P.E. Class, Really

          David, a six year old elementary school student, goes to school every day on the bus but not without controversy. While David does not look to be nuisance, the other students in the class find a way to give David trouble. David is a little different from other kids on the bus; he is overweight and wears glasses, which clearly makes him stand out among his peers. David was what the other kids called a nerd, a dweeb, and a dork. Unfortunately for David, his punishment didn’t end on the bus. I recently met David when I attended a local elementary school and observed the physical education (P.E.) classes for the day. I decided to use the P.E. classes as my sample within the elementary school as children in schools generally establish a deviant class without fully appreciating the consequences of their actions. After visiting four P.E. classes for the day, it became clear that every class had four to five individuals who were considered the “cool kids” of the class, and they made sure that certain kids were deemed deviant, which many of the other kids in the class accepted; the members of the class who were deemed deviant by the “cool kids” lacked physical ability, were overweight, and oftentimes were female.

          While some people may find it difficult to label children deviant, in sociological terms children can indeed by classified as deviant in society. According to Alexander B. Smith and Harriet Pollack (2000) in “Deviance as Crime, Sin, and Poor Taste,” Howard Becker defines deviants as outsiders or “anybody who is outside the consensus of what constitutes proper conduct. In observing the P.E. classes, it became evident that the children who could not compete with the other kids in the class were indeed outsiders. They could not conform to the standards set by the athletic kids in the class, thus, making themselves outsiders. According to Stephen Pfohl (2010) in “Images of Deviance,” “Losers are viewed as living outside the boundaries of social life as it ought to be, outside the ‘common sense’ of society.” In this classroom setting, the social life consisted of competing at a high level in order to win the game. The kids who could not compete at that level became outsiders or deviants. Pfohl (2010) states, “deviants are viewed as such because they threaten the control of people who have enough power to shape the way society imagines the boundary between good and bad.” These kids who were not athletic enough to compete at the highest level, which was established by the popular athletic kids, threatened to tear down the social hierarchy in the class as these students could potentially cause the popular kids to lose the game that the class was participating in if they were assigned to be on teams with the popular kids. These kids became the deviants in the class. They were teased and ridiculed by their classmates, and they were left to fend for themselves as none of their other classmates came to their aid. While one may wonder why the other classmates did not step in to help those being ridiculed, one could look to what Allan Johnson refers to the path of least resistance. Johnson (2009), in “Privilege, Power, Difference and Us” states, that is easy for people to take the “path of least resistance.” It is easier for the other kids to avoid problem rather than standing up against the status quo, which could result in the popular kids turning on them and labeling them as deviants.

            The observations in the P.E. class demonstrated that the deviant class can be established at a very young age and what is classified as deviance does and can significantly vary based on the culture, time, and location. While some sociologists view deviance as “a violation of any social rule,” (Heckert, 2002) some people can be viewed deviant simply for having an unfortunate condition for which they cannot be held responsible, (Heckert, 2002) such as the children in the class who were overweight or who happened to be female. These deviant kids were considered socially awkward because they could not compete at a high level in the game, and hence they were singled out by the athletic popular kids as losers, dweebs, and nerds; they were in fact deviants.  

Allan Johnson. (2009). Privilege, Power, Difference, and Us. In Michael S. Kimmel and Abby L. Ferber (Eds.), Privilege; A Reader (pp. 77-86). New York, NY: Westview Press.

Alex Heckert and Druann Maria Heckert. (2010). A New Typology of Deviance: Integrating and Reactivist Definitions of Deviance. In Alex Thio, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers (Eds.), Readings in Deviant Behavior (pp. 11-14). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. 

Stephen Pfohl. (2010). Images of Deviance. In Alex Thio, Thomas C. Calhoun, and Addrain Conyers (Eds.), Readings in Deviant Behavior (pp. 11-14). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. 

Alexander P. Smith and Harriet Pollack. (2000). Deviance as Crime, Sin, and Poor Taste. In Patricia A. Adler, and Peter Adler (Eds.), Constructions of Deviance: Social Power, Context, and Interaction (pp. 19-28). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.   

                                 

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