Ready or Not...

So, I’ve had something on my mind for a few weeks that I’ve wanted to take a shot at blogging about, and now, for better or worse, I’m going to give it a shot! 

I gave a very small part of it in my blog post last week, I’ve discussed it with a few different people, and I’m as ready as I think I will ever be, especially with our unit on folk knowledge coming to a close.  I couldn’t find one word to exactly describe what I want to talk about.  I was first tempted to call it ‘bullying’, but that seems much too provincial; stereotypes and discrimination have something to do with it too, but I would like to broaden the discussion to include the distortion, loss, or negative transmission of folk knowledge.

Let me make myself a little clearer:  In last week’s post (see above), I discussed the culture of the people of Bretagne (Brittany), and as part of that discussion, I pointed out that, after certain Breton leaders betrayed France in the second World War, there was a very strong movement away from teaching the traditions of this culture to the upcoming generations, which very nearly killed the Breton spirit and culture.  That idea of negative social reinforcement (de-inforcement?) is exactly what I would like to focus on.

In a comment to Shuan’s post on showering, I made allusion to the fact that I had been sort of mistreated in middle school gym class while in the shower.  Ever since I made that comment, I have been thinking about bullies, and what they try to achieve.  I’ve decided that these bullies are teaching us in a very physical, experience-driven way that something we are being or doing is wrong, and that we ought to change.  Isn’t that sort of how folk knowledge works?  Bullying is certainly a negative sort of learning experience; it isn’t generally healthy and it teaches us things that may or may not be good for us, exposes us to taboos and biases that may in fact slow our development or cause damage to our character, and it may have even worse effects on the actual bully, and yet it still bears striking resemblance to what we have defined in our class as passing down folk knowledge.  

When stereotypes, biases and other prejudices are allowed to control or influence our actions, we refer to it as discrimination, which if you ask me is just a more ‘adult’ way of saying bullying, because they both seem to amount to the same thing.  There is a certain anthropological argument (presented in a basic form here) that these prejudices originated in prehistoric times, but in virtually all of recorded history, the ideas of ‘us’ and ‘them’ seem (to me at least) to cause nothing but problems and various kinds of contention.  Slavery, segregation, bullying, even homicide and genocide (admittedly very extreme examples) are just the same ideas being carried further and further past their logical limits (if such ideas can ever be said to be permissible).  However, while the more extreme examples are certainly not acceptable in civilized society, these actions and feelings all contribute to setting social norms, with all the positives and negatives that implies.  On the one hand, those social norms help make society homogeneous enough that we can all live and work together and not fall apart. On the other hand, how many people are unnecessarily persecuted and mistreated, and sometimes the ones who suffer the worst are the best and the brightest among us, who are so exceptional precisely because they are so different!

So, what do you think?  Do these negative interactions qualify as passing down folk knowledge, or have I completely missed the mark?  I really mean it, feel welcome to disagree with me.  Let me just finish by saying  that for me, there are still lessons I learned from bullies that shape the way I behave today, and I wouldn't be surprised if others feel the same way.