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

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I find it difficult to recognise the map from school or university (but then I went to a fee-paying private school) - I recognise it more from ILX I guess!

How did the freaks alter the participates-in-school activities / doesnt-participate-in-school-activities schema? By providing alternative school activities or seeing to bring the outside activities into the school?

[koganbot]

Strange commas were added after "majority" in this sentence:

A majority, but by no means all of the jocks, were from middle-class families; a majority, but by no means all of the burnouts, were from the working class.

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued by the claim that in later life people tend to revert back to high school cultural maps -- I know this is partly true for me, as I started to discuss on Tom's punk question, i.e. The Clash and Pink Floyd fit together for me in what I called there 'classic rock' but which I realise ought to be called 'approved bands amongst the big boys and their younger acolytes'. This might explain why for me 'indie' is associated with the failure of an oppositional position to remain oppositional. But I don't know if it's true for anyone else. I guess there is a strong cultural tendency to project this as a pattern -- all those high school reunion movies (in which the implied audience are those who have moved to the big city -- I know this is less of a class thing in the US than in the UK where moving away to the city is mainly via university and therefore mainly middle class) in which the question of returning is always what categories are we all in now?

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

Oddly, the high school categories are very relevant to music.

um, this doesn't seem odd to me at all, high school is arguably the place where music matters most and also where most pop music is aimed (intentionally or not) (steely dan excluded ;)). also one could argue that the majority of musicians never grew out of being burnouts, maintain adolescent attitudes...

my school map was nothing like that, primarily because there were *no* organised activities (not even a football team) due to long-running teachers' disputes throughout most of the 80s, and that around 85% of the kids were working*-class and desparately, outrageously, manically anti-intelligence/swottiness/cleverness.

*well given this was thatcherite mid 80s, "not working" class would be more appropriate

[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!

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I pass this on my way to University every year:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/sites/history/pages/elvis_rock_photos.shtml

[martinskidmore.livejournal.com]

I don't feel it fits with my school experience much. Judging by exam results, I was the smartest kid in the school, and some of my best friends were the only rivals. We were all hugely into punk and would smoke and drink and do drugs and take oppositional stances to the teachers (well, some of us) and the perceived establishment (partly as embodied in this venerable fee-paying boarding school). I was also in the football first team, and was a class clown, and seemed to be very popular particularly for that last reason - but for me the clowning was almost entirely tied in to the oppositional stance, it was about mocking and undermining authority. I think I had more stern talkings-to from the top teachers than anyone else there, and I'd probably have been expelled had I not been a serious Oxbridge candidate (for those who don't know, one of the key criteria for judging posh fee-paying schools is how many students they get into Oxford and Cambridge - I was 50% of the success rate for my year). I know I was the first Oxbridge candidate the school had had in its 300 years who wasn't offered a prefectship, something I take some pride in. (My friend Dave, the only one who has stayed a friend for the 30 years since those days, was apparently the first person ever to turn a prefectship down. He was the other person to get to Cambridge that year, and was very punk-bohemian.)

I mention all this because there didn't seem to be so much of a distinction, and being hard-left and a punk didn't stop me being friends with the rich kids. There were groupings, but they were more based on certain activities - people who'd go down the pub, people who'd play football, people who'd go to gigs. I was in all three of those, though I'm not sure I can think of many more who were. The outsiders, I think, were those uninterested in all of those things, the ones who stayed in and spoke politely and did their homework diligently and never got in trouble. That was a minority, and not one with much impact. They'd be jocks in the scheme you discuss, but they were almost entirely distinct from the sports-jocks (who also tended to be among the cleverest kids).