EXAMINE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ANY THREE SOCIALISATION AGENTS IN

TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION (50)

INTRODUCTION

Socialization cannot take place in a vacuum. Individuals, groups and institutions create the social
context for socialization to take place. It is through these agencies that we learn and incorporate
the values and norms of our culture. They also account for our positions in the social structure
with respect to class, race and gender. The habits, skills, beliefs and standard of judgment that we
learn in the socialization process enable us to become functional members of a society. There are
various agencies at three levels, viz., micro level, meso level and macro level. The essay will
scrutinize the importance of one of each agent in the different levels showing how they are
important.

DEFINITION OF TERMS

Bourdieu (1990) presents individual SOCIALIZATION as a process by which individuals are

influenced by the class cultural milieu in which they are being reared.

Agencies of Socialization: In general, it may be said that the total society is the agency for
socialization and that each person with whom one comes into contact and interact is in some way
an agent of socialization. Socialization is found in all interactions but the most influential
interaction occurs in particular groups which are referred to as agencies of socialization.

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly”.

— Henri Bergson

MICRO LEVEL: FAMILY

(Yasaei, 2001) family is a small community that one of the aims is the socialization of children
Family learning center person; for one, many of the family learns social behavior, such as respect
for the rights of others, having good or evil traits and environmental compatibility of family and
others. For the social development of children naturally be complete, certain conditions must
prevail in the family environment, which are briefly discussed below. One must in a family
environment, a sense of peace and security and ensure that the love and respect of others. When
someone in the family is about love, social relations will be strengthened further, but if a family
environment with fear and anxiety, he joined the humiliation and hatred, the vengeful and
cynical times, and certainly in the social connections will be a failure. The behavior of parents in
child development and social education is very effective. If parents constantly argue and talk
constantly of separation and divorce, the socialization of the child would be severely
compromised. In these situations, children suffered from anxiety and fear, and always concerned
that fights and disputes occur between parents. This practice has very bad effects on children's
mental and social fields and provides diversion and delinquency. In addition, the children of
these families after marriage and family, his parents followed the ugly behavior and their wives
behave in the same style. This issue in addition to severe psychological distress for families, in
the long term may even lead to ruin societies.

Man being social origin and social aspects of child development constitutes the basis of his
human life. Necessary social, psychological fitness, enjoyment of social skills, self-esteem and
social adaptability. Undoubtedly, the personality of the community is the social dimension of
personality. In a word, family, good character development of children's basic platform. Parents,
at least begin from the time that thought in your mind nurture childbearing, educational work.
All eyes all walked and everything directly and indirectly voluntary and involuntary them makes
the book a lesson and an example to the children and the critical factors of social development.
In the process of socialization of children in the family, which forbids parents, imitation and
identification of the most important ways of transmitting the values, norms and social customs
that are mentioned. In fact, in the family that children learn what is right and what is wrong
(Sotoudeh, 2004).

Child characteristics inherited from their parents in this way, parents provide growth and
development of children. Parental influence on children is not limited to hereditary aspects, but
also in understanding the child's parents in public life and culture also play an important role
Family social status, economic situation, opinions, customs, ideals and aspirations of parents and
their education level has a lot of influence on children's behavior (Shariatmadari, 1970). Healthy
child is born, the highest growth potential, he created at his best, and it has the capacity to be
trained in the best way and to achieve the highest perfection; provided that the family should be
given the right environment in which to grow. (Atai, 2012)For children from socially desirable
growth should benefit from the experience of pleasant social. When the adult patterns because
parents always intimate and emotional relationship with the child and establish social balance
and vitality of the association and play together, they prepare children to communicate with
others and to participate in social activities more. Conversely, children whose parents are not
with them but autocratic behavior and ordering another behavior, such experiences are
unpleasant and repugnant not show much desire to connect with others. Anxiety, shyness, anger
and aggression among parents and children could be socially desirable growth of pests. To
encourage children to develop their social connections have sweet memories of their relationship
with their parents remain in their minds so that social satisfaction for the positive relationship
and interaction with others. According to what was said to be the family's role in children's
socialization realized.

The family is the primary agency of socialization. It is here that the child develops an initial
sense of self and habit-training: eating, sleeping etc. To a very large extent, the indoctrination of
the child, whether in primitive or modem complex society, occurs within the circle of the
primary family group. The child‘s first human relationships are with the immediate members of
his family, mother or nurse, siblings, father and other close relatives. Here, he experiences love,
cooperation, authority, direction and protection. Language (a particular dialect) is also learnt
from family in childhood. People‘s perceptions of behavior appropriate of their sex are the result
of socialization and major part of this is learnt in the family.

As the primary agents of childhood socialization, parents play a critical role in guiding children
into their gender roles deemed appropriate in a society. They continue to teach gender role
behavior either consciously or unconsciously, throughout childhood. Families also teach children
values they will hold throughout life. They frequently adopt their parents ‘attitudes not only
about work but also about the importance of education, patriotism and religion.

MESO LEVEL: SCHOOL

Schools are the agents responsible for socializing groups of children and young people on
specific skills and values in a society (Henslin, 1999:77-78). Appelbaum and Chambliss
(1997:120) argue that this socializing agent probably contributes most to social conformity. The
school system has become the glue that holds society together.
The education system has served the purpose of catalyst when movement and dynamism was
required or the purpose of stabilizer when society needed to put on the breaks. The school system
responds to society’s needs, and complies with society’s demands, for trained workers,
intellectual citizens, and well-educated citizens. The school system has always operated within
specific parameters and has been charged with the task of promoting conformity.

In 1932 Professor George Counts of Teachers College in his Dare the School Build a New Social
Order? states,

"Faced with any difficult problem of life we set our minds at rest sooner or later by their
appeal to the school. We are convinced that education is the one unfailing remedy for every ill to
which man is subject, whether it be vice, crime, war, poverty, riches, injustice, racketeering,
political corruption, race hatred, class conflict, or just plain original sin. We even speak glibly
and often about the general reconstruction of society through the school."(Counts, p3)

Professor Count’s statement is relevant today as it was then. Today’s society expects the school
system to teach students life skills, such as drug awareness, conflict resolution, and sex
education, all within the confines of set parameters imposed by today’s society’s conflicting
values, diverse morals, and emerging mores. The other traditional agents of socialization, the
church and the family, have changed, and in the absence of a consistently strong and
homogeneous church and family the school has emerged slowly as society’s binding agent.

Hiner explains, "The Puritans had great optimism in the educational efficacy of a Christian
community and its two primary institutions, the family and the church."(Hiner, p8). However, as
Puritan society was becoming more heterogeneous, the social fabric was coming undone, and the
Puritans realized that

"Education for salvation by churches and families had failed to reach all members of the
community. Education for social control by the schools, the third member of the symbiotic triad
of Puritan educational institutions, became necessary to keep the unregenerate civilized on a
minimum level. Concern for civility tended to enlarge the cultural importance of the
schools."(Hiner, p11)

Thus, schools were born out of the necessity to perpetuate an established view of the world; they
filled a void no longer fulfilled by home or church. Evidence shows that the purpose of the
school from the start was to give heterogeneous society commonness. The school connected the
parts of the society. The Puritans had a sense of society as a system and each of the institutions,
home, church, community, and school, were the interlocking parts which held society together.
As society became more heterogeneous the Puritans sought for the school to become the
foundation for their collapsing community, although they understood the limited capacity for the
school to become a hub for spiritual renewal and spiritual sustenance. "The school could provide
literacy and the most elementary spiritual instructions, but it was not designed to furnish the
direct means of salvation."(Hiner, p17). As society became increasingly egalitarian and the
diversity of thought increased this required those in charge to set up systems to perpetuate their
way of thinking. Foucault states that the power elite in the classical age discovered the body as
both "an object and target of power" and therefore sought to use state institutions, one of them
being schools, to produce "docile bodies" that could be "subjected, used, transformed, and
improved" (p. 136). In Discipline and Punish (1979), Foucault drew analogies between the
creation of the prison and the social organization of the school system in the 18th century.

Contemporary historians also agree that the school’s role as an institution of social control has
existed since its creation. (Foucault, 1979; Sarason & Doris, 1979; Noguera, 1995, Spring,
2001). Erevelles writes about the “unruly bodies” that challenge the rigidity and discipline of the
system, and argues that these strategies and constraints mirror those being applied by the penal
system. He points to the development by the school system of strategies, constraints, and
activities that were designed to manage those “unruly bodies” (2000). One such strategy is that
of routinization of every aspect of the students‟ life, as well as the imposition of rules and
regulations that became the operating norm of the institution; Schools were designed to be
scientifically managed to ensure order and efficiency. Schools were also divided into vocational
schools for lower-class immigrants and high schools for middle-class students to ensure the
continuation and the smooth transition of the social order into the world of work. (Noguera,
1995). Thus, as the school and penal systems mirrored each other, both were built on the concept
of an institution whose main task was to control people who were in its custody, “to regiment,
control, and discipline the social outcasts” (Noguera, 1995).

While European immigrants soon assimilated into the “American way” a new threat to the social
control of the school came from African Americans through the provisions of Brown v. Board of
Education; from the new wave of immigrants, predominantly of color; and from the issues of
inclusion brought about through the provisions of PL94-142 (Noguera, 1995). The result of these
threats was the tightening of rules and regulations of the system. Schools began operating as
institutions of social control by providing an important custodial function with respect to the care
and movement of children; they began exercising considerable authority over students, and many
of the basic civil rights of students were suspended while they were in school (Casella, 2001a).

Today’s stated norms prompt students to relinquish some individual freedoms in exchange for
the benefits of receiving an education. For the majority of students, this arrangement elicits and
even encourages a high level of compliance (Noguera, 2003). However, many students
understand, and reject, the reality of such control and rebel. When these students‟ response to
school policies and procedures is rooted in an active rejection of the dominant culture's norms
and values, they consciously engage in behaviors that ensure their educational failure (Willis,
1977; Giroux, 1990). These students do not sabotage their educational prospects by themselves;
the educational system is only too eager to ask conformity of these students or to exclude them
from their established system.

Contemporary school reform movements haven’t done much to alter the outcome of this
conundrum. Today’s education reform efforts have only created more effective processes to
perpetuate the status quo. With the school seriously taking on its role as an institution of social
control and adopting rigid policies that are instrumental in constituting the deviant student, it has
turned its oppressive ideologies on students with differences marked by race, class, gender, and
disability. These differences play an important part in the disciplinary and punitive policies
supported by the schools. For example, several researchers have pointed out that the students
who are consistently disciplined in public schools are male, working-class African Americans
and Latinos, many of whom are segregated in classrooms for students labeled Educationally
Mentally Retarded (EMR) and Trainable Mentally Retarded (TMR) (Artiles, 2003; Casella,
2001a; Skiba et al., 2000; Noguera, 1995).

When poor and minority students do not conform the system has designed effective and more
stringent ways to control them (Devine, 1996). For example, the widespread use of tracking is
one educational practice that helps replicate the social order. This gate keeping process
distributes institutional benefits in numerous informal and formal ways (Oakes, 1985; Lee &
Bryk, 1988). Students are sorted according to ability, past academic achievement, and behavior
to form more homogeneous classrooms. The result is that poor African American and Latino
children are overrepresented in the lower tracks, reproducing the social order and maintaining the
status quo. Some social reproduction theorists have argued that schools mirror the social
structure and organizational patterns of society (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Bourdieu & Passeron,
1977; Bourdieu, 1977). They have proposed that schools maintain the existing social order by
transmitting knowledge, values, norms, and social skills that translate into either high-skilled or
low-skilled jobs. Grant and Sleeter (1988) state that schools provide "an institutional ideology,
socializing agents, and an experiential context within which students define and shape the way
they think

Schools not only teach reading, writing and other basic skills, they also teach students to develop
themselves, to discipline themselves, to cooperate with others, to obey rules and to test their
achievements through competition. Schools teach sets of expectations about the work, profession
or occupations they will follow when they mature. Schools have the formal responsibility of
imparting knowledge in those disciplines which are most central to adult functioning in our
society. It has been said that learning at home is on a personal, emotional level, whereas learning
at school is basically intellectual.

MACRO LEVEL: MASS MEDIA

Mass media has become a major social influencer. From the first years of childhood, the current
generation of children are exposed to worrying volumes of audio-visual messages. The statistics
point to an average of two hours, twenty minutes daily dedicated to mass media by the current
young people and children (Anckle, 2011). Exposure to mass media is bound to impact on the
children in either way (Anderson, 2014). Media is one of the main agents of socialization that
affect the youth most. Mass media covers the radio, television, and print. There is also electronic
media such as computers, smart phones and IPads. Studies in developed countries have noted
that mass media has great influence on children’s behaviour (Baferani, 2015; Crisogen, 2015;
Castro, 2017).
Esteve (2018) argued that mass media has become an important agent of socialisation of
children, youth and adults. Mass media has a significant effect on children’s development of
communication and social skills among diverse populations worldwide. Rivière (2013) argued
that advanced communication skills can be used for the explicit purpose of provoking learning
which would facilitate socialisation and advancement of learners’ attitudes.

The role of mass media as an influencer of behaviour enables educators to develop educational
broadcasts such as radio lessons, television lessons and educational web pages. However,
socialisation promoted by mass media is indirect and takes a short time for adjusted behaviour to
be manifested. Esteve (2018) further observed that the mass media assists in shaping behaviour
through making propositions to people. These propositions assist in development of mental
models that can be imposed with greater force and persuasion. The propositions are presented in
a dramatic or emotional context that helps to inhibit the judgment critical. The study supported
the findings in Pusateri and Liccardi (2015) that expressed most emphatically that the media, no
longer report facts or, if they do, this is a secondary objective. The study noted that media was
primary used for entertainment and thus most media houses have opted to reduce educative
programmes. The current media has a primary role of entertaining the viewers; this makes the
other roles such as education and information dissemination to be secondary goals. This is
evident due to the organisation and volume of entertainment programmes offered by media
houses. Analysis of the volume of time the media allocated to news and informative programmes
have reduced significantly. Mass media belong to a group of opinion shapers with a significant
role in shaping children’s behaviour such as the family, the church or peers (Pusateri and
Liccardi, 2015). Therefore, the media and its powerful network of influences are major
socialisation agents and thus have a greater effect on children. This means that the media can
complement, counter, enhance or nullify behaviour.

Mass media as a socialisation agent fulfils a very important socializing function. In the first
place, the media provides information to people. This information is applied by people to
construct the image to base their reality on. This reality created assist individuals to model and
exhibit behaviour needed and thus form part of the information with which people construct the
image of reality according to which people deploy their behaviours. Secondly, the media provide
values, norms, models and symbols which people use in personal and social cohesion. Finally, it
is through the media that personal identity is developed and built. Through interaction with the
media an individual may develop their own definition applied in personal identity as an
individual and a social person (Vera, 2010). Identity is a psychic need and social, since it
contributes both to the maturity of the personality and to the social cohesion. The question is to
know to what extent the means of communication is an entity capable of influencing a coherent
direction or, on the contrary, of generating destruction.

CONCLUSION

The idea of a distinct process of socialization leads to the danger of a narrowly conceived
scheme of vocational education to perpetuate the division between rich and poor. The means of
overcoming these dangers was to tie both formal instruction and vocational education to the
living reality of present social experience. Everybody understands a distinction between learning
in a utilitarian fashion to use a tool and learning to use the tool to produce an aesthetically
satisfying product. What has been wrong with some parts of the traditional form of education is
that this distinction has been complacently accepted and built into practice, such that it is seen as
perfectly proper for the masses to be taught in a utilitarian fashion if indeed an acceptable
proportion can be taught to use tools, read, compute, and so on, adequately for the demands of
their job and social role -- and proper for others to be educated. In general, it may be said that the
total society is the agency for socialization and that each person with whom one comes into
contact and interact is in some way an agent of socialization. Socialization is found in all
interactions but the most influential interaction occurs in particular groups which are referred to
as agencies of socialization.
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