Friday, April 10, 2009
Symbolic interactionist
The quote, "To claim that knowledge is socially constructed usually means that the world we live in is constructed symbolically by the mind through social interaction with others and is heavily dependent on culture, context, custom and historical specificity. " (p. 409) really caught my attention. It describes, almost entirely, the symbolic interactionist theory of sociology. I have always been drawn to this theory because of exactly what our text said. The world is in the eye of the beholder. We each see different things from different points of view at every moment. It is impossible for two people to interpret a situation exactly the same because of this. We go through life and everything is a symbol, and each symbol has a different context based on our culture, customs, etc. It really is fascinating.
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Great post, I'm also very interested in this theory. The world truly is in the eye of the beholder. This is the main reason that I think the standards movement is failing. To hold every school to the same achievement goals runs against human nature. I think that the solution to the improvement of our education system is to either get rid of standards altogether, or to make standards universal so that it becomes truly clear that they're of no use. Make it an even playing ground for students and let teachers teach to their fullest potential. We need students to think critically, not be able to pass standardized tests that have very little practical use to students.
ReplyDeleteShout out for sociology!
ReplyDeleteI am happy to hear that others are interested in the theory of social construction and liked this article. Social construction is my bread and butter. I teach about it everyday. Both the best part and the worst part of the theory is the realization that absolutely everything that we learn as "objective knowledge" is something that we need to think critically about. This can be exhausting. But it is also liberating. Not only do we need to recognize this for ourselves, but we need to teach it to our students.