Colliding Codes

How do we uphold, nurture and foster a proactive, positive school culture when the gender codes runs in the background undermining all our efforts? This question was posed in response to our previous post entitled “How’s your Code”.

Before we can work on re-visioning our school culture, we must have a solid understanding of the intricacies that drive the Boys and Girls codes in our school. Research tells us that imprinting begins the moment we emerge from the womb and every experience thereafter continues to help shape who we become.  For example, parents who tell their little girls that they look pretty in a dress or their hair makes them look cute, sends the message that we value looks. We all do it, in some form or another; we all contribute to the barometer of social norms. An example for men is seen in how we collectively learn to keep our emotions in check and that the only real emotion to show is strength and power. These beliefs are solidified at a very young age when we tell out little boys to be strong and don’t cry.  These are powerful mechanisms that build our social being and define how we think we should behave.  The outcome of all this is the solidifying of an inner code that governs how we behave. In school, during our formative years, these inner codes often come into direct conflict with how schools want students to behave. Many adolescents struggle with conflicting emotions because their inner code tells them to behave one way, while their true emotional state tells them to feel another.

This struggle between conflicting emotions creates a gender code that often works to undermine the values we want our students to espouse. Here is how Pollock (1998) explains the Boy Code phenomena:

“When boys show their emotions, the Boy Code makes boys feel ashamed of themselves. By the time boys reach school age, years of training teaches them that neither their mother nor their father will respond warmly to their expressions of emotions. By elementary school, most boys know and honor the Boy Code even if it deeply hurts them….Yet when boys rebel against this push to separate -- when they cry, get injured, or tell friends that they'd rather stay at home than go outside and play -- society's Boy Code makes them feel ashamed of themselves. Shame haunts many boys all their lives, undermining their core of self-confidence, eroding their fragile self-esteem, and leaves them with profound feelings of loneliness, sadness and disconnection." 

(1998, “Real Boys: Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood,” Pollock, W.)

For the girls, the code is defined as “Mean Girls” or the “Queen Bee” phenomena. Wiseman (2002) defines this concept in “Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence” as the ways in which girls in high schools form cliques and can be aggressive towards other teen girls. This aggressive behavior is driven by the desire to be at the top of the girl social circle. 

These gender codes often create a daunting barrier to overcome when we work to build school culture. How do we overcome gender codes and develop a “School Culture” that addresses and realigns conflicting codes? It is a daunting task for schools to undo what has been imprinted. What we can do is be aware of the social intricacies that define how our students behave and we can definitely take the factors into consideration when we work to define our own school culture.

We all need to play a part in helping temper gender codes that undermine the positive values we work to inculcate in school. We all need to role model what we want to achieve by: 

• Encouraging parents to give their child some undivided attention every day
• Encouraging the expression of a full range of emotions
• Avoiding teasing or taunting
• Avoiding using shaming language or language that defines looks
• Looking behind anger, aggression and rambunctiousness
• Expressing your love and empathy openly and generously
• Letting boys know that they don't need to be “The Warriors” in all they do
• Helping girls understand what it means to be a “Wise Woman”
• Creating a model of masculinity and femininity that is broad and inclusive

Coming together and understanding gender codes as being attached to the root of such things as the “code of silence” and “bullying” are crucially important when we work to foster and develop positive school tone and culture. We need to recognize that these forces work in the background against our efforts and further, we must avoid dismissing them by saying “they’re just kids”. Understanding that the code of silence is part of a gender code in action is the first step in beginning to overcome it.

Identify the stakeholders…       Trust the process…      Trust the people…