Hi Christine,

I've found that even at the Masters level when we had group projects there were social loafers who took credit for the group's work, but didn't contribute their fair share. There are fewer at that level than at grade school or undergraduate level, but I certainly experienced working with such people in groups during my MAIS degree. That's why I always hated working in groups all through my school career, and is probably why team work is difficult even in a business setting where social loafers can be fired. As a highly individualistic culture, group pressure just doesn't seem enough to get all people to carry their fair share. Even my First Nations students, though their culture is more collectivist than mainstream Western society, have their share of social loafers.

I've talked a bit in previous posts about the Schwartz Values survey - which is really about motivation, what larger purposes motivates people, and one of the ones that has been linked to highly creative people is benevolence, with power and security values being negatively associated. In other words, highly creative people want to help people, and work for the greater good, while people who work for their own power and security are not creative. Something to think about, huh?

Schwartz also says that people's values (and motivations) seem to be quite stable over time, though as far as I know, no one has systematically studied whether people's values change either with experiences or through concerted effort on their part. Which suggests that it simply doesn't work to try to motivate people, because if they don't find their own values and motives, it's not going to happen. And that kind of answers my question in the negative, doesn't it?

But I don't like that answer, I'm going to go look for another one. I hope it's out there.

Heather- very interesting re Values survey. Thinking of my own life, I'd say that the premise re "security" is accurate; when my family was harmed by a criminal act, I found I put away my painting...for years. No creativity was available, whilst I attempted to re-establish security. This likely addresses the issue of stability of values & impact of experiences--although arguably I might have always prioritised security & this was only emphasised in crisis. Food for thought, for me. A key thought you put forward--are students genuinely aware of their values & motivations? after all, one goal of educating is to raise critical thinking/awareness skills.

Hi Christine,

Yes, I think your example illustrates the concept nicely. Creativity is expansive, security is closed and contracting; they can't co-exist.

I think a lot of people aren't really aware of their own values; it's alwasy easier to identify other people's values than your own, I've noticed. There are a few places online that have a version of Schwartz's survey you can take and they tell you your results. I have one site bookmarked somewhere, but I'd have to go looking for it. What it means in your specific circumstances takes some thought, too.

Teaching critical thinking and awareness is almost as tricky an issue at teaching self-management, I think. Some people will pick it up with a little help and prodding, some people seem to be almost willfully oblivious.

But I might also be a bit overly cynical at the moment because I'm tired...

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for the link - the author was making much the same point that I was, though more articulate and less rant-like .  Modern women seem to be better than our mothers and grandmothers at not buying into the patriarchal crap regarding what we can and can't do in terms of education and careers and so on, but why, oh why are we still buying into the patriarchal crap about what a woman is supposed to look like?

I guess the only answer is that change takes time. Baby steps. But I still plan to rant from time to time...

Hi Caroline,

I'm glad you liked the post. I've actually never been to a yoga class, I'm an entirely self-taught yogi...weird, I know, but time, money and opportunity have never come together at the same time for me to get to a class. I'm hoping that will change eventually. I like that mantra too. I've had varying success with using mantras for focus; sometimes they work really well, sometimes they just annoy me.

I wish you success at your practice, too.

I like your ranty version. :) More fire in your belly.

I'd add - a rant of my own, I guess - that women, despite being granted little room for self-awareness and reflection, are subject to pretty intense scrutiny from everywhere else: what women eat, don't eat, wear, don't wear, say, do, express, repress, feel etc is constantly examined and debated as reasons for our various "failures" to live up to whatever we're supposed to look like, be like, be to other people. Talk about exhausting!  

I want to send you an award for most helpful innertet writer.
- Geraldine

Aw, poor tired woman! It won't be so exhausting, once you get into the swing of things.

Lolcats: they make your life better. http://icanhascheezburger.com/2009/10/09/funny-pictures-studying/

Oh that's cute. Almost too adorable for words.

I expect it will get less exhausting as I get used to the schedule. The only problem is getting myself going in the mornings until them. I have to say, I love my cappuccino maker...

Oo, mornings :( I've tried to maintain, as much as work allows, a "nothing before noon" policy. I find I'm just nicer to people that way. I guess DE and a long job search can put you out of practice pretty quickly. But fresh cappucino in your own kitchen sounds lovely!!

An anecdote: I took my Galpal to a very traditional and conservative xmas party over the holidays. Our feminisms aren't exactly separatist - we do know and love quite a few men - but they're definitely a bit insular: we know and love only Good Feminist Men. It is a myopic view of our own culture that allowed us to be completely stunned, when we were playing a party game (each guest had trivia about another guest hidden under their plate, and had to guess who it was about), and the fellow who received a fact about the ludicrously overlong name of Galpal's degree asked every man at the table if he had a masters degree, then looked at our host and said "I don't know who it could be." Our jaws hit the floor a second time, after dinner, when all the men handed their dirty plates to their female partners and retired to the living room, and nobody said a word because it was just normal.

I feel like feminism is always playing catch-up. We leap out of one patriarchal box, where gendered oppression is normal and natural, and into another one - often also racialized and divided by colonization and class war - where it's somebody else's daily collective struggle, not our own. Feminism for a new decade is a beautiful idea; I'd love to find that feeling that we're acting in the present and actually determining a few realities of our own.

That said, young women in Japan dropping out of the heterosexual agenda = fabulous, good for them!! 

Hi Sarah,

That is fairly jaw-dropping...it just didn't occur to them that a woman might have a graduate degree? Where have they been for the last few decades?

But with that said, the last statistics that I saw was that women have outnumbered men in earning undergraduate degrees for about ten years now - about three years ago the split was about 55-45 in favor of women and rising. But the number of women earning graduate degrees was still significantly lower than that of men, with fewer than 40% of graduate degrees going to women each year, if I recall correctly.

Since graduate degrees have a fairly tight link to higher earning power and higher social power, women in general have a way to go. Especially since I've also heard stats saying that women are much more likely to drop out of a graduate program than men, because other life demands (such as much higher expectations for caregiving of children and elderly parents) take too much time and they can't get the school work done.

I'm also not sure whether to laugh or cry when I see Sarah Palin, a "career" woman, promoting a party and platform that says that a proper woman's role is at home, with her life centered around her husband and children. If the women involved with the Tea Party in the US aren't an example of the oppressed internalizing the oppressor and oppressing themselves, I don't know what is.

I wouldn't say that young women in Japan are opting out of the heterosexual agenda so much as the patriarchal agenda, but yes, I'm cheering them on, too. I wonder how long it will be before the patriarchs actually notice what they're doing and why...