The Interpersonal Children Perspective

Behavioral expectations or, in the language of the sociologist, roles may be laid out in an interlocking pattern which can be conceptualized as the social structure, but how are they actually learnt? Learning has been seen very much as a part of the province of the psychologist. What has the sociologist to say about learning that is of help to the teacher In beginning to answer these questions must be switched from looking at social structure to an examination of the manner in which people interact at a face-to-face or interpersonal level. Once something has been understood of the way in which learning takes place in a model situation where two people interact, then the possibility exists of extending this process to socialization in all parts of the social structure and at all stages of the life cycle. Basically, what has to be explained is how an individual indicates to another his definition of what social reality is in such a way that the other learns this version and makes it his own.

One useful model for examining the way in which socialization takes place at the interpersonal level is to use the idea of 'feed-back'. This concept may be applied to the way in which two persons steer each other as they interact with one another. Let us take as an example a teacher in a primary school. She has expectations of herself in her role as teacher and of the behavior of the children aged, say, seven in her class. Her pupils likewise have expectations of their teacher and are willing to imitate or to obey her in order to learn what they take to be socially acceptable behavior. They may be willing, and this is important, either because they value their teacher or because they see her as powerful enough to insist that they do as she wishes. In either case they interpret the cues that the teacher feeds back to them consequent upon any action that she observes or knows them to have made. The teacher signals to them by a nod or a smile that to throw papers into the waste paper basket is valued behavior; it meets the value of tidiness which she wishes to teach to her pupils. But she may also indicate to them by a from or by words of disapproval that to throw paper darts even into the waste paper basket is not acceptable; it contradicts the value of orderliness upon which she puts great emphasis and which she hopes will become a valued part of the social reality that she will recreate in her pupils.

A point worth noting is that the range of behavior tolerated in any role is usually quite wide. There are strict and less strict, tidy and less tidy teachers. Because of this each individual has some chance to make, rather than just to take, his own role. When one remembers the very large number of positions that anyone person has to fill at any point in his life - for example, son, customer, holiday-maker, adolescent and so on - it is clear that there is considerable room for individuality in the way in which interpretations of each role are combined. Social devices do, however, exist to restrict the range of tolerated behavior in certain positions. Thus, many schools insist that their pupils wear uniforms that ensure that they are highly visible and cannot, therefore, easily deviate from the behavior desired by the school authorities.

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The Interpersonal Perspective of Children's Peer Groups

Young people make their choices and live their generational lives largely with their friends. Individuals create the sub-cultural diversity which offsets the apparently strong contemporary pressures for cultural uniformity. As peer groups form, their members bring to them their past experiences and the effects of the pressures acting upon them in other social positions that they fill. Sociologists have analyzed such effects by using the concept of latent role to cover the behavioral expectations brought to a situation from outside it.

Various types of grouping amongst youth are normal, not pathological, social phenomena. Some groups create styles that older generations tolerate or even praise; the behavior of Boy Scouts doing 'bob job' week is not labeled as outside the boundaries of tolerated behavior in young persons. Other groups clearly take part in breaking the law; the behavior of those who take a bob rather than earn it is seen officially as juvenile delinquency. Between these two extremes there is a wide range within which young people can choose to create or adjust to very different sub-cultural styles of life.

The importance to the contemporary young of such sub-cultures is largely based on the fact that adolescents have extremely restricted choices for action at work or at school so that a major part of their response to their social class location can be made in the sphere of consumption and leisure. These spheres of action provide 'a more negotiable space than the tightly disciplined and controlled work (or school) situation'. Within this space the young can create what Mannheim called 'concrete groups', the members of each of which can adopt or interpret or create a style of life that meets the needs of their position.

In this process groups draw upon the cultural sources around them to create new styles and to express generational meanings. The parent culture can provide materials. Thus, working-class youth can draw upon, for example, a tradition of collective activities, an emphasis on territoriality and a concept of masculinity, or middle-class youth upon the tradition of displaying individual initiative, the feeling of the importance of high art and on an apparently more casual role for the two sexes. But whatever materials are chosen there are certain focal concerns for the young generation of any historical moment and these now seem to centre on dress, music, ritual, slang and, perhaps, various means of transport.

During the early teens peer groups are made up entirely of boys or of girls and these small single-sex groups are isolated from one another. At about fifteen, though to specify an exact age is impossible, the members of the single-sex cliques begin to interact with each other and the leaders in each group seem to be the first to intermingle with the opposite sex. There is, therefore, a period during which the isolated single-sex cliques are being transferred into a linked system, the crowd, made-up of cliques, now containing both sexes. However, by the late teens the process of disintegration is likely to have begun as the members of the new cliques become engaged or married and tend to drift away from the very loosely organized activities of the crowd.

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