Charismatic people carry a special talisman that many of us introverts wish we could borrow. They can walk into rooms and bask in the attention of watchful eyes . They can speak with authority on topics they're the least familiar with. They can tell jokes that aren't knee-slappers. Nature gave them this birthright and they get to carry it with them for the rest of their lives. The rest of us, who often feel somewhat cheated with our dowries, can only make up for our lack of charisma through stagecraft. And though most of us can wear masks of confidence when we speak to audiences, we remove those masks and see our quieter selves in our mirrors when we return to our comfort zones.
Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking gives me much needed insight in the way I see myself in that mirror. Cain specifically reveals culture's lust for charismatic personalities through her research on extroversion and introversion. It's research that can be directly applied to our teaching practices.
While I was working on my MA degree in Writing Pedagogy, I briefly worked as a bookkeeper for a printing company, and this is where I was given a book that was going to change me forever, my new boss announced. I guess he wanted to cultivate a more exuberant number cruncher. He smiled lavishly and placed Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People in my hands. He asked me to read the book over the weekend and be ready to discuss it the following week. It's not ironic or just coincidental that Cain begins her first chapter "The Rise of the 'Mighty Likeable Fellow': How Extroversion Became to Cultural Ideal" with Carnegie's book. The personality driven culture we live in today, where parents have been taught to praise and reward personality attributes over traditional attributes was and still is in full force.
After the publication of Carnegie's book, according to Cain, children were taught by well-meaning parents that the socialization of their children was the single most important precursor to success. "The experts advised parents to socialize children well and schools to change their emphasis from book-learning to 'assisting and guiding the developing personality.'" Even the White House promoted this new belief with a slogan of "A healthy personality for every child," Cain adds (27).
It's one of the reasons I didn't attend Harvard Business School--I say this tongue and cheek--where introversion is almost impossible to find among its students and where this mantra dominates the cultural landscape: "Speak with conviction. Even if you believe something only fifty-five percent, say it as you believe it a hundred percent" (Cain 47). This sets up a culture where personality rather than substance is rewarded. Those of us who don't stand on stages and shout out our ideas usually get pushed aside for those who do. Donald Trump seems a perfect example of this.
How does a culture who sees introversion as a type of poverty shape the destinies of its young people, and how have schools promoted that mantra? Those are the questions I will be exploring.
I believe the "culture of personality" has infiltrated our classroom practices in more ways than we know. We have all been in classrooms where our teachers continually called on those students who enjoyed speaking. They were the darlings in the room, the personality standouts. Students who needed more think time or were just hesitant to speak got left behind in the class discussion. Many teachers just assumed these students had little to share. Boy did these teachers miss out. And as a teacher, I missed out, too, when I allowed by quiet students to sit quietly in my classes.
ReplyDeleteHigh school yearbooks unintentionally promote personality. It's the extroverts who seek the limelight and place themselves before the cameras. Those who shy away due to their natures realize their pictures will probably only appear on one page. I can't help but wonder how many of my fellow introverts flipped through the pages of their yearbooks and became a little embarrassed, especially when our parents asked us to show us the pages where our pictures appeared.
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