Lecture 3 Jan 25/13
Primary socialization
… foundational lessons about self, possibilities, rationality
Key to basic personal attributes (e.g. psychoanalytic perspective – pre-conscious)
Secondary socialization
Social influences outside the family
***The two cannot be completely separated
a) Education system
o Interconnections with family
1) Enrollment
2) Attendance
3) Homework (report cards, parent-teach meetings, PTA)
4) School discipline (attendance officer, etc.)
This connection is premised on a middle or upper middle class family at a particular moment in
evolution of capitalist economy (e.g. social class and history create ‘context’). This is problematic when
family is immigrant, non-English/French speaking, working-class, poor, non-SNAFU.
b) Education is historically and culturally situated and constructed
o Relatively recent advent but now part of ‘taken-for granted reality’
o Historically learned by doing, modeling
o Ride of education historically rooted in class, gender, racial patterns (e.g. education as
class and gender signifier – delayed and reduced access to education)
o Direct and indirect socialization
1) Direct: specific skills (reading, etc. which are explicit in curricula) is key to
functioning in social system
2) Indirect:
a. Disciple – obedience, hierarchy, individualism
b. Timeliness/punctuality/deadliness/self-
control/deception/surveillance
c. Competition – grading/evaluation, awards
d. Dills defined in a narrow range of abilities
o Historically institutionalized (state-run) education as source of obvious social control –
off the streets; respectful; skilled
o Formal education provided conduit to economy, military and family responsibilities
(girls)
o Education today
Further blurring of family/school link
Few challenges to standard class-room approach to education
Absence of alternative conceptions of ‘learning’ or ‘skill acquisition’ Lecture 3 Jan 25/13
E.g. Summerhill – 1960s (open school) – self-directed learning, non-
evaluative
Home schooling is uncommon today
Taliesin West – Frank Lloyd Wright
Experiential learning – Finland – curiosity rather than curriculum-driven
*All components are key to functioning in economic institution (employment)
Hidden curriculum (what is not valued or visible?)
Creativity, spontaneity, co-operation, resistance and agency, physicality (docility)
o Eg. Even some teachers must follow curriculum – not be spontaneous, reactive to
students in class
Indirect and informal socialization in education – role of peers
Foundational rationale for day care and early childhood education = learn to get along with
peers; to socialize with one another
Other patterns of informal and indirect socialization are more invisible and complex
Keep in mind layers
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