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Schools play an important role in socializing children through both their manifest and latent functions. The manifest function is to teach academic subjects, but the latent functions include socializing children to behave in ways expected by society, such as practicing teamwork, following rules, and dealing with bureaucracy. Some examples of how schools socialize children are through competitive grading, cooperative group projects, and teaching citizenship and national pride. The hidden curriculum prepares children for the adult world by socializing them to handle situations like waiting their turn and sitting still for long periods.

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78 views2 pages

Family

Schools play an important role in socializing children through both their manifest and latent functions. The manifest function is to teach academic subjects, but the latent functions include socializing children to behave in ways expected by society, such as practicing teamwork, following rules, and dealing with bureaucracy. Some examples of how schools socialize children are through competitive grading, cooperative group projects, and teaching citizenship and national pride. The hidden curriculum prepares children for the adult world by socializing them to handle situations like waiting their turn and sitting still for long periods.

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PHILLIT CLASS
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Family

Keep in mind, however, that families do not socialize children in a vacuum. Many social
factors affect the way a family raises its children. For example, we can use sociological
imagination to recognize that individual behaviors are affected by the historical period in
which they take place. Sixty years ago, it would not have been considered especially
strict for a father to hit his son with a wooden spoon or a belt if he misbehaved, but
today that same action might be considered child abuse.

Peer Groups

Peer groups are important to adolescents in a new way, as they begin to develop an
identity separate from their parents and exert independence. Additionally, peer groups
provide their own opportunities for socialization since kids usually engage in different
types of activities with their peers than they do with their families. Peer groups provide
adolescents’ first major socialization experience outside the realm of their families.
Interestingly, studies have shown that although friendships rank high in adolescents’
priorities, this is balanced by parental influence.

Institutional Agents

The social institutions of our culture also inform our socialization. Formal institutions—
like schools, workplaces, and the government—teach people how to behave in and
navigate these systems. Other institutions, like the media, contribute to socialization by
inundating us with messages about norms and expectations.

School

Most U.S. children spend about seven hours a day, 180 days a year, in school, which
makes it hard to deny the importance school has on their socialization (U.S. Department
of Education 2004). Students are not in school only to study math, reading, science, and
other subjects—the manifest function of this system. Schools also serve a latent
function in society by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork,
following a schedule, and using textbooks.

School and classroom rituals, led by teachers serving as role models and leaders,
regularly reinforce what society expects from children. Sociologists describe this aspect
of schools as the hidden curriculum, the informal teaching done by schools.

For example, in the United States, schools have built a sense of competition into the
way grades are awarded and the way teachers evaluate students (Bowles and Gintis
1976). When children participate in a relay race or a math contest, they learn there are
winners and losers in society. When children are required to work together on a project,
they practice teamwork with other people in cooperative situations. The hidden
curriculum prepares children for the adult world. Children learn how to deal with
bureaucracy, rules, expectations, waiting their turn, and sitting still for hours during the
day. Schools in different cultures socialize children differently in order to prepare them
to function well in those cultures. The latent functions of teamwork and dealing with
bureaucracy are features of U.S. culture.

Schools also socialize children by teaching them about citizenship and national pride. In
the United States, children are taught to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Most districts
require classes about U.S. history and geography. As academic understanding of
history evolves, textbooks in the United States have been scrutinized and revised to
update attitudes toward other cultures as well as perspectives on historical events; thus,
children are socialized to a different national or world history than earlier textbooks may
have done. For example, information about the mistreatment of African Americans and
Native American Indians more accurately reflects those events than in textbooks of the
past.

Government

Although we do not think about it, many of the rites of passage people go through today
are based on age norms established by the government. To be defined as an “adult”
usually means being eighteen years old, the age at which a person becomes legally
responsible for him- or herself. And sixty-five years old is the start of “old age” since
most people become eligible for senior benefits at that point.

Each time we embark on one of these new categories—senior, adult, taxpayer—we


must be socialized into our new role. Seniors must learn the ropes of Medicare, Social
Security benefits, and senior shopping discounts. When U.S. males turn eighteen, they
must register with the Selective Service System within thirty days to be entered into a
database for possible military service. These government dictates mark the points at
which we require socialization into a new category.

Mass Media

Mass media distribute impersonal information to a wide audience, via television,


newspapers, radio, and the Internet. With the average person spending over four hours
a day in front of the television (and children averaging even more screen time), media
greatly influences social norms (Roberts, Foehr, and Rideout 2005). People learn about
objects of material culture (like new technology and transportation options), as well as
nonmaterial culture—what is true (beliefs), what is important (values), and what is
expected (norms).

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