How people act when you change their role

I´m this kind of person who think people have strong beliefs and values and it´s difficult to change their minds and behaviors but in Stanford experiment you can see this is not true at all;  if you change their roles, people can become cruel –guards-, or  out of control –prisoners-, in a short period of time.

Something similar, but not so strong, happened to me a few years ago, when I was 20. I was making a course. I had to go to a small village to work for 5 days. We were around 20 people. We went to a hotel where we had to share the bedroom.

Immediately people adopt their role: the role of a “responsible” adult and the role of a “free” adult.

It was summer, the temperature was high; we worked hard the all day. At night, the “free adults” wanted to go to bars and enjoy the night and the “responsible” adults wanted to rest. The conflict begun: as we slept all in the same room, some people arrived at 4 or 5 in the morning and wanted to talk, laugh or play cards in the room while other people tried to rest.

During breakfast of the first day we talked about this problem; people who want to rest said:  “don´t you see this is the only place we have to sleep? Go away and let us sleep!” But people who prefer not sleeping said: “it´s not our problem. This is our room too! We have the right to have fun as much as we want in our room”.

Well, it was impossible to get agreed. All knew their rights but nobody knew their obligations.  The most important thing that I learnt in this experience was people think completely different from each other and what for you is right and logical, for others,  it is not.

PEER GROUPS

Hello Everybody!

I want to talk about my peer group.

Well, actually is a little bit complicated to visit my friend as I usually did, the answer: I have 3 children and very little free time.

I have two different kind of friends: one with old friends in different situation as I (we often call us but we see little) and another with childs with similar ages as mine.

Something curious with the second peer group is the status is very similar: young couple with two or three children, living in similar houses, our child go to same school or similar and very similar economic and culture status.

Anyway, I don´t have a big group of friends but I know they are  best friends because, as I  have seen, I can call them for good or bad events and although the time have passed.

I think  our control mechanism are very soft, they are  based on the amount of time without hearing from each other and to give views on specific situations or problems because your opinions affect to a complete family and you must to be careful.

I don´t want to imagine what would happen when a couple of friends get divorced or one friend steal the husband/wife of another friend… I wish I  have not see it!

ALIEN REPORTS: How human educate children

Hello I´m from planet XYZ and I´m arrived to planet earth to see how humans learn.

How do you call the place to learn?

Ahhh, schools, this is how you call it; but why your schools are buildings? Don´t you study your planet, environment, plants, weather? Inside buildings you can´t see your planet and the sky. If you don´t know your planet perfectly, how can you organize it?

And what about little ones? As I can see they like to run, play and move all the time. Why do you keep them in rooms, stand still or seated to learn? Is this a good way?

I have seen in your learnt rooms there is an big human –how do you call him? Oh teacher–

Sometimes the teacher is talking and writting all the time and little humans are trying to look, but I can see some of them yawn and trying not to close their eyes. Are this little humans learning? They don´t participate in their own education?
This is quite different as how it is in my planet!