Saturday, November 1, 2014

Peer Power and Pressure

As an adolescent I hardly knew what peer pressure was. I was homeschooled which I believe was a huge factor in reducing peer pressure. I do remember however refusing to wear a certain pair of serviceable non-dress shoes that my mother bought me to wear to church, because all of my church friends wore nice dress shoes. To my great relief she consented to me donating the shoes when my church friends and I were putting together a clothing relief box. Mostly the minimal peer pressure I had was positive. I believe it would have been beneficial for me to have had more social interaction as an adolescent. My parents feared peer pressure much more than they recognized its positive effects.

Another factor in reducing negative peer pressure was going to a church with people from a variety of backgrounds for most of my childhood and early teens. When I was 16 we left my childhood church and went to a more conservative church where everyone was from Amish background and everyone was more like each other. I recognized immediately that peer pressure was much stronger there, if you weren't like everyone else you were the odd one out. I clung to my uniqueness and didn't want to change who I was to fit in, and so I never really did. Here again the peer pressure was mostly positive other than the squashing of individuality. In both of these groups there was never any pressure to drink, smoke, experiment with drugs, steal, or engage in any other criminal activity. If anything the peer pressure was reverse - doing any of those things was not considered cool, smart or fun by my peers.

2 comments:

  1. I think that a lot of times when parents place their children into home schooling it is either for religious purposes or fear of peer pressure, which usually overlap. This makes sense, seeing as how the book talks about the fact that peer pressure is generally thought of in almost all negative terms. Rarely do people think about the positive aspects of peer pressure. This includes me, and probably a lot of our peers before reading this chapter. It's interesting to read about how you would have preferred more socialization in a public school setting. Perhaps this is the beauty of a course such as this one; we're able to learn so much about human development, and ultimately we can place it into the context of our own past lives while using it to form the context of our future lives. I would be interested to learn if you plan to have children, whether or not you will be following in your parents path and homeschooling them, or if you will be less fearful of the impact of peer pressure and place them into public (or private) school? Reading about how you would have maybe preferred a public school setting is interesting. I appreciate your insight on this topic.

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  2. I'm not particularly planning to have children, but if I do I very likely would send them to a private school. I view social interaction among children as much more important than my parents did and also I have some life goals that don't quite mesh with the being a home school mom. I'm not anti-homeschooling just not as pro as my parents, because I do see benefits in sending children to school.

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