for this short paper.
• Go to the library or online and find some journal
  articles on your topic and apply those ideas and
  your own to the sub-topics on your ecological
  dialogue circle. Start writing about what you are
  finding. Include your own views. What new ideas
  came to you? Record them to form your journal
  entry.

• Choose a topic it will likely be quite broad at
  first. It doesnt need an obvious gender
  connection dont force gender where it doesnt
  want to go. Google the topic.
• Jot down what you already know about it what are
  your experiences with the topic? Here is where
  you will likely find your pop culture
  sourcesvideo clips, websites, articles in
  magazines, newspapers or on the radio, TV shows,
  video games, art museumsbasically, anything
  thats not in the SMU library.

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Paper Guidelines Like sociology, Ecological
Dialogue may be applied to any topic

• Choose any topic and read about it, recording
  your thoughts as you read and think about it
  this becomes your Journal Entry and may be in any
  format. I will be looking for how you allowed
  yourself to be informed by your topic and any
  discoveries which altered or confirmed your
  beliefs on that topic how have you grown?
  Drawings, handwriting, or typed media are
  acceptable. Your papers are considered
  confidential I mark them. Feel free to email me
  your work as you write for commentary.

• This paper is framed by key concepts of either
  Dorothy Smith or Erving Goffman, as discussed in
  class, and by Michael Bells claim that ideals
  are part of an ongoing dialogue of our lives.
  Ideals are what we internalize, expect, and are
  accountable for in this course we are concerned
  with how gender, sex, and sexuality ideals are
  implicated with ideals of nature or natural. This
  paper anchors your second midterm paper on how
  those ideals are physically represented in
  societythe material aspects of the ecological
  dialogue.

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• Locate and explore some obvious and obscure
  social ideals within your topic related to how
  gender, sex, and sexuality are ideologically
  linked to ideals about what is nature or natural.
  The topic need not have obvious gender or
  sexuality implications, but these will likely be
  revealed once you begin reading. For example, a
  paper on shoes may reveal a well-developed market
  which plays to conventional gender and sexuality
  ideals in the modelling world, outlined in this
  way (here, I locate the problem from the
  wider-world to the local)

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Title The Pinch of High Heels Exploring Dorothy
Smiths Bifurcated Consciousness in the
Modelling World

• Table of Contents
• Introduction (a very brief history of footwear,
  gender, and modelling ideals introduce paper)
• The Model Society High Heels as Norm
• The Model Consumer Conflicting Ideals between
  Physical Comfort, Aesthetics, and Environmental
  Concern
• The Model Audience Expecting Gender and
  Sexuality in High Heels
• The Model Accountable as a Sexualized, Unnatural
  Object through her Shoes
• Journal Entry
• Concluding Remarks
• References

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• DUE DATE AND SUBMISSION Thursday, October 9,
  2008 by 400 pm. May submit early, in class, or
  to the Administrative Assistants in the
  Sociology/Criminology Department on 4 South in
  McNally.
• TOTAL LENGTH 8 pages, single-spaced text (an
  immediate reduction of environmental stress)
  including title page, table of contents, body of
  paper, references page, and your Journal Entry
• REFERENCES Five references, no more, no less
  three must be from academic sources and two must
  be pop culture references (if in doubt as to what
  constitutes an academic source, please contact
  me)
• WRITING AND REFERENCING STYLE Use an official
  style, such as APA, and be consistent
• COURSE VALUE 20 of total mark

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FORMAT

• Title page (1 page)
• Table of Contents page (1 page)
• Body of Paper
• Introduction (introduce the topic, your
  problematic, the paper) (1 page)
• Main sections (and any Sub-sections of written
  text, if necessary) (3 4 pages)
• Journal Entry (at least 1 page, single-spaced)
• Concluding Remarks (½ 1 page)
• References page (½ page)

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Grading

• 10 WRITING clarity, (what are you saying?),
  grammar, spelling, punctuation
• 10 FORMATTING consistent with official
  formatting style (such as APA)
• 10 INTRODUCTION introduce the topic and main
  issues what can readers expect?
• 45 SECTIONS be concise, bold and imaginative
• 15 JOURNAL ENTRY
• 10 CONCLUDING REMARKS

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Today

• J.J. Rousseau on gender and education in/of
  nature
• Dorothy Smith, at OISE, worked hard to undo much
  of the gender and education) harm done by
  Rousseau and others who believed that women and
  otherwise oppressed/controlled people were not
  experts of their own reality.
• In this course, we use terms like nature, gender,
  sex, and sexuality loosely that is, we know
  these categories are problematic when viewed
  through a sociological lens.

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• Remember Dorothy Smith believes that SOCIETY IS
  WHERE PEOPLE MAY BE UNDERSTOOD AS EXPERT
  PRACTITIONERS OF THEIR OWN LIVES (P. 216).
• WE CANNOT ASSUME THAT WE KNOW others CONCRETE
  EXPERIENCES but, we can attempt to understand by
  unpacking some ideals which intersect at their
  experience.

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Last class

• Taken for granted assumptions of tomboys and
  girly-girls are usually identifiable in a
  material, or concrete, sense
• Why do we have these kinds of measuring sticks?
• How do we, in Dorothy Smiths terms

• Conflicts continue to exist in society between
  those with strong religious ideals and others
  personal attempts to be ones natural self
• How/Can this abyss be narrowed?
• In Canada, are we free to be our natural
  selves?

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How might we apply Dorothy Smiths concept of the
Bifurcated Consciousness when exploring these
kinds of conflicting views?

• BIFURCATED CONSCIOUSNESS
• TWO WAYS OF KNOWING HOW TO BE IN THIS WORLD
  (enter, environment)
• 1. IN THE BODY AND SPACE THAT YOUR BODY OCCUPIES
  (LOCAL)
• 2. ALL SPACE BEYOND YOUR BODY (ABSTRACTED BY
  OTHERS).

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• STANDPOINT OF WOMEN (AND OTHERS) (p. 214) THE
  ONLY WAY TO ENTER THE ABSTRACTED CONCEPT IS
  TO PASS THROUGH, AND MAKE USE OF, THE CONCRETELY
  AND IMMEDIATELY EXPERIENCED
• THIS MEANS THAT WE CANNOT ASSUME ANYONES
  EXPERIENCE AT LEAST COMPLETELY, THOUGH WE CAN
  FEEL SYMPATHETIC AND EMPATHICas a student
  mentioned a few classes ago
• WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF WE STOPPED JUDGING?
• WOULD SOCIETY COLLAPSE THROUGH SOME KIND OF
  IRRECONCILABLE ANARCHY DUE TO THE PUNCH OF MORAL
  RELATIVISM?
• Or WOULD SOCIETY BECOME MORE ACCEPTING OF EACH
  OTHERS VIEWS?

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• RELATIONS OF RULING TEXT IS HOW THE RULING
  APPARATUS ORGANIZES, REGULATES AND DIRECTS
  SOCIETY WE NEED TO GUARD AGAINST THAT IN
  SOCIOLOGY ITSELF.
• REMEMBER THE SIGNS HELD UP BY PROTESTERS AT THE
  GAY PRIDE GATHERING? They drew from Biblical
  passagesbut there are many other texts which
  tell us how to be a certain gender or sexuality,
  and how those ideals are or are not natural or
  who is permitted to be in nature.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, wrote such
  text on how children of certain genders could
  negotiate nature and how closely they were
  related to nature.
• Many of his ideals are still internalized by many
  of us today, particularly in the area of
  education.

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Nature, gender, and play, then and now

• A contrast of colossal proportions

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(1875 photo - http//images.google.com/imgres?img
urlhttp//www.barefootsworld.net/images/atplay.jp
gimgrefurlhttp//)
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SASKATCHEWAN FARM CHILDREN(1941 photo -
http//www.edb.utexas.edu/resources/team/lesson_1.
html)
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And todays kids? Was this you? If you have
children, will these be them? (http//msnbcmedia4
.msn.com)
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The roots of gender and nature ideals run deep

• They are open secrets.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• 1712-1778
• Born in Geneva father was a watchmaker
• His mother died shortly after giving birth to
  him, and his father held Rousseau fully
  responsible for her death and never forgave him,
  abandoning him totally on the street at the age
  of 10.
• (photo http//www.axonais.com/saintquentin/musee_
  lecuyer/graphs/rousseau.jpg information adapted
  from Hergenhahn, 1998 An Introduction to
  Psychology)

• He did his best to make lemonade. Rousseau stayed
  in school only for a couple of years, as the
  relatives raising him provided less than a
  standard of care. His health was poor, and he was
  usually starving.
• To feed himself, he converted to Catholicism in
  order to be fed by an order of nuns. This called
  his moral convictions to his own attention he
  felt bad by deceiving them, but he had to
  survive.

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By Rousseaus time

• European ideas had been strongly influenced by
• The Greeks Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato,
  Aristotle (What is the soul? What is truth? What
  is knowledge?)
• The Religious St. Paul, St. Augustine, Thomas
  Aquinas (How might we best seek the good life?)
  (paper topic look up castration of Peter
  Abelard and his love affair with Heloise)
• Seeds of Modern Science and Government
  Copernicus, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Comte
  (Humans are not at the centre of the universe,
  after all empiricism and regulatory control
  impose the best way to survive)
• Witch hunts (6-9 million women, and also many men
  and children, murdered for holding and acting on
  ideals which conflicted with the church and state
  at the time
• POSITIVISM had begun by the time Rousseau began
  to formulate meaning of his own experiences.
  POSITIVISM KNOWLEDGE EMPIRICAL
  OBSERVATIONSRATIONALITY
• (Empiricism closely related, includes more
  reliance on reported and observational
  experiences)
• YOU dont live in a vacuum eitherwhat
  institutions influence and help form your
  idealsyour belief systems around gender, sex,
  and nature?

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• Gained money through illicit acts or deception
  most
• of the time was considered a real loser by
  many
• Known widely as a womanizer
• Age 32 hooked up with the maid in the hotel he
  lived in Therese It is claimed that he did
  not love her and that she reportedly drank and
  chased after local stable boys (Hergenhahn, 1998)
• Therese and Rousseau had 5 kids all of them were
  sent to local foster homes immediately (not the
  worlds 1 dad or the 1 lover, yet, oddly
  enough, hes known as the FATHER OF ROMANTICISM?)
• Romantic (word used for several hundred years
  by the French before Rousseau was born. It is
  traceable to Roman culture, but was used mainly
  by Russian (Slavonic) and European writers in
  love novels. If a novel was called romantic in
  Rousseaus day, it was generally denigrating that
  text --- remember people were beginning to
  believe that science, and not matters of the
  heart, could lead the way to truth!
• Romanticism trust ones nature and live
  according to that inner nature trust your own
  impulses each person is unique take the best
  from positivism and rational thought and merge
  that with your nature in order to know how to
  best live.

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• One of The Big Romantics Rousseau, Goethe
  (though he was not anti-science), Schopenhauer,
  Nietzsche
• Rousseau wrote on many things, including
  politics The Social Contract 1762
• A quote from the Contract Each of us places in
  common his person and all of his power under the
  supreme direction of the general will and as one
  body we all receive each member as an indivisible
  part of the whole. If a persons private will
  is contrary to the general will, he or she can be
  forced to follow the general will (in
  Hergenhahn, 1998, p. 186).

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• Still, Rousseau fancied himself an intellectual,
  travelling to Paris to meet up with leading
  philosophers and academics of the day.
• This awakened his moral code, and he published
  The Social Contract and Emile
• Not everyone was impressed. There was such an
  outrage about these texts that a warrant was
  issued for his arrest!

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You might be familiar with Rousseaus opening
line in The Social Contract

• Man is born free, yet we see him everywhere in
  chains.
• What does this mean for our course?
• He went on to say the first
• impulses of human nature are
• always right there is no original
• sin in the human heart. (Religiouscircles were
  not amused at this.)

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BAD MOVE ROUSSEAUFor one thing, This really
POd the government of the day --- who held
great power over the citizenry. The rulers
didnt want people finding out that they had a
human nature which would free them of dire
obedience to authority.Also, this didnt win
any friends in the formal school system, as he
believed that the best setting for education was
in nature, where children leave civilization with
a mentor to discover what their gifts are ---
what they are meant to do with their lives,
rather than to have it dictated by scholars who
based their decisions on the best career moves
(sound familiar???).

• It also put him in bad graces with the Catholic
  Church. While not a churchgoer, he aligned with
  the Protestants of the day who were beginning to
  believe that it was okay to think that God was in
  their hearts and not totally external to them,
  while the Catholics were fortifying the original
  sin formula within their rituals and belief
  system.
• Remember wherever there is state, church and
  school arent far behind! At SMU, how are state
  and church implicated in your education? SMU
  history site

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Rousseau on the lamb for 4 years!

• Philosopher David Hume felt pity for him and
  invited him to England in 1776. Their friendship
  dissolved when Hume began to become guilty by
  association with Rousseau, and gave him the boot.
• Rousseau died in utter poverty and squalor in
  Paris in 1778, likely of suicide. He was 66.
• Quite a boy. Quite a man. Quite an uneducated
  scholar, according to todays standards. And,
  yet, were still speaking about him today!

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About Emile

• Rousseaus romantic (naturalistic) notion of
  education is the root of todays free and
  individualized attempts to revise our education
  system in the west.
• Rousseau education should arise from natural
  impulses that is, the natural ability of each
  child (and adult) should guide educational
  processes.
• Notions of the wild child emerged from Rousseau
  and others, such as John Locke, claiming that
  children naturally belonged outside. Still, there
  were many sexist overtones about how girls were
  allowed to be in nature.
• Clip on artistic representation of the wild
  child
• WERE YOU A WILD CHILD?
• WERE YOU RAISED ON Dr. Spock?

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Challenging Emile

• Incidentally, the education of boys took up the
  majority of the book, while the education of
  girls got a chapter near the end.
• 1. (p. 217) What variable did Rousseau use to
  differentiate female from male? Does he use this
  to make one sex more superior than the other?
• 2. (pp. 218) What do you make of this Woman was
  made specially to please man if the latter must
  please her in turn, it is a less direct
  necessity his merit consists in his strength, he
  pleases by that fact alone. This is not the law
  of love, I grant but it is the law of nature,
  which is antecedent even to love. If woman is
  formed to please and to live in subjection, she
  must render herslef agreeable to man instead of
  provoking his wrath her strength lies in her
  charms.
• Could we go forward and trust the educational
  philosophy of someone who said this? How do we
  reconcile the zeitgeist of the day with the
  political correctness of the day? Can you guess
  the annual operating cost of the local Halifax
  Regional School Board this year?

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FYI Halifax Regional School Board?Bang for
Buck?

• Our annual budget is 345,004,600 of which
  260,546,300 comes to us from the Nova Scotia
  Department of Education and 83,020,200 comes
  from the Halifax Regional Municipality. In
  Harold Windsors (Chair) 2007 address, no mention
  was made of gender issues, sexuality was raised
  once. site Gender Report (http//www.hrsb.ns.c
  a/content/id/217.html)

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• 3. (p. 219) Educational Corollaries section
• In Pictou County, NS, the mantra for the
  Chignecto Central Schoolboard is Success for
  All Children. In HRM, it is All Children can
  Learn. How would Rousseaus following statement
  impact this inclusionary claim?
• When once it is shown that men and women
  neither are nor ought to be constituted alike
  either in character or in temperament, it follows
  that they ought not to receive the same
  education.
• Clip Gender and the first moon landing 1969 (4
  decades ago)
• (note that the interviewer asked 6 males and
  only two females in the taping, at least)
• Did these responses likely reflect your parents
  and grandparents gender and nature ideals in
  1969?
• What does the commentator mean by Kids will be
  kids?

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• 4. (p. 220) What variable does Rousseau claim is
  responsible for female-ness in this passage?
• Does it follow that a woman ought to be
  brought up in absolute ignorance and confined
  entirelyto the management of a household?
• No, surely this was never the intention of
  Nature in endow in her with so delightful and
  imaginative a mind on the contrary, Nature
  intends that she should think, should judge,
  should love, should learn, and should improve her
  understanding as she improves her person.
• So, it seems that Rousseau did believe that women
  could/should be educated, but heres where the
  differences begin

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• 5. (p. 221) Early Studies Needlework section
  
• Little girls, almost from their cradle, love
  dress not content with being pretty, they wish
  to be thought so In the case of boys the object
  is to develop strength, in the case of girls to
  bring out their charms.
• Many claim weve worked so hard at getting women
  into education that we dont know how to
  appreciate the stay at home women who love to do
  needlework.
• Did you have co-ed
• Home Economics in High School
• Wood Shop/Mechanics in High School
• Where do these organizations fit in the scheme
  of things?
• WINS Womens Institutes of NS
• CFUW Canadian Federation of University Women
• (photos www.purselipsquarejaw.org)

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• 6. (pp. 223-224) Moral Discipline Constraint
  section
• Comments?
• Girls ought to be energetic and industrious,
  but this is not all they should at an early age
  be inured to constraint. This evil, if in their
  case it is an evil, is inseparable from their
  condition. They will all their lives be subjected
  to an unceasing and unyielding constraint, that
  of convention. They must therefore be accustomed
  to restriction from the first, that it may cost
  them nothing their fancies must be crushed, to
  subject them to the will of others.
• Site NS Department of Education 2007
• Do these stats ring true to your experience in
  grade school?

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General questions about Rousseaus Educational
Theory

• 1. Would parents let their children go off alone
  into the woods with a mentor in todays world, in
  order for the child to discover what interested
  them? Why/not?
• 2. Today, would we trust an administrator to tell
  us what is best for our children if they had
  their own children removed from their custody?
  Why/not? Can everyone be a natural parent? (Why
  do we have birthing classes? Breastfeeding
  classes?)
• 3. Here at SMU, how might there be students and
  professors freebutin chains? Is this some
  kind of irreversible nature?
• 4. How is/how isnt todays education on all
  levels connected to natural environments?
• 5. What would SMU look like if we incorporated
  Rousseaus idea that, in order to learn, we must
  first rouse our natural curiousity?
• 6. Do humans have a natural desire to learn, as
  Rousseau believed? Would you rather be doing
  something else that seemed closer to your natural
  ability? Where would that something else get
  you in life?

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• 8. (pp. 225-226) Teaching of Accomplishments
  section
• I am aware that strict tutors are opposed to
  teaching young girls singing, dancing, or any of
  the agreeable accomplishments. This is absurd.
  Who then is to learn them? Boys?
• Check this out.
• End of Rousseau dialogue can you see how he
  designed a natural inclination for girls within
  education through the relations of ruling
  through text?
• Ideas change over time, although many persist in
  various forms. We write about the world around
  us, and it is up to us how far we take it for
  granted. Still, even sociological thinkers find
  themselves in chains, as do activists.

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Next Class readingLast Child in the
WoodsSaving Our Children from Nature Deficit
Disorder while you are reading it, think of
how gender and sexuality may be implicated