Conventional wisdom

Nowadays getting a good education is of the utmost importance. No longer can we just rely on physical labor to earn a living. Consequently kids should work very hard in every subject because scholastic knowledge plays a bigger role than it used to.

What if

What if the things that kids mainly learn were not at all the ones we take for granted? What if the things they did focus on most were ugly mean things that did not go along with our values?

Well that very situation might be happening as we speak. Obviously going to school means adapting to a given group social dynamics and as such a kid will invariably be faced with what is called social hierarchy. Quite simply, after having learned in the first few years of his life that every human has roughly the same value, school reality will correct him on that. Slowly at first but surprisingly rapidly, the child learns that a very precise social order will establish itself in the class.

[ad code=2]

That social order depends on the class or school social-economical background but it will be based on things such as: perceived physical beauty, leadership, capacity to intimidate, clothes, who you associate with and many other things. Some may seem trivial to you as adults but if you look closely you will see that it mimics the social patterns and hierarchy of the adult world.

Why is it important? Because that state of affairs will efficiently program children as to their social importance in later life. Confidence and self-esteem building (or destroying for that matter) will have a significant impact on a child’s life. If you are among those who believe in the first years of your life being more determinant in that respect you will only give more credit to the reasoning.

How does it work concretely? I guess the easiest way would be to follow a child throughout a school day to fully realize how big a part social hierarchy plays in a school setting (or for that matter in any other setting).

So Ben (the average Joe or the average Ben) goes to school. From his house he goes to the bus stop where, let say, five people are there. Of those, three are socially out of reach because they are older. Two are girls and you do not talk to girls (Ben is 8 but he will almost wait 10 years until he feels confident enough to really talk to girls). The remaining one is Ben’s age so he talks to him but discreetly as to not disturb the older boys who are talking as if they owned the bus stop. The bus arrives and Ben goes to his tacitly reserved seat at the front of the bus (the oldest and coolest having taken the back of the bus … as they should being the coolest and all) and waits until he gets to school. Among arrival at school he goes to the unofficial eight year old area. This area is also subdivised. The toughest (behavior challenged kids) kids have the best place and according to their social importance every child will choose the appropriate place. People are matchmaking in the schoolyard according to their social rank. That concept is such a solid one that it even has a name: a sociograph. That graph representing who associates with whom will be found at every occasion where people are free to choose their place. Gym class (where there are no set desk assigned to everybody), cafeteria of which the cruel and precise social order is often depicted on T.V., recess or during an informal break granted by the teacher in class, are all reflections of the social order.

The bell rings, people go to their class. The teachers by now have assimilated social hierarchy so there is a complicated but precise way in which class rules are applied to everybody. Gym class then comes up with the ever famous need to form teams. Two or four captains are chosen among the dominant kids. Because the gym teacher has himself chosen the captain, he has once more made a little more official what was already understood, not everybody is at the same level. With the clueless help of the gym teacher the captains will litterally classify and rate students winner to loser. Ben is still young to know (or to care) but girls, who live the same thing, are watching boys evaluating them to figure out exactly which one of them they will deserve and consequently have a right to when they get to be teenagers.

In any case Ben spends his days in school and oddly does not like it. When he rarely talks about it, adults with a concerned and disapproving look on their face ask him what the problem is, he cannot put his finger on it. For some reason he feels a “pressure” in school for which he has no explanation.

What to make of it

It might be argued that the first step to dealing with a situation is to understand it first. Indeed parents or teachers could try to explain to children the mechanism of social hierarchy and make them realize that the insidious and often negative programming it brings is not nearly as damaging if you are clearly aware of it. Someone who is, so to speak, at the bottom of the food chain could stop the negative impact (at least partially) by realizing that the whole concept relies on lame and superficial foundations. Obviously my explanations would have to be translated into children-language.

So you see school does teach you things that have a tremendous impact on your life. They are just not those you think!