Picture this; Charlotte is cool, popular, pretty. She’s funny, kind and amazing with people. She loves sport and shopping and she’s your classic popular girl. Sophie is a little bit strange, she spends a lot of time completely silent on the outside but animated and noisy within. She loves books and writing fanfiction, she sucks at sport and her fashion sense is a little quirky. In any teen novel, Charlotte is the nasty mean girl who will eventually get her comeuppance and Sophie is the protagonist who will probably fall in love with the popular sporty guy (who is obviously secretly a great guy.) and she’ll become cool and popular and liked by all, leaving behind all her realism.
Pop culture gives us one of two views; the first, that Charlotte is cool and the one we should aspire to be, Sophie is boring and will never amount to anything anyway, and the second that popular girl =bitchy and that Charlotte is shallow and false while Sophie is dorky and relatable. We only get one view never the possibility that both girls are good people and that we can learn from both. Nerdy guys are either our protagonist (such as in “Life in Outer Space” by Melissa Keil) or, (and this is more common), a side character, sometimes shown to be kind and/or smart but never with a love interest or portrayed as attractive.
So why do we do this? Why do we categorize people and disregard evidence that doesn’t fit with the way they’re meant to behave? We have formed stereotypes for thousands of years, it provides an evolutionary advantage in that if we know that a certain type of animal (or person) behaves in a certain way we can be on guard around them. Friendship groups in a school setting are usually quite solid by the age of 11 and while heavy emphasis on “popularity” is most common in middle school and lower high school, most situations in which there are cliques will have some sort of social and popularity hierarchy.
Knowing why we stereotype doesn’t tell us why we associate things like “nerdiness” with being a loser and “popularity” with unkindness, when in reality, some studies have shown it’s not the kids at the top of the pecking order that do most of the bullying, and that many people have identified popular people as being popular because they’re kind and good with people. We also seem to have this idea in our heads that you can belong to one group and one group only! Apparently popular people can’t love Doctor Who and write fanfiction, and if you have glasses and love books you are destined to remain at the bottom. I personally know this to be untrue, as of of the most popular girls at my old school secretly loved to geek out over fanfiction with me.
So how can we leave these stereotypes behind? Well, it’s going to be hard to do that entirely. Teenagers are always going to label each other no matter how much we preach. In fact, some people are proud of their labels, proud of having something to connect them to others. But we need to remember that labels are a perception, not a perfect description. No label can Entirely sum up an individual and nor should we expect them to. Labels can be useful, they can be a badge of honor. But a badge shouldn't define a person and neither should any label.
"Why Nerds Are Unpopular." Why Nerds Are Unpopular. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2015. <http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html> Kennedy-Moore, Eileen. "Popular Kids." Psychology Today. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Nov. 2015. <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/growing-friendships/201312/popular-kids>.
Showing posts with label Bullying. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bullying. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
Sunday, December 6, 2015
The Impressions of Peer Pressure
Have your friends dictated what you do, what you say and how you do it? Then you can simply say that peer pressure leaves an impression on you.
His consciousness conflicted with him as he attempted to follow instructions.
His consciousness conflicted with him as he attempted to follow instructions.
The young boy’s arms drooped at his sides and his chest tensed. Streaks of sunlight glazed the room in a warm gold, yet the air around him was dense. Even though he dwarfed the smaller child, he couldn’t push himself to do it. A group of children stood beside him, he sought attention from them, as if he were the boy who cried wolf.
Peer pressure has always been a prime issue within schools. Friends have the ability to put impressions onto others, but what marks do they leave? At times, the results can be more than favourable, but those delinquents have always disrupted the balance.
Young adolescents, especially between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, are quite often affected by peer pressure as social acceptance has developed as a priority for children of that age. Although, there are quite a small number of children who have been able to develop forms of resistance against peer pressure. A psychology professor at the University of North Carolina, Mitchell Prinstein quoted, “Those who are more popular, have families with low dysfunction and have high communication skills. But they still don't know why these kids are less susceptible.”
Aditya Bhanap, an 8th grade student, conceded firmly, “The key questions that revolve around this are quite basic, asking about who is affected and how they are affected. My friends have always had in an impact on my decisions, especially when it came to sports and other hobbies that I enjoy. Since I began attending UWCSEA three years ago, the community has allowed me to be more open to my decisions and opinions, as opposed to my first school. But my peers still cloud my judgement even until now.”
The key questions that Aditya stated previously are very relevant to the subject at hand, as it could lead towards discovering a few of the prime reasons to how and why peer pressure has become such a dominating tradition within schools and communities and a part of human nature.
When surveyed, 8th grade students in UWCSEA reported that roughly 42% were influenced quite frequently by their friends. Whilst relatively often, a majority reported that their friends affected them in positive ways, such as support and challenge in academic pursuits that yielded results that were beneficial. Adding onto the previous evidence, 66% of the students accounted that peer influence began to become more prominent during the age thirteen and above. While only a small fraction have found peer pressure to be negative, most have stated that it was due to concerns about their appearance and how their peers saw them.
Peer pressure can cause children and teens to conform to the behaviours, attitudes and personal habits of a group or clique. Peer pressure is often sourced by personal activities habits, as friend groups also tend to originate from them. Sometimes, kids within a group will pressure other kids to bully others due to reasons that are similar. This can affect many, resulting in low self-esteem and aggression towards others.
Even though it can be a minor issue within school communities, learning how to make better decisions when it comes to selecting and embracing friends can also affect how you treat other people. Friends can cloud judgment, but what the cloud obscures is a glistening sun.
By Philip Haryanto
Gordon, Sherri. "Peer Pressure and Bullying – What Is the Connection?"Http://bullying.about.com/od/Basics/a/Peer-Pressure-And-Bullying-What-Is-The-Connection.htm. N.p., n.d. Web.
"All about Peer Pressure." ReachOut.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
Peer pressure has always been a prime issue within schools. Friends have the ability to put impressions onto others, but what marks do they leave? At times, the results can be more than favourable, but those delinquents have always disrupted the balance.
Young adolescents, especially between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, are quite often affected by peer pressure as social acceptance has developed as a priority for children of that age. Although, there are quite a small number of children who have been able to develop forms of resistance against peer pressure. A psychology professor at the University of North Carolina, Mitchell Prinstein quoted, “Those who are more popular, have families with low dysfunction and have high communication skills. But they still don't know why these kids are less susceptible.”
Aditya Bhanap, an 8th grade student, conceded firmly, “The key questions that revolve around this are quite basic, asking about who is affected and how they are affected. My friends have always had in an impact on my decisions, especially when it came to sports and other hobbies that I enjoy. Since I began attending UWCSEA three years ago, the community has allowed me to be more open to my decisions and opinions, as opposed to my first school. But my peers still cloud my judgement even until now.”
The key questions that Aditya stated previously are very relevant to the subject at hand, as it could lead towards discovering a few of the prime reasons to how and why peer pressure has become such a dominating tradition within schools and communities and a part of human nature.
When surveyed, 8th grade students in UWCSEA reported that roughly 42% were influenced quite frequently by their friends. Whilst relatively often, a majority reported that their friends affected them in positive ways, such as support and challenge in academic pursuits that yielded results that were beneficial. Adding onto the previous evidence, 66% of the students accounted that peer influence began to become more prominent during the age thirteen and above. While only a small fraction have found peer pressure to be negative, most have stated that it was due to concerns about their appearance and how their peers saw them.
Peer pressure can cause children and teens to conform to the behaviours, attitudes and personal habits of a group or clique. Peer pressure is often sourced by personal activities habits, as friend groups also tend to originate from them. Sometimes, kids within a group will pressure other kids to bully others due to reasons that are similar. This can affect many, resulting in low self-esteem and aggression towards others.
Even though it can be a minor issue within school communities, learning how to make better decisions when it comes to selecting and embracing friends can also affect how you treat other people. Friends can cloud judgment, but what the cloud obscures is a glistening sun.
By Philip Haryanto
Gordon, Sherri. "Peer Pressure and Bullying – What Is the Connection?"Http://bullying.about.com/od/Basics/a/Peer-Pressure-And-Bullying-What-Is-The-Connection.htm. N.p., n.d. Web.
"All about Peer Pressure." ReachOut.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2015.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Is bullying just an issue in schools?
Bullying is not just a crisis in schools, at the beach in Krabi Indonesia a girl was suffering through what was supposed to be a vacation.
Saraiah seemingly a very nice girl had been criticising a smaller girl, Anna, on almost everything in Anna’s life.
Saraiah, “What is that shirt?” Anna, “Umm” Saraiah “I had one like that like three years ago”
None of the people around seemed to notice the bullying going on and Anna kept quiet. The girls were brought together by a group of friends they were with. Anna started going off for 10 minutes at a time and came back with her eyes all red.
The group of friends were too busy playing volleyball to notice the girls constant disappearances. However, a lady sitting nearby knew exactly what was going on.
“Don’t you notice your so called friend is getting extremely hurt by this nasty girl???” The lady yelled at the kids. After clarification with the friends they got to terms with what was happening with Anna.
The friends spoke, “We didn’t know what was going on or we would have done something as soon as Saraiah started. We feel horrible that we let this happen to our friend and that we introduced her to Saraiah. We completely cut Saraiah off now and hopefully Anna will get over this.”
By Eloise
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