Recently, I was reminded the topic of rule breaking and how being deviant differs depending on a person's culture. Depending on your culture and where you live in the world, different actions can be considered deviant or as breaking the rules of society. It is important to remember you can’t judge all deviant acts by the same standards but of the standards of the culture you are examining.
Assignment About College Students Breaking The Rules
My own examples of how cultures can label different behaviors as deviant come from my years as a college level instructor. I had the honor of teaching at two different universities in two different states: Tennessee and South Dakota. I taught Sociology classes and regularly assigned my students an essay asking them to analyze the subject of deviance. In their papers my students had to write about how they themselves had been deviant and the social consequences of their actions. I like this assignment because it helps students apply course material to their own lives to reflect on their own roles and actions in society.
This assignment has always been educational for me as an instructor because it has opened my eyes as to how I perceive deviance based on my social experiences living in Tennessee. From my students I learned that I have a tendency to view deviance in ways people raised in South Dakota might not share. It has also brought to light cultural differences when comparing deviance in South Dakota and Tennessee.
Deviant Acts Differ In Significant Ways
For me growing up in Tennessee, I have never seen underage drinking as being that big of a deal. I remember back in high school it was the norm to come to school on Monday morning and listen to the other kids talk about the wild parties they had been to, how drunk they had gotten, and how cops showed up to bust up the party. I also was influenced my mom’s relatives. I have relatives who believe it is okay for kids to drink underage but only if they are with family members when they are given alcohol. Because of my experiences in Tennessee, I didn't perceive underage drinking being as horrible an act of deviance until I started teaching in South Dakota at the age of 25.
For me to read South Dakota students papers I was surprised to realize they thought disrespecting their parents was the number one deviant act to commit. I read papers about lying to parents, mouthing off to parents, and not doing their chores around the house. These were deviant paper topics students in Tennessee never wrote about.
Rural Society Versus Urban Society
The idea of disrespecting parents as a large form of deviance is fascinating to me. When I refer to South Dakoa students disrespecting their parents I am referring to behaviors such as lying, sneaking out after hours, making bad grades in school, and other similar behaviors. I had never been in rural areas before I moved to South Dakota. The way society is structured there it is more controlled and strict than where I am from. The consequences of behaviors I would define as only moderately deviant are greater than they would be in my hometown.
I had never really had to think about how rural societies are structured in comparison to society in urban areas until I experience both cultures. In South Dakota most students from that state grew up in small towns (some as small as a few hundred people). Most students grew up on farms and were required to work on their family farm since childhood. It isn't uncommon to see kids sheltered by their parents with little experience living in the bigger world outside their small towns.
Where I grew up in Tennessee, I was surrounded by a much larger population and large cities. Crime and more severe forms of deviance were normal for me to see. Kids in Tennessee weren't as controlled by their parents. They didn't have to work on family farms. In large cities the culture can be extremely different than in rural cities.
I Had To Change As A Teacher
This assignment made me realize that as a teacher my students may not completely understand many of the examples I use in class because they may have never been exposed to the forms of deviance I was exposed to in my life. When in South Dakota I had to change my lectures to include more rural forms of deviance and had to seek advice from other instructors in order to learn the culture in South Dakota better so I can reach my students using their own culture.
It's funny how I assigned my students a paper to help them learn but in return I was also educated about a culture I didn't know existed. Looking back at my time in South Dakota I am still bemused by how upset it made some students feel to lie to their parents or to forget doing their chores. Now that I am back in Tennessee I see kids acting in far worse ways and it is interesting to compare how different cultures can be.
