Module 3: Socialization and the social functions of education (Notes)
It is the continuous process that begins immediately after birth and ends at death. An individual learns the group defined ways of behaving
It is therefore a process of building or adapting and internalizing group values in the society.
Generally, socialization is the process through which we learn to live in a society and learn the values of the society and ways of thinking, doing and living that are deemed to be desirable.
Read different definitions of socialization from different scholars summarized in Aggarwal, (1995:159)
Perspectives of Defining Socialization
a) As a Process
- Socialization as a process involves a series of actions which are involved in learning new norms.
- It is the process by which people learn the ways of life of a particular group.
- In every group, one has to learn the rules, expectations and truths of that group whether the group is family, army or state.
b) Societal view
- In this perspective, socialization means inducting all individual members into its moral norms, attitudes, values, language motives, and social roles.
- It means social and cultural continuity are attained.
- Therefore, socialization is a process whereby people acquire personality and learn a way of life of the society.
c) Individual Perspective
- For the individual perspective, socialization provides skills and habits necessary for acting and participating within the society.
- It is the fulfilment of individual potentiality for personal growth and development.
- Socialization refers to all kinds of learning regardless of setting or age of an individual.
- The most important time when socialization occurs between the ages of 1 – 10 years.
Nature vs. Nurture
These are key concepts which are important in defining the term socialization.
Nature refers to something which is innate or inborn. So, it is the role of innate tendencies in the process of socialization. Nurture, on the other side, refers to the role of the environment in the process of socialization. There is a complex interaction between nature and nurture in the process of socialization. The debate between nature and nurture explores the relationship between cultural environment (social environment) and biological factors (hereditary factors) in the process of socialization.
Reflection: which of the two factors do you think overrides the other in the process of socialization?
Studies on Socialization
a) Twin Studies
- It was conducted by Applebaum and Chambliss (1997).
- They described that when twins are separated, each develops his/her own behaviour.
- Criminal records of twins show no correlation between the genetic factor and criminal behaviour.
b) Study on Feral Children
- Feral children are those children who are or were reared by animals or lived in the wild on their own.
- It was conducted by Applebaum and Chambliss (1997).
- It was about a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from very young age, and has no little or experience of human care, love or social behaviour and crucially of human language.
- The study reported that such children developed either their own way of behaviour or animal like behaviour.
- Feral children were reported to lack social skills like how to use toilets; they also had lack of interest in human activity.
c) The Study on Institutionalized Children
- Institutionalized children are those children who were/are reared in institutions.
- Most of these children are either orphans or living in difficult environments.
- They were taken to be taken care of by different institutions.
- The studies found that those children developed different behaviours from those who are or were reared by a family.
Characteristics of Socialization Process (Aggarwal 1995:160)
- Socialization is a continuous and endless.
- Socialization is a visible and non visible process.
- Socialization is a deliberate and unconscious process.
- A democratic approach to socialization is preferable to an autocratic approach.
- Socialization process aims at enabling the individual to become a worthy member of a society.
- Socialization improves the individual as well as the society.
- There are several agencies and groups of socialization: the family, the peer groups, the club, the media and the school.
Types of Socialization
a) Primary Socialization
- It occurs when a child learns attitudes, values and actions appropriate to be practiced as the member of a particular society.
- It is influenced by the immediate family and friends.
- It sets the ground work for all future socialization.
b) Secondary Socialization
- It is the process of learning the appropriate behaviour as a member of a group within the larger society.
- It is reinforced by socialization agents like school, religion, and peers.
- It takes place outside the home environment.
- Individuals learn how to act properly in the social group that they want to be member(s).
- It is associated with teenagers and adults and involves smaller changes than in primary socialization.
- Examples of secondary socialization include: entering a new profession or relocating to a new environment or society.
c) Anticipatory Socialization
It is the process of socialization in which a person ‘rehearses’ for future position, role, occupation and social relationship. For example, individuals living as husband and wife before marriage.
d) Re – socialization
- It is the process of discarding former behavioural pertains and accepting the new ones as part of transition in ones life.
- It occurs throughout human circle.
Examples of re – socialization include total institution (a term coined by Ervin Golffman, 1961) – people are isolated from the rest of the society and manipulated by an administrative staff. The other example includes young men and women leaving home and joining a military or a religious convent internalizing the beliefs and rituals of a new faith. Also, transsexual is another example of re - socialization. Transsexual is the process in which an individual learns to function in a dramatically altered gender role.
- It has an ability to re-socialize people either voluntarily or involuntarily like prisons, military, mental hospitals and convents.
e) Gender Socialization
- It refers to the learning of behaviour or attitude considered appropriate for the given sex.
- The family plays important roles in enforcing gender socialization. For example, boys learn to be boys and girls to be girls through, say, toys and activities, communicating gender ideals, and interaction.
f) Peer or Group Socialization
- The group or peers to which an individual belongs has a great influence in one’s behaviour.
- Peer groups influence ones personality and behaviour in adulthood.
- Adolescent, for example, spend more time with peers than with parents. In so doing, they learn values and norms of the group.
g) Organizational Socialization
- It is the process whereby the new employees learn the knowledge and skills necessary to assume his or her roles in the organization.
- New employees learn about the organization and its history, values, jargon, culture and procedures. They also learn about their work group, the specific people they work with, their own role in the organization, and the skills needed for their job.
- Organizational socialization functions as a control system in that new comers learn to internalize and obey organizational values and practices.
h) Racial Socialization
- It is the development process by which children acquire the behaviours, perceptions, values, and attitudes of an ethnic group, and come to see themselves and others as members of a group.
i) Natural Socialization
- It occurs when infants and youngsters explore, play and discover the social world around them.
Foundations or Basis for Socialization
The foundations or basis for socialization are conditions or requirements for socialization to take place. They include:
a) Absence of Instinct
- Instinct is the relative complex behaviour pattern that is biologically fixed for different species. It is an innate drive in an organism to satisfy its basic needs or it is a natural tendency for people and animals to behave in a particular way using the knowledge and abilities that they were born with rather then thought or training.
- A man has no true instinct, but has reflexes (natural movement of a part of body in response to something).
- By reflexes, the man’s behaviour does not depend much on biological factors but on the environment.
- Instinct limits the ability of an organism to learn and act.
b) Childhood Dependency
- A man has a long period of physical dependency right from infancy to late childhood or beyond.
- Through childhood dependency, a man acquires values, norms, and beliefs of those whom he or she depends. These values and norms will enable him or her live in the society of those whom she or he depends.
c) Capacity to learn
- Human beings have capacity to learn from their environment as well as innate intellectual dispositions.
- An individual with high capacity to learn is able to socialize or to be socialized easily.
- An individual with low capacity to learn has low sociability capacities. It is difficult for them to socialize or to be socialized.
d) Language Development
- Language facilitates communication of ideas and skills from one society to another.
- Without language, there will be no communication and no mutual understanding between and among individuals.
- Language is an important element of culture. It includes speech, writing, and symbols like gestures.
- Language describes and shapes culture.
e) Group Context
- Socialization involves communication of ideas, beliefs, and skills among groups of people.
- A child has to adapt to himself or herself to the ideals of others.
- The process of socialization presupposes the context of a group like a family, workplace, and peer groups.
Agents of Socialization
Agents of socialization refer to people or groups and or institutions that influence self concept, emotions, attitudes and behaviour. There are different agents of socialization including:
a) The Family
- The family is the most important agent of socialization.
- The family whether monogamous or polygamous, nuclear or extended is responsible, among other things, to determine ones attitudes towards religion, language and carrier goals.
- The role of the family is to provide a child with basic orientations and guidance such as how to use toilets, table manner, and greetings.
b) Peer Groups
- Peer group is a group of individuals of approximately the same age and social status who associate each other basically as equals.
- The group introduces an individual into a set of social values that pattern the group.
- It introduces an individual into a wider society.
c) School
- The school is an agent responsible for socializing different groups of young people.
- The school develops the attitudes, skill and values of 7 Rs (Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, Rights, Responsibilities, Relationships, and Recreation).
- The socialization process in a school is realized though it’s curricular, co – curricular and extra – curricular activities.
- The class provides an opportunity for children to mix in an egalitarian group. As the result, children adjust their behaviour to fit the class norms.
- The school helps children stop behaving distinctively in terms of caste, colour, and creed; and in all forms of prejudices and indifferences.
d) Religion
- Religions introduce individuals to certain set of beliefs and values pertaining to them.
- The introduce individuals to their dos and don’ts.
e) Legal System
- The legal system pressurizes individuals to conform and obey certain laws or norms of the community.
- They shape individuals into being acceptable members of the society.
f) Penal System
- The penal system acts as an agent of socialization to prisoners and the guards.
- Since prisons are in separate environment from a normal society, it is obvious that they form their own communities and social norms.
- Inmates are socialized into acceptable norms of the prison and the society in general.
g) Mass Media
- Mass media are means of delivering impersonal communications directed to a vast audience.
- Mass media have enormous effects on our attitudes and behaviours.
- The mass media programs may shape people into certain ways of behaving, believing, and thinking.
h) Language
- People socialize through language.
- It is through language that people can learn the skills, knowledge, and norms of a certain group.
- Language facilitates communication of ideas from the source to the destination.
- Knowing the language of the group is important in order to get socialized.
i) Economic System
- Socialization within an economic system is the process of learning the consequences of the economic decisions.
Socialization impacts decision regarding acceptable alternatives, establishment of dominant values and the nature of involvement in consumption.
Essential Conditions for a School to Socialize a Child (Aggarwal, 1995:161)
- There should be a democratic social climate in the school.
- There should be effective interpersonal relationship.
- There should be a motivated learning situation.
- There should be a school – community interrelationships.
- There should be students’ participation and involvement in school administration.
- There should be a rich programme of co curricular activities.
Characteristics of a School as a Socializing Agent
a) A school provides an intensity of social contact and frequency of occurrence
- A child spends more time in schools than in other businesses. For example in Tanzania, a child spends 7 years in primary schools, 4 years in ordinary secondary schools, 2 years in advanced secondary schools, 2+ years in tertially education, and 3+ years in university education. In so doing, a school has an opportunity to impart different skills, behaviours, attitudes or norms to the child
- So, it can be argued that children spend relatively shorter time in other activities like worshipping than they do in schools.
- Therefore, a child or person becomes more familiar to his/her teacher than to other people.
b) The Standardized School Environment
- The setting in which children do their activities is highly uniform. For example, class activities are uniform, teacher and student interaction (a teacher stands in front of the students).
- The uniformity in the school environment makes children think and act in an egalitarian way and thus interact each other more easily.
c) Compulsory Nature of Attendance
- Children are required to attend school in a manner that is defined by a school or the ministry.
- The attendance is enforced by the laws of the country, ministry, or a school.
- The compulsory nature of attendance makes children feel obliged to socialize through schools.
- In Tanzanian primary and secondary schools there are attendance registers which enforce pupils’ attendance to school.
d) Unmatched Social Intimacy
- A school has higher level of social intimacy developed in a very long period of time as individuals associate themselves overtime.
- Children have ideally one target as opposed to other social gatherings like in bars, clubs, and buses.
Roles of the Teacher in the Socialization of the Child (Aggarwal, 1995:161-163)
A teacher can play a vital role in the socialization of the child. He or she may influence the development of child’s personality development. As a socializer, a teacher can do the following:
- Organizing community activities like camps and common meals.
- Cooperating with parents on the matters related to proper socialization of the child.
- By direct teaching the acceptable and non acceptable norms in the society.
- Organizing study tours like visiting museums, national parks.
- Involving children in social events like their own birthdays, anniversaries, and others of the like.
- The introduction of common dress (uniforms) in schools makes pupils feel that they are one despite their differences in terms of ethnicity, religious beliefs, family background and economic status.
Social Functions of Formal Education
The functions of formal education can be subsumed under 2 categories: Manifest and Latent functions.
a) Manifest Functions
The manifest functions are kinds of functions which are explicit (they can be seen). Such functions include:
- Expanding socialization process initiated by parents and kinship group through re socialization and relearning.
- Transmission of specialized skills by specialized institutions and persons beyond family or kinsmen. For example, in vocational training colleges, skills like carpentry and plumbing can not be taught in a family.
- Training in research and application of research results.
- Sorting and sifting the educates for more specialized and often more limited occupation through tests, exams, assignments, and interviews.
b) Latent Function of a School
The latent functions are those functions which are hidden or implicit. They include the following:
- Widening of individuals cycles and networks.
- Enables one to make, develop, and keep contacts of others.
- Custodial function.
- Helps individuals to build up social status. People tend to evaluate individual’s status by the nature and amount of formal education and institutions they attended.
- Expands marriage market
Aims of Socialization
From the societal point of view, socialization aims at several things. Among them are:
a) Instilling a sense of belongingness.
- A child feels that he or she is part and parcel of a certain group.
- It establishes standards and norms of behaviour against the standards of the group.
- The standard of the group whose membership includes individuals commonly refers to as ‘significant status’. In such referent group such as a family, and close friends, the individual evaluates themselves against the values, beliefs or ways of conduct held by the group. The individual thus develops to become the ‘mirror’ of the group to which they belong and has the strong stake. This conforms to a Chinese saying ‘I am because you are and because you are, therefore, I know how I am’.
- According to R.E Park and E.W Burges (1921), in their book entitled ‘introduction to the sense of sociology made the following assertion: Man was not born human, but only through slow and laborious contact or integration and cooperation and conflict with his or her fellows that he or she attains the distinctive qualities of human nature
b) Inculcating Basic Disciplines
- After a child is born, people around him or her inculcate values, beliefs, and behaviours.
- A child learns the values and norms from members around him. So, the family members like mother, elders, and siblings play major roles in socializing a child.
- Socialization works to discipline individual and creates rationality in their relationship with their environment.
c) Instilling Aspirations
- The process of socialization creates in an individual the long term perspectives, imaginations and desires like a desire to be a good father, good teacher, and a good trader.
- The society transmits not only the general cultural values that define its own way of life but also more specific aspirations often bearing on the roles of aspired status. In so doing, the individual comes to associate positively with individuals in the society or in their immediate environment they have come to appreciate.
d) Teaching Social Roles and Supportive Attitudes
- Group membership requires not only an ability to take account of others in social relations but also a more specific ability to play specialized roles like those of a leader. Each of the roles specifies the virtues, feelings, attitudes and personality traits appropriate to it.
e) Teaching Skills of Real Life
- Socialization takes place in order to provide an individual with basic preparations for participation in adult hood activities.
- Socialization enables one to develop certain competencies by which they might in turn render services or functions needed in group life.
- Development of such skills and life trade is associated with particular members or groups acknowledged in a society to posses those competencies and skills they could transfer to the youngsters for posterity. For example, hunters, gatherers, iron workers and smith, masonry, warriors and court chronicles.
- In modern times of formal schooling, development of specialized competencies and skills has largely been late to specialized training institutions like medical schools, teachers’ colleges and polytechnic colleges like VETA in Tanzania.
Social Functions of Formal Education and the Historical Antecedents
Socialization has the function of education. In education, socialization can be expressed in the light of the following scholars.
a) Emile Durkheim
- He contends that the function of education in socialization is exercised by adults to those who are not yet socialized.
- In brief, education is the socialization of the younger generation.
- The main objective of education is to arouse and develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual, and moral traits that are demanded of him by the society and the special milieu for which he is especially destined.
b) Brown
- Education is the consciously controlled process whereby changes in behaviour are produced in the person and through the person within the group.
- Education, in the highest sense, takes place when external controls have been accepted as conviction by the person and have thus become internal controls.
- Education makes participation in the total process of interaction in terms of various socially desirable values effective.
Micro processes and Dynamics in Educational Setting
- They refer to minor activities or sub cultures or events that take place in a small scale environment like classroom, playground, or the school.
- In educational context, a school has complex micro-processes which may be manifest or latent running together in an open or hidden curriculum.
- According to Dewey (n.d), a school is a microcosm (something with all the features and qualities of something much larger) of the wider society which continuously mirrors the value systems and occupations of the whole society.
- He further argues that the school is primarily a social institution and education is a social process. Thus, the school is simply a form of community life.
- A school must represent real life of the society. It exemplifies the existing social life it is a complex process where a child is overwhelmed with multiplicity of activities which are going on in the school.
According to Dewey, schools are expected to perfume the following functions:
- To provide the scope for attractive basic activities for children enough to be able to compensate for the partial educational opportunities of the modern home – a school must be an extension of the child’s home and not a separate camp.
- It reflects the wider society through the land and range of activities selected by physiological consideration if they are reality and purpose of their children. The school community relationship makes the resources available for selected studies and learning experiences. The society becomes an educative one while the school provides both formal and informal education.
- Schools pose challenges to learners to think and experiment and provide for individual tasks that are performed in accomplishment of group purposes. In encountering the nature outside the school, and the simple experiment in and outside the school, learners will familiarize themselves with the environment.
- Schools encourage and foster group cooperation and group activities where each learner have an opportunity to argue, experiment and test for the benefit of group as the whole.
According to Philip Jackson (n.d), the micro processes include language and symbolism in the classroom interaction, curriculum, teaching and learning transaction and formation of school or college sub culture.
a) Language and Symbolism in the Classroom Interaction
- Language is a biologically given potentiality of man.
- Through language, one can internalize the attitudes and norms of others towards him or her and the environment.
- Language facilitates interpersonal communication and mutual understanding in the classroom.
Edward Sapir (1884 – 1939) and his student (Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897 – 1941) developed two principles related to language: linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity.
> Linguistic Determinism
- It presupposes that language shapes the way people think.
- The language provides a framework for thoughts and it is difficult to think outside this framework. In other words, language determines the way we think.
- The way we use language is determined by the culture in which we are.
> Linguistic Relativity
- It presupposes that different cultures have different world views and it is language that triggers these differences.
- Lyons (1981) adds that the world views are unique to a certain language and incompatible with those in other languages.
- Distinctions found in one language are not found in another one. For example while Swahili language has several words to denote father, like "baba mdogo", "baba mkubwa", and "baba mzazi", English has only one word ‘father’ (baba) and all the "baba mdogo" and "baba mkubwa" are collectively referred to as ‘uncle’.
b) Curriculum
- Curriculum is a plan or program of educational activities designed to orient learners towards achieving intended goals and objectives.
- It describes what a teacher should do, experiences that a learner is expected to be exposed.
- The curriculum is divided into disciplines (subjects) and topics or modules.
- Concerning socialization, Njabili 1999:3 maintains that the school curriculum include not only the available curriculum subjects but also all other educational encounters related to personal related to personal relationship, moral attitudes and social habits – hidden curriculum.
- With the context of formal education, there are three different curriculum orientations: society oriented curriculum. It is the curriculum that is societal oriented. Its main proponents include Plato, John Dewey, Aggrey, and Nyerere. The learner oriented curriculum. It is the curriculum that puts much emphasis on the needs of the learner. It was advocated by, among others, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Frederick Froebel, and Jean Pestalozzi. The subject matter oriented curriculum, on the other side, assumes that the subject matter must fit the context of the society. It was advocated by, among others, John Dewey and Jerome Brunner.
- It is suggested that the curriculum should integrate all the three orientations: the society, the subject matter, and the learner.
c) Teaching and Learning Transaction
- In formal schooling, the implementation of curriculum whether societal, learner or subject matter oriented, involves kinds of personal participants like teachers, pupils, and supporting personnel like auxiliary police and accountants.
- Any teaching and learning task assumes important dimensions which include the process, the teacher, the subject matter, the learner, the social system, a spatial setting, and time. All of these interact each other over a certain period of time.
d) School or College Sub culture
- The school is the constituent part of the society and hence it shares the language culture (s) of the society.
- Being an institution, it develops its own sub culture (s) and these sub cultures emerge out of students’ attitudes.
- There are five types of subcultures that emerge at the school or college: collegiate Subculture, Academic subculture, vocational subculture, non conformist or revolutionary subculture and ambivalent subculture.
The Collegiate or Social Subculture
- It is exercised by individuals who happened to be in a particular place and meet in other places. For example, they happened to study together at a particular school and later meet to another place, say; a university.
- Such students do not take school seriously because they consider it as more a socializing than academic area.
Academic Subculture
- It involves students who take the school or college as a serious world of learning.
- Leisure activities outside libraries, lecture theatres or seminar rooms are optional or accidental.
- Students with this sub culture have limited friendship usually narrowed to academic issues only.
- Failure in exams for them is something embarrassing.
Vocational Subculture
- Students with this subculture are interested in job seeking.
- They are in colleges predominantly for job preparation or job searching.
- They always seek information about jobs in the labour market.
- Even course options, for them, are centered on job benefits.
- They spend much of their time discussing about jobs.
Non conformist Subculture
- It involves students who are interested in serious discussions usually against the general consensus.
- They read widely to defend their ideas or positions.
- They tend to be unique and have selective friendship usually with those who support their ideas.
- They are always associated with chaos or strikes in schools due to their unsocializing attributes.
Ambivalent Subculture
- They are neither on the above subcultures.
- They are not ready to say something of their own.
- They are everything but nothing
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