Obama, McCain & Social Thinking
Thursday, 06 November 2008 16:00

Thinking about thinking; this has become a focused aspect of my life. Fascinating to watch people think and then see how they respond to those thoughts. The presidential debates are a perfect case in point. Everyone in the audience was well dressed and well behaved, but I can't imagine there was a single person listening to the debate who did not have some irritated or even angry thought based on what was being said (or not said!). Even the candidates who were slinging mud (very subtly) at each other stayed composed; smirking when criticized but not showing sadness or obvious anger. How did everyone in that room learn such social self-control? From the audience to the candidates, from the pundits to the camera operators, no one yelled out "enough already; we can't stand to hear another put-down!", but that doesn't mean that most people didn't think that!

 

Classroom teachers don't directly teach these skills, nor do parents. At best we adults help students learn the importance of group self-control by nudging along its development with subtle encouragement. But even without adult input, kids seem to work out a lot of this in their play even as young as preschoolers. People instinctively depend on each other to help us all co-exist in a relatively peaceful and productive way. Children and adults depend on each person's social brain to recognize the importance of self-control given that we should each realize that we influence others' thoughts. How people think about us affects how they feel about us, which affects how they treat us. Admittedly, this social thinking formula is over-simplified but it is a solid starting place for teaching this information.

 

The purpose of my blogs from here on out will not be to reiterate what is provided for free elsewhere on this website (please explore as you wish!), but to provide a forum for me to describe my latest thinking. Here are some examples:

  • Showing your older students clips from the presidential debates and having them explore the content from a number of different angles can provide contemporary lessons in social thinking.
  • Look at the language used in the debates. All the "put-downs" used by both candidates were subtle, requiring the listener to infer what the speaker meant by what he said.
  • Ask you students: would McCain keep mentioning that Obama had a friendly relationship with a man who had previously been known to be a terrorist? What is he trying to make us think? Interpreting language requires perspective taking, in that you had to try to interpret the motives of the candidate to figure out what his words meant.
  • Then watch McCain's concession speech and figure now what his words meant. He looked sadder during the concession speech but he said nicer things? What's up with that? Now what was his intention? Work with students on trying to figure out what people's motives are prior to trying to figure out what they mean by what they say.
  • Also have your students watch the debates to try and see the mismatch in the non-verbal information being stated. Both McCain and Obama were most likely to smile during the debates when they had just been criticized by the other.

Geesh..is this confusing. But this is exactly the information we need to use to help our students learn about the complexities of the social mind for our highest-level student who needs to learn about the expectations of the adolescent and adult social world. Social thinking goes way beyond teaching social rules!

© Michelle Garcia Winner 2011
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