Just Girls: Hidden Literacies and Life in Junior High (Language and Literacy Series (Paper))

Rating:
Summary: Just fine
Review: As an ethnography, Just Girls describes the literacies which provide means and vehicles for adolescent girls' expressions of their conformity and nonconformity to social codes and norms. Finders classifies the girls at the high school on the basis of social, economic and, to a lesser degree, behavioural characteristics. I suspect that the process of classification somewhat shaped the ethnographic report. Finders' use of language and her descriptions of the cookies and the queens frequently belie a bias in favour of the former and against the latter. Though this is helpful in truly bringing alive the power games that are played at the school, as well as justifiable to some degree, it was rather disturbing: the queens are, after all, young girls and not hardened, exploitative capitalists. The language used in some cases borders on the offensive: to take only one example, the queens "traveled in packs," like beasts of prey. She associates the queens' busy social lives with a severance of or distancing from parental ties; I am uncertain as to why greater involvement with one's peer group cannot be taken simply as part of normal behavior, rather than a form of violence. Finders appears to agree with Dottie's mother, who associates adolescent social activities with this distancing from one's family: my father also perceived the choice as being one between family or friends, due to which I believe that as an adolescent I was deprived of a normal social life. Through "rich description" and careful selection of circumstantial detail, Finders identifies what modalities align students with particular status groups: she shows how the cookies' inability to participate in co-curricular activities (because they do not have transportation) accords them low visibility and establishes them as low-status members of the school community. By and large, the social uses of literacy are emphasized; I would personally have also liked to explore the individual psyche of the girls further. It is fascinating to me how the queens use their cultural and linguistic literacy to establish status and power. They play with words and cultural images that are considered "out of the control of adolescents." It also serves to establish norms of "cool" which they apparently derive from popular culture, for which they are the custodians at school. As a teenager who never knew the cool thing to say, much of what Finders has to say about the cookies' lack of integration in the school community certainly does strike a chord with me. What is most interesting to me, however, is Finders' analysis of classroom roles in Chapter Five. Her critique of student-centred pedagogy rings true in the light of my own experience of teaching; I am disturbed by the concern that "[a] pedagogy built on comfort, built on students' experiences, will, of course, continue to privilege those who feel most at home in the classroom." It have come to question my role as an instructor who demands participation in classroom discussion and bases some grade value on the same. I have indeed noticed that it is always the same students who are prepared to contribute to discussions, and it is always the same students who appear unable to do so, who perceive their experiences as not belonging to the accepted scheme of things. How far am I privileging the already-privileged? Yet how is it that classroom discussion comes to be perceived, by those who do not speak out, as the domain of a particular type of student? The "Myth of Free Choice" reminds me also of school strategies in writing. Our senior English teachers were European nuns; by and large I do not recall choosing to write about my life and experiences in Pakistan. I vividly remember writing stories about heroines named Sally, Amanda and Muriel, but I do not remember many attempts at writing about poverty, class-based behaviour, religious practice, or my own developing religious commitment. Students have an intuitive understanding of "what you're supposed to write" (Cleo's words, page 120). Having been an extremely serious, rule-conscious and spiritually intense (and lonely) adolescent, I am glad to read Finders' questions about the myths of universal adolescence and of adolescence as a negative period. I had trouble identifying and socializing with my peer group, since I did not fit the stereotype of the defiant adolescent. I wonder if this was related to the fact that I was less in touch with popular culture than my peer group: I did not watch much television, I stopped listening to pop music at the age of fourteen, read no pornographic literature, watched few movies, and did not have much interest in keeping up with fashion. I wonder if my lack of exposure to popular culture and the media had anything to do with the fact that I never developed according to the norms of a typical adolescent. This may be the reason for Cleo's and Dottie's rather fierce independence of thought and practice.