Race and performance of student as determinants of teacher nonverbal behavior

This study tested the hypotheses that the nonverbal behavior of teachers is affected by the race and performance of their students. Fifty-six white college-age subjects, acting as teachers, were led to praise successful or unsuccessful students. The students were either white or black. Stimulus teachers' nonverbal behavior was recorded, and silent samples of their behavior were shown to naive judges who rated how pleased they appeared to be with their student. Results showed that stimulus teachers were more pleased with successful than unsuccessful students, and more pleased with white than black students.     

Sex and the Quiet Schoolgirl

The article is based on a year's ethnographic work at a West Midlands comprehensive school, which is described. The usual genderising pattern of subject choice and behaviour are identified, and used as the basis of an analysis of the differences, real and imagined, between boys and girls and their expectations of secondary schooling.

Having identified quietness as one of the distinguishing characteristics of girls at Cator Park school, I relate this to their own assessment of how they accommodate to the demands of school. This highly selective adaptation is suggested as one reason why the boys are puzzled by the behaviour of girls in school, and it is suggested that it allows the girls to retain their private identity outside school. The conclusion is that quietness is a successful adaptation to the situation of girls in school, and should not be viewed as a weakness.     

改变方向

“No! ”I stated without apology, “I’m not giving you one red cent.”The beggar flipped me off with a stream of profanity.     

Stanley Cavell in Conversation with Paul Standish

Having acknowledged the recurrent theme of education in Stanley Cavell's work, the discussion addresses the topic of scepticism, especially as this emerges in the interpretation of Wittgenstein. Questions concerning rule‐following, language and society are then turned towards political philosophy, specifically with regard to John Rawls. The discussion examines the idea of the social contract, the nature of moral reasoning and the possibility of our lives' being above reproach, as well as Rawls's criticisms of Nietzschean perfectionism. This lays the way for the broaching of questions of race and America. The theme of the ordinary, which emerges variously in Cavell's reflections on Emerson, Wittgenstein and Austin, is taken up and extended into a consideration of Thoreau's ‘experiment in living’. The conversation closes with brief remarks about happiness.