What follows is a conversation between one of my students and I. I will call him Moon Unit.
Moon Unit, holding up his hands to make a heart: You are the love sign!
Me: Yeah?
Moon Unit: And I'm the rock and roll sign, because I'm a boy!
Me: Why are boys the rock and roll sign?Moon Unit: I don't know.
Me: I like to rock and roll. Can I be the rock and roll sign?
Moon Unit: No.
Me: I have to be the heart sign?
Moon Unit: Yes.
Me: Why?
Moon Unit: ....
Me: Because I'm a girl, and girls like love?
Moon Unit: Yes.
Me: Do boys like love too?
Moon Unit: ....
Me: So who told you that boys are the rock and roll sign and girls are the love sign?
Moon Unit: Nobody told me. I JUST KNOW.
No, my head did not explode because I'm an angry feminist (which is true). It exploded because a four-year-old summarized the entire field of anthropology in one short sentence.
Nobody told me. I just know.
If that isn't enculturation in a nutshell, I don't know what is. Of course, people in your society explicitly tell you things, like you shouldn't kill people and Santa Claus has eight reindeer (NOT slave helpers). But so much of our understanding of our own culture is made of impressions and experiences you can't exactly remember, and Moon Unit summed it all up right there. Nobody told me. I just know. FOUR YEARS OLD and he has internalized these ideas and shaped an understanding of his culture so much that he cannot explain to me why he believes what he believes. As far as he can articulate, it just is. It freaks me out a little when I find myself explicitly enculturating kids, like when I'm explaining why something is the way it is, such as why we have days of the week. But what freaks me out EVEN MORE is how much I'm enculturating them WITHOUT KNOWING IT. Everything I say and do gives them an impression and teaches them how to behave and what to think and what to believe in our culture. And YOU are doing it too. Kids aren't only influenced by their families and teachers. Doesn't that freak YOU out?
As for gender roles, Moon Unit is not the first four year old to give me a recipe for traditional gender types. Another four year old once asked me if a female figure in the farm activity was the "sister." I said it could be the sister, or it could be the farmer. She said, "No, she's a girl. She's the helper."
Cue brainsplosion.
Maybe kids are receiving explicit traditional explanations of the roles of girls and boys at home, but since it's 2011, I suspect that their concepts of "boys" and "girls" are mostly unspoken impressions. And if that's the case, where are they getting these impressions from? What or who is implying to them that girls like love and helping people while boys love to have fun and can be farmers? There's nothing wrong with men and women acting out traditional roles in 2011, but when kids think that this is the only way, the only option, it's the way it is, I find it very intriguing. Isn't Dora out there, adventuring and kicking ass? Aren't the men in the Wiggles dancing around and singing about their feelings? Of course part of it must be child psychology and how kids categorize and define things very strictly and cannot see nuances, but isn't it still a little strange, given the liberal state of our gender roles today? Maybe I'm completely naive, maybe not much has changed since the 50's. But I find this conversation incredibly delicious. Maybe I shouldn't be a teacher at all, maybe I should just study four-year-olds. I can see it now, me with a clipboard, spying on four-year-olds interacting behind a one-way mirror. NOT CREEPY AT ALL. At least not as creepy as naming my kid Moon Unit.
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