What is "Cool"?

“Cool”

Another aspect of the pecking order that fascinates children is the concept of what it means to be “cool”. Children spend a lot of thought, and an incredible amount of emotional energy, on this idea. It is one of the biggest motivators of social activity among children (also adults). It is also one of the most misunderstood social concepts children have to deal with. If children actually understand what it means to be "cool", they can concentrate their efforts in the proper direction, instead of wasting their time and energy on a false quest.

There was a popular song a few years ago which described a person as being “fashionably sensitive but too cool to care.” This is an interesting point, and it illustrates the dichotomy between who a cool person really is, and what the kids think is cool.

Because caring leaves you vulnerable, and kids see "cool" people as not being vulnerable, they conclude that someone who is "cool" is someone who doesn’t care. To create this image, they try to look tough and unfeeling. Unfortunately, many are successful at this, and are able to climb the pecking order on the basis of their pretended (or real) insensitivity. Their success does not make them happy people. Because they got to the top by fighting against others for their position, they always have to be worried about staying there.

If you look at the teenagers who are truly cool, the ones who are mature and confident, the ones who are looked up to as leaders, you will see that the popular image is right about one thing. The kids who are cool are less vulnerable. Where the popular image is wrong is in thinking that people who are cool don’t care about other people. People who are cool are free to care about other people, are free to be sensitive, because they truly don’t care.

They don’t care about the pecking order.

They aren’t always looking over their shoulders to see who is going to approve or disapprove of them, because their own self-image tells them who they are and what they should be doing.

I find discussion with children about this very useful, so that they are aware of the different types of “cool”.

Once again, it takes time. It’s the kind of thing you spend hours at, as a teacher or as a parent. You don’t want to sit down and talk about it for hours. Fifteen minutes or so, on a regular basis, makes a great deal of difference. For parents, it’s the kind of topic that you hit once in a while, sitting around the dinner table.

What? your family doesn’t sit around the dinner table? Well, you have a major problem. Statistics show that a high percentage of successful families, with happy, successful children, regularly sit down, all together, at the dinner table. In spite of hockey, figure skating, soccer, gymnastics, bridge night, and homework.

Do it. It’s fun.

Another way of looking at “cool” is to consider that self-confidence comes with maturity, and the "cool" children are just a bit more mature than the others in this respect. If you get the opportunity to work with a group of children who are truly "cool", you see them as calmer, more caring of each other, less concerned with the pecking order, and more focused on group objectives.

Actually, I think what I have just described is also a truly effective adult work environment.

I had a class once that had a fairly high percentage of “difficult” students. It was a disparate group, from a wide range of backgrounds. It included some trailer trash, some ignored rich kids, and a good sprinkling of positive, well-adjusted students. What made them different from other classes was that, to a greater degree than most, they bought into my program of de-emphasizing the pecking order.

One great result of this buy-in was that some of the more difficult boys who excelled at sports, forgot about being stars, and became focused on helping the weaker members of their team. This caused the ability level of the whole class to improve at a faster rate. The payoff for the good players was that the quality of play increased, so they had more fun. They could actually pass the ball to one of the weaker girls, and she wouldn’t immediately lose it to the other team.

Of course this meant that they passed more often, the weaker players got stronger, and the learning spiral rose steeply. This happened in a more subtle way in academic subjects, especially in cooperative projects, where the weaker academic students had more success. As you might suspect, if a smart girl has just been helped on the basketball court by an underachieving boy, she is much more likely to give him a chance to participate in a group activity in which she is the leader. The boy, who has given her credibility in a situation he feels is important, is much more likely to accept her leadership.

For me, the crowning glory was the school Christmas concert. The other teachers, and I suspect many of the students and parents, were absolutely amazed to see four of the toughest grade six boys on stage wearing tutus, dancing ballet. Needless to say, they brought down the house.

To my knowledge, those boys got nothing but positive responses, even from their peers. I told them they would be funny, they believed me, and they were. They bought into the program, they took a big risk, and they achieved success in a very public way. The boost to their self-esteem was fantastic, and it coloured the rest of their year in school. I’d like to think it had some effect on the rest of their lives. They had learned a slightly different way to be "cool".

The funny thing was, I had not been thinking of the effect of this performance on my position in the school. I had been focused on the objective, which was to make the performance as good as possible, and I was completely surprised at the reaction of the other teachers. As far as they were concerned, I had taken a big risk, one they wouldn’t have dared, and had left myself vulnerable to failure. So, when I succeeded, they thought it was pretty cool. From comments I picked up in succeeding years, I gather that performance did a lot for my position with both teachers and parents, and also gave credibility to the Arts in a school which was highly academic-oriented.

So everybody won.

If more adults and children had a better idea of what it means to be "cool", and if we could eliminate the idea that "cool" means unfeeling and uncaring, I think we would have a lot more truly cool kids.


Next Posting: The difference between acceptance and praise.