Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks And Burnouts

[koganbot]

My latest column, where I try to justify my nonstandard use of the word "class."

The Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks and Burnouts

I'm curious if you think the social map that Eckert provides and the social dynamic that I identify (the basic form being "jocks vs. burnouts" [w/ different category names in different times and places], but there being an unsettled effect when a third group, the "freaks," appears in strength) have anything to do with the situation at the high school you went to. If not, what was the social map? Also what sort of map(s) would you apply to situations you've been in after high school?

Oh yeah, and here's another chance for you to help me figure out what the hell it is I'm trying to say about Elvis.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I could talk at great length about the social structure of my secondary school, but time eludes me right now.

Main point: the 'burnout' group wasn't made up of kids who didn't get involved with school activities, but kids who got in trouble/smoked behind the bikesheds/disrupted classes/had fights in the park on the way home. As if they were actively fighting the system rather than ignoring it (there was plenty of ignoring going on as well - this would be more true of the 'misfit' category).

Your definition of 'getting involved' would make me and my friends among the most jock-like which surprises me! We were picked on by the popular kids for being spoddy teachers pets. However our (comprehensive) school was more academically orientated than sport orientated - sport was treated as a neutral activity by the burnouts and there was a mixture of sporty kids distributed across the social groups.

ARRGH I have too much work on to think about this in depth!

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yeah "who gets to misbehave" is a big question. I was VERY PURITAN about alcohol especially while still at school, which was obviously looking back (since erm I don't seem to have sustained this attitude) a reaction against some kind of group I was outside of, but I can't exactly work out what.

BINGE DRINK ICKENHAM

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Same here with smoking - militantly anti until I was 18, because I associated it with people who were horrid to me (I was v upset when Kirsty briefly took it up in 6th form for this reason). Not booze though - booze was universal. Everyone drank booze. EVERYONE. Apart from the super religious dudes & diabetics. Booze wasn't seen as 'naughty' in the same way.

Re: BINGE DRINK ICKENHAM

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Apart from the super religious dudes & diabetics.

In school I had a hard time differentiating myself from the straight-edge diabetics; besides which, drinking a LITTLE as a diabetic is a quick shortcut to burn-out circles since the stakes are higher. (half kidding)

[koganbot]

Well, I'd say teachers don't necessarily adore teacher's pets; they have respect for people who engage with them but are willing to contest with them as well. And of course teachers don't all fall in the same place socially either. And interestingly I was friendly with - though obviously not friends with - some of the teachers, and these would also tended towards being liberals and in a couple of instances freaks. Which is interesting given that I wouldn't say I was particularly close to the two teachers I admired the most, a gym teacher and a science teacher; I wasn't unfriendly with them, but we didn't banter in the classroom or run across each other in nonclassroom settings (e.g., in school activities).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

A certain amount of misbehaviour = TOP OF SOCIAL TREE in my school; chatback to teachers, affecting disinterest in work, drinking and so on. Not so much as to be a total burnout though - there weren't many of these, in fact I can't remember any. I guess there were a couple who affected to be more fucked up than they were.

The existence of boarders meant that school activities were neither here nor there when it came to coolness.

From Y7 to Y9 all the cool kids did sport. GCSE years were a strange transition into the 6th form, where only a minority did, and where it was irrelevant to your cool status. (6th form is when all the rich local farmers' kids left b/c they were thick, and when loads of musicians on scholarships joined, so the musicians stopped being one weird class out of four who didn't do the same lessons as anyone else, and started being over half the year.)

[koganbot]

Er, my reply above about "teachers not necessarily adoring teacher's pets" was actually meant for you.

[koganbot]

I mean, in relation to some misbehavior helping you up the social ladder. (Didn't mean to imply you're a teacher's pet, which you're not.)

[koganbot]

In my school, interestingly, there was no name equivalent to the "jocks" of the Detroit suburbs. "Prep" wasn't used. The term "jock" did exist, but it really was limited to those involved in sports. And there were two centers of what I'll call "respectable" status c. 1971 or so: Craig and his friends, Craig being the class president and the goalie of the soccer team but also in a rock band and not snooty at all, got along with a lot of the freaks, as I recall. And then there was Ethan and the drama school kids, Ethan also being president of the student council, and tending to have more artsy-fartsy and academically inclined friends; but Ethan was a bit snooty (though very engaging) and didn't cross to the freaks that much, even though in general I'd place his group closer to the freaks than Craig's was. And I was pretty much in Ethan's group - in fact, even helped assemble it somewhat during the Duffey Summer I described in my book [which I don't think you've seen, but Tom and Alex have] - but also made myself a bit estranged from it, which is when I started hanging out to some extent with the younger freaks (except when I was withdrawing altogether). People would sometimes refer - disparagingly - to people like me as "liberals." (Liberal being compromised in comparison to Radical or Freak.) Whereas the greasers would tend to lump liberals and freaks together and refer to all of us as "hippies." (And maybe we were lumping disparate groups together and calling them "greasers." I wouldn't know.)