I'm going to discuss how socialization comes about. In other words, the process of inheriting preferences. I'll be looking at where they come from and how some indicators are more influential when compared to others.
There are four agents of socialization. These are social arrangements which accomplish socialization. These are the four most common in our society, however, there can be and are others. They teach newcomers, mostly babies, kids, about the culture. They assign and develop a social identity and they inform people about appropriate behavior which is internalized as norms. That’s what these social arrangements accomplish which makes them, once again, the agents of socialization.
The family is the first and universally acclaimed as the most important of those agents wherein the early social identity is assigned or ascribed starting with your family name and probably including an ethnic and linguistic identity as well as perhaps a religious identity, a social class position, all kinds of key features of your entire social life are defined there, at the very beginning, in your family. Your most important decision on life may be your selection of your parents. What happens in the family is pretty permanent. What you learn, by way of socializing lessons, stays with you throughout life, very likely, either in original form or reactionary form and the basis of much of the teaching in the family is also embedded in a small emotional complex. There are lots of feelings in families; we hope revolving around something we would call ‘love’ but occasionally if not often, complicated by other strong feelings.
School, education, differs from the family most especially in that. It’s basis is no longer emotional but rather essentially rational. Its performance oriented; you do or you don’t do. You’re asked to do things and perform as well as perform at different levels as you are evaluated on that performance. It is not complicated by emotional feelings. Its judgment is based on explicit criteria in school. In addition, in school, we have ‘hidden curriculum’, things we learn outside of the program of studies or beside, perhaps, the program of studies. We learn things like punctuality, responsibility, honesty, gender behavior, as well as a whole range of things that we pick up, in and around school. They’re not part of the formal programs. Not geography, math or history. It’s what we learn aside from that.
The peer group is distinguished because one is being socialized by people of one’s own age, essentially, age group at least as well as the same status in society. The peer group is the one you’re most likely going to be strongly influenced by as a child and you’re very likely to share some keen social indices, very likely to be of similar ethnic and linguistic and so-called racial origins. Most of you probably when you left high school and arrived at college found that the mix of origins was profound compared to the high school –if you went to a public high school, the high school served a community around where you lived, so that the range of origins was narrower, like people that were born like you. The peer group is most important especially because it’s the same status, because it tends to have some similar origins but it’s a very powerful mechanism for especially those school years. From somewhere to primary school through to one’s mid-teens, most of you are probably pretty much past that intense peer period now. However, for that period, while you’re growing up, establishing yourself in the larger world, the peer group can be hugely important, pressuring you into doing things you might not otherwise do. It is hugely depending on the evaluation of others, your friends and your co-students. The ultimate negative version of that being bullying of course, at school, when you get picked on just being who you are or appearing the way you do or speaking the way you do or whatever the source may be, through to having a night nip of friends that you consider, probably at that age, the most important thing in your social life.
When I did a study a few years ago with first-semester-college-students that came right out of high school, we asked them “When you get up in the morning, why do you go to school? What’s your main reason for actually making the effort to get there?” And almost universally the answer was “To see my friends”. It’s all about social life. “What subjects are you taking?” we’d ask. “Oh, I forget”. –“Why’d you go to school?” –“To see my friends.” From that we can gather, social life is really big.
The peer group does, and I probably don’t have to remind you of this, serve as an alternate source of authority and instruction and modeling to one’s family and most especially and alternative to one’s parents. Unless you’re quite an unusual young adult, you will remember some incidents of your mid-teen years when the peer group was at logger-heads with your parents. Your parents wanted you to do one thing, you friends wanted you to do another and you got into trouble with one or both, trying to make your decision. It’s classic. You’re being drawn into the larger world, outside your family and into your peer group. Sometimes, the peer group is ultimately teaching the same lesson but in a different more speculative fashion.
The media, of course, serves to model behavior in the form of role models, literally; entertainment stars, athletic figures, etc. In a number of other ways, it demonstrates appropriate behavior, attitudes –everything from shows about the law to shows about relationships, shows about family, and because of the amount of time, which ten years ago was on the average about three and a half hours a day of television, add in all the other screen-time’s that you’d now enjoy, from your computer to your telephone, through your iPad or whatever else you’re using, the impact of the media is still kind of an unknown quantity. What we know is that it’s hugely important. Even some years ago, by the time a kid was eleven years old, they’d spent more time watching television than they’d have ever spent in school. What is the primary means of education a good questions and something we should pry ourselves on.
Now, ask yourself; how were you influenced?
There are four agents of socialization. These are social arrangements which accomplish socialization. These are the four most common in our society, however, there can be and are others. They teach newcomers, mostly babies, kids, about the culture. They assign and develop a social identity and they inform people about appropriate behavior which is internalized as norms. That’s what these social arrangements accomplish which makes them, once again, the agents of socialization.
The family is the first and universally acclaimed as the most important of those agents wherein the early social identity is assigned or ascribed starting with your family name and probably including an ethnic and linguistic identity as well as perhaps a religious identity, a social class position, all kinds of key features of your entire social life are defined there, at the very beginning, in your family. Your most important decision on life may be your selection of your parents. What happens in the family is pretty permanent. What you learn, by way of socializing lessons, stays with you throughout life, very likely, either in original form or reactionary form and the basis of much of the teaching in the family is also embedded in a small emotional complex. There are lots of feelings in families; we hope revolving around something we would call ‘love’ but occasionally if not often, complicated by other strong feelings.
School, education, differs from the family most especially in that. It’s basis is no longer emotional but rather essentially rational. Its performance oriented; you do or you don’t do. You’re asked to do things and perform as well as perform at different levels as you are evaluated on that performance. It is not complicated by emotional feelings. Its judgment is based on explicit criteria in school. In addition, in school, we have ‘hidden curriculum’, things we learn outside of the program of studies or beside, perhaps, the program of studies. We learn things like punctuality, responsibility, honesty, gender behavior, as well as a whole range of things that we pick up, in and around school. They’re not part of the formal programs. Not geography, math or history. It’s what we learn aside from that.
The peer group is distinguished because one is being socialized by people of one’s own age, essentially, age group at least as well as the same status in society. The peer group is the one you’re most likely going to be strongly influenced by as a child and you’re very likely to share some keen social indices, very likely to be of similar ethnic and linguistic and so-called racial origins. Most of you probably when you left high school and arrived at college found that the mix of origins was profound compared to the high school –if you went to a public high school, the high school served a community around where you lived, so that the range of origins was narrower, like people that were born like you. The peer group is most important especially because it’s the same status, because it tends to have some similar origins but it’s a very powerful mechanism for especially those school years. From somewhere to primary school through to one’s mid-teens, most of you are probably pretty much past that intense peer period now. However, for that period, while you’re growing up, establishing yourself in the larger world, the peer group can be hugely important, pressuring you into doing things you might not otherwise do. It is hugely depending on the evaluation of others, your friends and your co-students. The ultimate negative version of that being bullying of course, at school, when you get picked on just being who you are or appearing the way you do or speaking the way you do or whatever the source may be, through to having a night nip of friends that you consider, probably at that age, the most important thing in your social life.
When I did a study a few years ago with first-semester-college-students that came right out of high school, we asked them “When you get up in the morning, why do you go to school? What’s your main reason for actually making the effort to get there?” And almost universally the answer was “To see my friends”. It’s all about social life. “What subjects are you taking?” we’d ask. “Oh, I forget”. –“Why’d you go to school?” –“To see my friends.” From that we can gather, social life is really big.
The peer group does, and I probably don’t have to remind you of this, serve as an alternate source of authority and instruction and modeling to one’s family and most especially and alternative to one’s parents. Unless you’re quite an unusual young adult, you will remember some incidents of your mid-teen years when the peer group was at logger-heads with your parents. Your parents wanted you to do one thing, you friends wanted you to do another and you got into trouble with one or both, trying to make your decision. It’s classic. You’re being drawn into the larger world, outside your family and into your peer group. Sometimes, the peer group is ultimately teaching the same lesson but in a different more speculative fashion.
The media, of course, serves to model behavior in the form of role models, literally; entertainment stars, athletic figures, etc. In a number of other ways, it demonstrates appropriate behavior, attitudes –everything from shows about the law to shows about relationships, shows about family, and because of the amount of time, which ten years ago was on the average about three and a half hours a day of television, add in all the other screen-time’s that you’d now enjoy, from your computer to your telephone, through your iPad or whatever else you’re using, the impact of the media is still kind of an unknown quantity. What we know is that it’s hugely important. Even some years ago, by the time a kid was eleven years old, they’d spent more time watching television than they’d have ever spent in school. What is the primary means of education a good questions and something we should pry ourselves on.
Now, ask yourself; how were you influenced?
