How the Sociological Imagination Affected My Life

As a returning student at the age of 24, I was unsure what I wanted to “do” with my education. I was much more aware of what I didn’t want to do than what I did. I didn’t want to keep working dead end service jobs and feeling like I was swimming against a tide that pushed me further away being the person I wanted to be. I didn’t see any way to get out and felt like I had no one to blame for my circumstances but myself. At 20 I knew I should have gone to college and could see I was getting nowhere fast. I wondered why I couldn’t break out of fast food and into the retail section, other people had and what was wrong with me that I was forced to work fast food jobs? I wondered why I couldn’t get hired to use the office skills I had gone to trade school for. I blamed myself and tried to imagine what I could have done differently and better to increase my chances of getting a better job. I felt that I had only one option –college but, for someone of impsoverished background it seemed pretty impossible and I had no idea how to fill out the FAFSA or interpret my own taxes staements.

Lucky, I landed in college but, not without alot of help. My first year at community college was filled with indecision and uncertainty, would this pay off better than the trade school? Would I be able to find a job after graduation? What career could I choose that was stimulating, paid well and would be in demand in 5 years when I graduated? Would that career bring me more satisfaction than others?
By my second year, I was content to remain undecided until I received my transfer degree and moved on to a four year university. Mostly I was happy to be succeeding at something other than a minimum wage dead end job. Just when you stop looking - you find love, or so they say, and I found my love for sociology after I stopped stressing about my future occupation. I enrolled in History of the French Revolution at Spokane Falls Community College; this class, and Marx, is at the very root of my understanding and love for Sociology.
Taking the course helped me to understand the historical context of Sociology as a discipline and showed me its roots in labor, industrial capitalism and revolution. The professor worked a lot of sociology into the lectures, although I did not realize it at the time. By doing so, he introduced us to many sociological concepts without calling them such. Social structures of the time were outlined and explained as being stratified by class and birth. We touched on Anomie as a result of peoples move from agriculture to industrialization and spent a few days discussing the Communist Manifesto and Marx’s’ various solutions to social problems associated with rural to urban migration and exploitive capitalism. This class prepared me to accept Sociology as a possible discipline because it gave historical legitimacy, concrete examples and interdisciplinary understanding to a subject that I had been very unaware of.
The next quarter I enrolled in Sociology of Race, Gender and Ethnicity and from the first day I felt intellectual stimulation like I had never experienced before. I felt like I was discovering the most meaningful subject in my education. When I wasn’t in class, I was talking about the class and when I wasn’t talking about it, I was thinking about it. So it seemed to me. It still does. I’m hooked and I haven’t really looked back since. Personally, it meant I could stop blaming myself for my failed attempt at entering the workforce without an education or social commection. I gained and understanding of how my situation is linked to political, economic and cultural factors that are both beyond my control and potentintially within societies agency to change. Sociology gave me a platform for addressing inequalities that I had felt but didn’t know how to express. Finally, my perception that society is patriarchal, racist and classist could be acknowledged through a subject that deals specifically with the differential power between genders, races and classes. I was amazed at how my concerns and ideas were shared by others, that I wasn’t “too sensitive” and others were aware and had experienced what I did. It was revolutionary.
What is it about Sociology that sets my mind on fire? I have always been interested in behavior. Sociology is the study of peoples and groups interactions - the movements between people that constitute the world we live in. I believe that I have always been studying Sociology, since I first watched two people interact and wondered, why? I love that I can take sociological thinking and apply it to any subject anywhere and look forward to “the familiar being transformed in its meaning (Berger, 1963).”
Now that I know about Sociology, I find that it permeates daily life and so I believe it to be relevant and worthwhile; two things that keep me returning to the subject. What I loved about sociology the most was how I learned to see beyond my individual experience and place my life within the context of greater forces such as economics and politics. C.W. Mills sociological imagination is defined as the ability to see the connection between the self and the greater world and is perhaps the most powerful tool for guiding and shaping our understanding of life. I no longer fear the tide that made me feel powerless, I use the sociological imagination to recognize the forces that influence my choices and in that recognition I gain the power to exert a greater influence where I am going and who I am.

A Response to Rote Education

As a student my response to a rote culture and through it a rote education is mixed. It's easier if you know what is expected but, does it prepare us for college or employment? The idea of a rote culture is introduced in Fast Families, Vertual Children by Ben Agger and Beth Anne Shelton as a way of understanding our fact based, multiple choice education which emphasizes memorization and repetition over creativity and critical thinking. Nowhere was this more apparent to me than when I transitioned from the GECR courses to those in my major, Sociology.

The expectation in most GECR classes is that you study the material until you are able to recognize the correct multiple choice answer or remember the few points that are necessary for a sufficient short answer question. The goal is to remember what you've been told and to commit it to short term memory; without a good understanding of the context or applicability of an isolated fact or event we forget it as soon as the quarter is over. Mostly, I was not expected to interpret or bring my own ideas into my test answer. Many of us probably have bad experiences associated with the few times we attempted to stray from the study topics and bring in our own interpretation or critical thoughts on the topic. We learn right away that there is only one correct answer - the one given to us by the instructor.

For students who went into the 'hard' sciences, I bet this multiple-choice-only-one-answer-fits education continues through the upper level courses as well. Perhaps this is to the benefit of the students learning and future employment but, I don't know; I went in to a liberal arts discipline that stresses interpretation, critical thinking and creativity. I have found my primary and secondary rote education has left me underprepared for the level of critical thinking and creativity that is necessary for sociological thinking.

When I took Social Stratification with Pui-Yan Lam I was challenged to think about and explain why poor minority students have a lower rate of success (statistically) than white middle class or upper class students in all most all levels of education. It was hard for me to think critically about how our educational institutions functioned and I was unable to recognize or articulate the differential treatment that poor and minority students receive compared to white middle or upper class students. Part of it was my own youthful experience as a white student in a mostly white school but, it was also my unquestioning acceptance of the status quo. Having hardly ever been asked to think outside of the box, I had a hard time breaking out of it and seeing what is hidden by our rote culture and rote education - an assembly line that produces and rewards middleclass white ideals, norms and expectations.

Even after two years in the sociology program here at Eastern, I feel like my critical thinking skills are not the sharpest tool in my shed. I still find myself looking through the texts and the discussions for the author or authorities final interpretation and relying on it as if it were the best or only answer to the question. My ability to synthesize information and come up with my own interpretations and ideas is growing but, it has been stunted by the years of rote education that continue to influence my desire for easy clear cut answers.

A rote culture and a rote education has consequences for our problem solving and critical thinking skills. If we hope to improve the world around us, to combat poverty, to end discrimination and hate then, we must be able to think critically about the way and the reasons things are. How can we do this if we don't practice critical thinking in our culture or our education?

To think about and imagine the way that our schools can be organized to promote critical thinking and interpretation is quite hard. I must first imagine schools without the authoritarian reliance on discipline and punishment, on standardized multiple choice question, on teachers who reward white middle class norms and habits. In this imagining I have already transformed schools from a rote education into a more humane and student focused environment where children are not pressured to speak white English, espouse ideas thought up by men a hundred years ago, to regurgitate knowledge out of context and discipline themselves to stay within the established lines and limitations.

Schools relay on rote education because it is easy. If the kids don't question, if they just take it all in and spit it back out at the appropriate times, teachers can rely on packaged lesson plans and standardized tests to teach and evaluate. Easy for teachers but, for students like me, who are now challenged to think creatively and critically it means unlearning a bad habit - looking for the answer rather than contributing an answer that fits the current reality; one that changes with the individual, the setting and the times.