Teaching TSP

Photo by codepinkphoenix via flickr.com

The Office Hours Team recently sat down with Dr. David Garland, professor of sociology and law at New York University.  He spoke with the team about his most recent book, Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in the Age of Abolition.  The podcast, found here, would be a great assignment, as it provides a concise review of key arguments he makes in the book.  Below are a few discussion questions you could use in class or assign with the podcast.

1)   In Garland’s eyes, why is the death penalty a peculiar U.S. institution?

2)   What reasons are usually given in favor of the death penalty in the U.S., and what does Garland think about them?

3)   Are there patterns found among defendants on death row?

4)   Do you have an opinion about the use of the death penalty in the U.S.?  If so, what is it?

5)   What is one thing you learned from this podcast?

If the questions are assigned as homework:

6)   Conduct some quick online research.  When did states start outlawing the death penalty?  How many states allow it?

Every semester I use an activity from the journal Teaching Sociology to teach about class inequality.  The article describing the activity can be found here.  The authors, Catherine L. Coghlan and Denise W. Huggin have designed a game that really helps students understand the difficulty of class mobility.

From their abstract:

Social stratification may be one of the most difficult topics covered in sociology classes. This article describes an interactive learning exercise, using a modified version of the game Monopoly, intended to stress the structural nature of social inequality and to stimulate student reflection and class discussion on social stratification in the United States. The primary focus of this exercise is to help students experience different levels of social stratification and to challenge the idea that individual talents or aspirations are enough to overcome structural barriers to upward class mobility. Student reactions to the experience suggest that it is an effective tool for demonstrating the structural nature of social inequality in the United States and for stimulating discussion on social inequality and related topics. This exercise has worked well in introductory sociology, social problems, and social inequality classes.

I don’t want to say too much about the activity (don’t want to risk copyright laws or plagiarism) so, instead, I’ll leave you to read the article on your own.  What you should know, however, is that in all of my evaluations my students (Introduction to Sociology and Social Problems) cite this as one of the most useful activities they have ever had in a college classroom.

This is an assignment my mentor and sociology professor from Luther College, Char Kunkel, uses in her class.  Her description of the activity is below.  Following that I have assembled a little bit of feedback from her students about the activity.  I look forward to using it in my classes in the future!

GENDER NORM VIOLATION PROJECT

Norms are rules or standards of behavior shared by most members of a society or subgroup.  They are statements about how you ought to, or should, behave.  When appropriate behavior is defined differently for women and men, the expectations specific to each are called gender norms.  One way to find out what the norms are in any given situation is to violate them–i.e., break the rules.

The purpose of this assignment is to determine the boundaries of some contemporary gender norms and to discover and challenge your own boundaries around gender.  A secondary purpose is to give you the subjective experience of violating a self-defined gender norm – to give you “hands-on” experience.

Choose a natural (i.e., non-laboratory) setting in which to violate a gender norm.  Think through clearly what norm you’re going to violate–make sure it’s a gender norm.  Work with a confederate (either someone in class or a friend) and have her/him record the reactions to your norm violation as well as your behavior during the violation.  You may also convince your confederate to do the gender violation and you be the observer/recorder.  Sometimes the reactions will be minimal; other times it will be strong; remember, no reaction is a reaction!!!  Be sure to record all reactions while they are happening.  In addition, you must provide some physical evidence!!  In the past, students have used cameras, video and tape recorders, flyers, receipts, etc. to capture reactions and document the project.

Your report should be about 7-10 pages, typewritten, and should include the following:

1.  State specifically the gender norm you intend to violate.  Explain why or how it is a gender norm, and provide cultural context.

2.  State in clear details exactly what you did.  Report any variations in your procedure.  For example, you may try your experiment in one setting, then in another.  You may compare different variations of the same norm violation, or change the degrees of violation.  Give all the details of the violation process.

3.  Describe your experience subjectively in two different ways:  (1) your feelings as you prepared and engaged in the norm-violating behavior;  (2) your feelings about how other people reacted to you.

4.  Report in great detail the general and specific reactions of others to your behavior. Provide the observations of your confederate.  If you get no reaction at all, or a mild reaction, report that.  Report on the effects of any variations in your procedure, and what you think the significance of any (or no) reaction is.

5.  What did you learn from this assignment?  About yourself?  About your culture?  How does a theory of gendered embodiment help you understand your experience?

**Don’t do anything illegal.  Stop whenever you are too uncomfortable with the situation.  If you explain your behavior to anyone–report it.  Be creative!

Students react very positively to this assignment and find it to be incredibly eye opening.  Here is feedback from a couple of people who have done this activity:

The impact Char’s gender norm violation activity had on me had more to do with providing insight for how people who are gender variant are treated than on how I understand my own gender identity. – which I suppose was the point at the end of the day. I became hyper aware of how I was not performing a masculine gender well enough, in comparison to those around me. However, I also experienced first hand what it was like to have my gender policed when I was using a public bathroom.

What was more extraordinary for me was that the only thing I did differently was try to hide the fact I had long hair. I wear pants, and I wear loose fitting shirts, and I try to dress in a way that does not emphasize the fact that I have breasts on a regular basis. So, I present myself as being more masculine by the way I dress, in general.

However, I have never been told that I was using the wrong bathroom before. This was very shocking and very confusing for me. I felt that the rest of the people I interacted with knew I was a woman, and here, in the women’s restroom, I was told that I needed to use the men’s room. Who knew the length of my hair would be something that could cause so much drama for a person who had a full bladder?

So, in short, this experiment gave me brief insight and sparked interest in learning more about how gender variant people experience the world around us…not to mention working to be the best cis-gendered queer ally I can to all my gender queer friends. – Meghan Karels ’04

—

This activity taught me a great deal about gender norms and values in our society.  I found it invaluable and far superior to simply reading about social expectation.  Learning this way enabled me to better empathize with those whose sex and gender do not relate as society expects.  I also feel better empowered to challenge people who ignorantly continue the perpetuation of gender normativity. – Anonymous

As a way of teaching students about contemporary white privilege, many faculty members turn to the classic piece White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.  However, my peers and I have found that students often resist its content, in part because of the article’s date of publication.  The original piece was produced in 1988 making it older than many current college students. Nevertheless, it is clear that McIntosh’s article has a lot to teach contemporary students, if used the correct way.

The Activity

In order to thwart student’s immediate dismissal of McIntosh’s article as outdated, this activity encourages students to use their own knowledge and critical thinking skills to update the piece such that it fits with current race relations.  The activity consists of two parts taking place on two distinct days (unless you have a three hour block class): in part one students are expected to update McIntosh’s examples to match modern social patterns and, in part two, they add new, contemporary examples of white privilege to the list.  Please note, this activity is traditionally more successful if used later in the semester when students have reached some level of awareness of systemic racial discrimination.

Part One

For the first part of the activity students are expected to come to class having read McIntosh’s article.  Once seated, they are divided into groups of four to five students and handed a slip of paper containing eight of the twenty-six privileges. They are then asked to work together to select items on the list that they perceive to be outdated and/or want to discuss as a larger class.  Each group is responsible for choosing at least one item on their list and must be prepared to explain why they think the item is outdated and how they would change it to fit modern race relations.  After 20 minutes of small group conversation, we reconvene and discuss each groups’ chosen privilege to discuss.  As the instructor I am always prepared with current examples of blatant racial bias through anecdotes and statistics in all of these areas.  Discussion about intersectionality and geography are also important to extend the analysis of students on these issues.

Part Two

For the second portion of this activity, students are expected to add new examples of privileges to McIntosh’s list.  They are again placed in groups of four or five students and asked to brainstorm new items to place on the checklist.

Words of Caution

Over the past several years I have had great success using this activity to discuss the concept of white privilege.  However, there are a few common errors made by instructors that warrant words of caution.

One challenge with this activity, and in teaching in diverse classrooms, is to make sure that everyone is being intellectually challenged by the material without leaving any students behind. A second challenge is the tendency of professors to ignorantly exercise and reproduce the very elements of white privilege discussed in the article.  Students of color have distinct backgrounds and paths to a class on race relations relative to both their white peers and one another (some of the challenges faced by students of color in mostly-white classrooms are addressed in the chapter by Logan et al in this volume).  One of the most common transgressions committed by instructors is to, much like mainstream white society, assume that all people of a particular racial group have had similar experiences.  As a corollary, they often call on people of color to speak as “experts” for their racial or ethnic groups, a challenge mentioned by many students in the edited volume Making a Difference: University Students of Color Speak Out (Lesage, Ferber, Storrs and Wong 2002) and an experience many of my friends in college were forced to deal with.  Through this activity, and any activity in class, it should never be assumed that a person of color can speak for his or her race, much like it should never be assumed that a woman can speak for all women or a man for all men.

Featured on The Society Pages last week was an edited interview with Annette Lareau conducted last year by Jack Lam (sociology graduate student at Minnesota) and I on her updated edition of her famous book Unequal Childhoods (University of California Press).

You can listen to and download the entire interview from Office Hours.

We highly recommend using this book in your classes: check out our post on a possible class activity to tie in with the book.

Even if you don’t assign the whole book, we recommend referencing her updated findings. Lareau’s important arguments are essential to any discussion on childhood, education, and class.

The folks over at Sociological Images, have collected some great examples of the commodification of Black History by companies to market products like kool-aid, hair relaxers, BET, fried chicken and collard greens.

Image by gavdana via flickr.com

We suggest using these types of ads as a teaching tool in your classroom. First guide the students through the pictures posted on Sociological Images during class. Then, at home, have them find another example of a company using racial stereotypes to sell products (an ad, commercial or something like the image here) and write up a short summary of what stereotypes they believe it portrays. They could email them to you or post links to the class website. This activity would work best after students are familiar with the concept, but early enough in the course that it can inform their thinking for the rest. Sharing these images in class will start a great discussion, as well as get students to pay more attention to this type of racism in the media.

If students are having a hard time finding images, you could direct them to blogs that often post on this topic. For example…Sociological Images, The Color Line, Racialicious, Feministing…and many more!

TSP’s Sarah Lageson recently sat down with Megan Comfort to talk about her research on women in relationships with incarcerated men.  You can read a summary of the fascinating interview here and listen to the entire interview here.

This interview would be particularly useful to demonstrate the effects of prisons beyond the incarcerated individual.  Below are a few discussion questions that can be used with the interview.

1. Briefly explain “presence creation” in your own words and provide an example.

 

2. What were some of the key things that women in Comfort’s study valued about their relationships with incarcerated men?  Did any surprise you?  Why or why not?

 

3. Can you think of any examples of secondary prisonalization that you’ve seen first-hand or heard about through friends or family?

In need of some last minute ideas for your sociology 101 course?  Nathan Palmer has compiled a great set of lecture slides, activities, syllabi, and assignments that you can download for free!  Here is the link.

Amy Schalet’s new book Not Under My Roof explores teenage sexuality and teen pregnancy in the United States compared to the Netherlands.

She wrote about this subject in Contexts in the Summer of 2010 in “Sex, Love, and Autonomy in the Teenage Sleepover.”

We created an in class survey in October 2010 to go along with this topic. See our post here.

Also, watch Amy’s interview on CNN, via Sociological Images.