TEACHSOC: Re: Sociological insights

[Del Thomas Ph D]

I have often said that a school without grades is like a society without racism.  Grade and and race labels have a great deal in common. Neither tells you much about the person(s) they are affixed to.   The same is true to a large extent  of the  attempts to place theory in to groups....   That is why I prefer narrative evaluations,  to have students understand Goffman (without placing  him in a theory race or tribe) I grew up in a time when people and sociologists were divided into 3 races.   You suggest that we fail in the name of what we (some of us) define as rationality will stay the course :-) .... Durkheim  opened a portal that permitted  recognizing the mechanical and the organic.....which is mostly non linear. We have used an instructional method that has been unable/unwilling to deal with the non linear, the non same...diversity.  That is why we use academic race (grades) when we know that narrative evaluations are much better science........ they give a full non mechanical measure of performance.  Think of it another way.  As an evaluator with a 40K contract would give them a grade or a narrative evaluation?    Perhaps we do not want to understand students, theorists or people.   Or perhaps it is false consciousness. DeL John Glass wrote: hi, Del   i think it is time to let go of the concept/label. i think that we can do this successfully without letting go of family heritage and other such considerations.   of course, just because there are data that support it and it makes sense to do so, doesn't mean that we will. in fact, i am pretty sure that we won't — at least if history is any indication. we seem to defend our categories to the death; one of the reasons that "rationality" as a frame for understanding social behavior is so inadequate.   john   >>> Del Thomas Ph D <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/18/06 1:33 PM >>> John Out of this world :-) .   There may be an important difference between labels and constructs. Race categories as has been pointed out vary from place to place and are not measurable biologically..... e.g. you can not determine/predict race groups by measures. There have been several systems in this country many are not permanent.... indentured slaves ....  slave races those developed to support the Va Slave law(s)  however have dominated.... race is permanent.... Students are faced with an ever expanding array of boxes to check.  Officials debate over allowing students to check multiple boxes...   One official suggested that we could easily end up with over 200 races/combinations.  It seems to me that we need to take a different approach to  presenting race..... perhaps it is an obsolete label  that is perpetuated to promote fear and maintain the belief in supremacy of one group over another. Del John Eby wrote: The video Race the Power of an Illusion has a segment in which students check their DNA and find much to their surprise that their DNA matches do not correspond to who they most look like. Isn't the discussion on the list about about whether Pluto is a planet or not is also illustrative. Several months ago it was. Now it is not. And some are advocating that it be given honorary status or called a planet no matter what its characteristics. With social construction there must be some level of correspondence with how we experience and observe the world. But our ability to observe changes and our criteria for naming things changes. John Eby "John Glass" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 9/18/2006 10:13 AM >>> hi, Michael (and Brian) what i do to make this point at a deep level...i am participating in the National Genographic project; i submitted a DNA swab and they tracked my DNA back to Africa. They also update the "route" my DNA took from Africa. i ask students what "race" they think I am ("white") and then i tell them that my ancestors were from Africa, then I show them the route of my DNA, and then I tell them that we are all Africans as that is where the most recent data indicates where the human race spread from. i then say, "this brings a whole new twist to the saying, 'i wish that they would all go back to Africa' as we would need a pretty damn big boat to fit all of us." this seems to get the point across pretty easily. i then point out to them how despite the fact that these data are quite conclusive, most of us a) have never heard this, b) are socialized and reinforced for acting out of notions of "race," c) how much insanity there is over these perceived racial differences. i typically let them draw their own conclusions. don't forget, i live in a state where a colleague's daughter heard a week or so ago at her university that "if there had never been a civil war, everything would be fine and we would all be wealthy plantation owners right now." i can tell by the expressions on some faces that this information (we are all from Africa and descended from, "blacks") is distasteful to them; not my problem. my job is to present data on what is happening and how we collectively go about making sense of it all. RE: gender...i show them the video XXXY about intersexuals and then ask them why we can't have a third option in terms of gender * we are locked into this idea that our biology determines our gender. they are more intrigued by the fact that there are people born with ambiguous genitalia (have had some students talk about how "disgusting" that is) than with the gender option, but i think it at least gets them thinking about it. i don't believe in telling students what to think; i do my best to present the data and then ask questions about what the data mean to us. i think that students are capable of figuring some stuff out pretty easily if it is presented in the right manner. john --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. 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