Kindness Week

Behaviors that seen during kindness week can be analyzed by using some terms that are found in sociology. One of the things that can help in understanding the behavior of bullies in ethnocentrism, or the view that one's own culture is superior than everyone else's way of doing things. That is why sometimes when a person from a different country arrives, their ideas, beliefs and customs are not always accepted, which can lead to negative behaviors of isolation towards the other person or of mocking their culture.

Contrary to that idea, we sometimes find cultural relativism, which is accepting that there are different ways to understand the world and that our own culture is not the only way of doing things. This is the type of positive behavior that is trying to be enforced in kindness week, accepting others who are different and breaking standards of beauty that society has established.

This week a kind of “norm” or expectation of right behavior has been established to encourage students into being more gentle towards each other. However, This is more of a folkway, because there is no serious punishment for not doing so, which as a consequence has lead some people to not feel the necessity of falling into the spirit. There seems to be a distorting lens in values, or different ideas of how people want society to be (everyone friendly and happy) versus how it actually is (the usual). Some people have not cared about the occasion of the week and continue doing their usual insults. This is because people don't see this week as a strict negative sanction to their behavior , it is really more of a folkway to them, or a norm that is not heavily encouraged that leaves the jokesters without too much trouble. Which in the end, leaves the real culture stay as a cycle of a person being the center of the joke as long as there are people that laugh.

Other people have participated in the activities of the week. The odd socks day, the superhero custom day and wearing purple shirts.  This are symbols to which people attach meaning for the anti-bullying campaign. The trend by which people in the school follow the example of classmates or friends to put on customs in an example of the effects of culture. Going along with the activities of spirit week brings positive sanctions for participating. But the school is also a pluralistic society of its own, so there are many different groups inside the school that have different attitudes towards this week, at the end of the day it all comes down to the different values people have.