Society makes me think of institutions, hierarchies, and cultures. But now, after this Educational Sociology class, I have realized that society is based on every interaction and shared assumption. Each gesture, eye contact, and intonation manifests dynamics that make up civilization. Now, what I call “ordinary” or “common sense” can be explored through the lens of sociology.

Unwritten rules

When I was in high school, our library had a thick book on etiquette. It detailed the right manners and conduct, from using dining utensils to ending a romantic relationship. But most of our social interactions are not codified into manuals or guidelines. Facial expressions, body movements, and small talk carry volumes day-to-day. 

Throughout my lifetime, I have interacted with people of different backgrounds, ages, and genders. These unwritten rules, as I have come to understand, can make or break relationships. But following them is like walking on eggshells; these rules vary wildly based on upbringing at home and the wider culture. Some people maintain eye contact, while others treat it as disrespectful. Some people are comfortable with touch, while others will consider it harassment and a violation of their private space.

Again, others will say that it is “common sense” that women should initiate a handshake with a man, or that you should not give the impression of staring down your boss. But why is that “common” in the first place? The discussion on Educational Sociology gave me the vocabulary and the framework that help explain why we do and believe this way as Filipinos working in our different circles.

I later learned this has a name. Harold Garfinkel called it ethnomethodology, the study of how ordinary people make sense of their world through the "common-sense knowledge." We tend to only notice these shared understandings when someone breaks them.

And some people break them on purpose. The lesson calls this interactional vandalism: deliberately violating the social rules to assert power over another person. When someone “accidentally” talks over a classmate or stays passive-aggressive, nothing in the school handbook is technically broken. Yet, a simple malicious act has quietly rearranged who stands above and who stands below. It has a recognizable name: bullying.

This knowledge is critical for teachers. If educators seek to “civilize” children by teaching them how to be good citizens, we need strong foundations in these cues and practices that build up our society. We cannot give what we do not have. 

Performers on a stage—status and roles

Sociology has given society many metaphors and comparisons. Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical theory is one of them. We are all like actors with a front-stage and backstage “performance.” Our front-stage side meets social norms when others watch. Meanwhile, backstage lets people set their true selves free. People work hard to separate the two as their “personal” and “professional” selves. They present an idealized version of themselves, polished and enhanced to meet cultural norms. It is reminiscent of the lines that Shakespeare delivered over three hundred years prior: “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances; / And one man in his time plays many parts, 
”

The stage also hands us our social position, which sociology calls a status. Some are ascribed to us at birth; others are achieved through effort. Each status carries a role, the behavior others expect from whoever fills it. I hold several at once—son, organist, editor, teacher, software engineer—and most days they coexist quietly. But they can pull against one another. When a Church duty and a deadline fall on the same afternoon, that is a role conflict between two statuses, and my priority is clear.

My further readings on this theory (since it piqued my interest) state that there are techniques that people use to achieve this: they tend to hide their flaws, treat themselves as exemplars, or misrepresent their credentials.

I don't want to be cynical about people who want to do good. My first instinct was to argue that performance does not have to mean fakery: if the standards we perform are kindness, respect, and peace, then let us pursue them honestly.

However, on a second look, I do not think that is the argument Goffman is making. He is not accusing us of pretending to be good people. He is saying something harder: there is no self standing outside all performance, no unmasked version of us waiting backstage. 

I know that all people have sinned. Nobody is perfect. But I take the theory seriously without despairing over it. If our sincere attempts to surmount our imperfections have produced civility, morals, and goodwill, that is not hypocrisy. That is grace blossoming from brokenness.

The roles of schools

Socialization spans a whole life course: childhood, the teenage years, young and mature adulthood, and old age. Each stage hands us new roles to learn and old ones to release. Family starts us off, peers and media tug at us, and workplaces reshape us later on. But schools wield so much influence during the years when a person is still deciding who they are.

That is a great responsibility. For a decade or more, teachers guide children on what is normal, excellent, and shameful. The rituals and routines of schools are a script that students will keep performing long after they forget where they learned it. If society is built from small, unremembered rules, then the classroom is one of the busiest workshops where those rules are made. 

Handshakes to shakeups

Social norms are rules we never agreed to, taught by people who were themselves taught, carrying an entire history of who may greet whom and how. The same is true of a glance, a seating chart, a grading system, and a word like "slow" said out loud in front of a child.

That is the shakeup this course gave me. Society is not only the institutions, the hierarchies, and the cultures I mentioned at the beginning. Those are real, but they are held up by countless small things that nobody remembers deciding. But before removing fences, say, with reform, shouldn't we ask why those fences were built in the first place? Sociology does not determine which fence is which. But it does show us where and how to look.

Understanding the social order and organizations is not a reason for paralysis but a reason for care. The smallest things we do in a classroom—both the explicitly coded and the unwritten rules—can have a large impact on the students’ future. Even good things like efficiency and predictability have costs when run unchecked, paid by people who did not choose the system and cannot leave it. Students are among them.

Sure, there is a reason to be cynical after studying performative virtues, social power struggles, and pervasive injustice. But our systems inherit the flaws of their parts, unsurprisingly. What I learned most is this: we must stop calling things ordinary simply because we have stopped noticing them. Society is also ours to answer for.