Social Education and Personal Development

Delwyn Tattum, Eva Tattum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351782739
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

The National Curriculum had placed personal and social education on the agenda of every primary school. This book, originally published in 1992, examines the quality and nature of relationships which contribute to a child's personal development and social awareness, and discusses how schools organise pupil experiences and the complex interactions in classrooms. At the formal level it looks at how PSE may be taught through cross-curricular, thematic approach to all age groups.

PART ONE

Socialisation and the Development of Self

The first three chapters address the fundamental issue of socialisation and the development of every child as a ‘centre of consciousness’ (Peters, 1966). Which means not only a growing awareness of self but also respect for other persons. In Chapter 1 we present a theoretical approach which is particularly appropriate to a study of socialisation, as its focal concern is the self is social; and in the personal and social education of young children the way social experiences occur has a major bearing on personal development. The approach is called Symbolic Interactionism and in subsequent chapters its main concepts will be applied to social education and personal development in primary schools. Chapter 2 is about socialisation in the home, as it is here that a child’s basic learning of values, beliefs, attitudes, customs, habits and, most importantly, language, takes place. The quality and nature of that learning has a significant influence on how well a child adjusts to early schooling. Entry into school means adopting the role of pupil and all that entails. In Chapter 3 we focus on pupil socialisation into the ways of the school by examining the progress of pupil career from reception class to year six. For many it is a smooth and satisfying learning experience in which their self-images are sustained and enhanced. Unfortunately, other children have discordant and negative experiences of schooling. Even in infant classes teachers can identify those who they predict will have deviant pupil careers, causing trouble for themselves and problems for teachers.

Within home and school we therefore look at how social experiences and learning are organised and presented to young children so that parents and teachers may better work together for each child’s personal development in the social as well as cognitive domains. To that purpose we offer the following poem, which contains the basic principles which influence how each and every child comes to feel about him/herself from the way in which adults and other children respond to them in their day by day encounters.

If a child lives with criticism

He learns to condemn

If a child lives with hostility

He learns to fight

If a child lives with ridicule

He learns to be shy

If a child lives with shame

He learns to feel guilty

If a child lives with tolerance

He learns to be patient

If a child lives with encouragement

He learns confidence

If a child lives with praise

He learns to appreciate

If a child lives with fairness

He learns justice

If a child lives with security

He learns to have faith

If a child lives with approval

He learns to like himself

If a child lives with acceptance and friendship

He learns to find love in the world

(Source unknown)

CHAPTER 1

Socialisation and Social Interaction

Introduction

The twentieth century has witnessed dramatic changes in the nature of processes of socialisation. In a period of rapid change the challenge has been to prepare people of all ages, not just the young, to be able to cope with the demands made by the complex nature of modern, urban, industrial society. As the main agent of socialisation the family has experienced changing patterns of child-rearing, a decrease in family size, its further dispersion from the extended family, plus the changing position and role of women. These factors affecting the family and community will be elaborated on in the next chapter, as will the increased involvement of other agencies in supplementing the family’s socialisation of the young. With the increased growth of services a range of professional views have been promulgated about correct ways of bringing up children. Amongst the groups spreading the message are health visitors, antenatal clinics, family doctors, community nurses and obstetricians, all of whom stress the importance of the early years of life for future development. A growing interest in childhood is also evident from the growth in the number of magazines devoted to bringing up young children and the increase in the number of specialist stores whose goods are exclusively marketed for children. There are toys and games for different age groups, graduated reading books and pre-teen boutiques, added to which is the power of advertising through newspapers, magazines, radio and television, to convince parents of the importance of childhood socialisation.

The introduction of full-time, compulsory education has also contributed to the professionalisation of socialisation, and equally influential has been the extension of the time children spend in school. The most significant expansion has been in the raising of the school leaving age but, in recent years, social and economic pressures have demanded increased provision for the rising fives. These developments have uncompromisingly made schools second only in importance to the family in the early socialisation of children, an aspect of which has been the growing emphasis being placed on personal and social education (PSE) in primary schools. In subsequent chapters a particular theoretical approach to personal and social development will be presented, it goes under the label of Symbolic Interactionism (SI). In this chapter we will present the central concepts of SI and these will be applied in the following chapters as we examine a whole-school approach to PSE. It will involve looking closely at school organisation and classroom management and the nature and quality of social experiences we give children; teacher–pupil interactions and relationships; peer group influences and also, how the whole curriculum may be used as a vehicle for social education and personal development.

What is socialisation?

Socialisation is a critical concept for all the social sciences because in considering it we are forced to examine the relationship between the individual and society. In examining it we are essentially exploring how we each became the kind of person we are. In fact, it would be valuable if you were to reflect on the evidence of your own experiences and also observe children (and adults) in your own family and classes you teach. For what we are seeking to understand is how the newborn infant becomes an adult member of society. But socialisation is more than formal education. It includes the acquisition of values and beliefs, attitudes and habits, skills and language, transmitted through the family, peer groups and mass media, as well as the school. These agents of socialisation are not mutually exclusive neither do they necessarily work in harmony, so that the process experienced by each of us is exceedingly complex, with varying degrees of consensus and conflict in the messages we receive.

It is because socialisation is such a basic concept that we have different theoretical approaches to its understanding. The early theorists in this field were strongly deterministic – whether from a psychological or sociological standpoint. Within the sociological tradition definitions were frequently expressed in terms of the transmission of culture, that is, a straitjacket programme for producing social beings thoroughly integrated into the mould acceptable to society. Theorists in this tradition saw socialisation as a mechanism for social control, in which the parent becomes a control agent operating in the family and the teacher in the school. Many sectors of society today regard the social control function of the teacher’s role as being central and, in fact, the relationship between the well-being of the class and the needs of the individual have to be daily balanced by every teacher. Examples of this approach are contained in the following quotations:

The process by which society moulds its offspring into the pattern prescribed by its culture is termed socialisation.

(Child, 1943)

We may define socialisation as the process by which someone learns the way of a given society or social group so that he may function within it.

(Elkin, 1960)

But this passive and malleable view of the individual was challenged in an influential article by Dennis Wrong (1961). He called it ‘The over-socialised conception of man in modern society’.

Socialisation may mean two quite distinct things; when they are confused an over-socialised view of man is the result. On the one hand socialisation means transmission of the culture, the particular culture of the society an individual enters at birth; on the other hand the term is used to mean the process of becoming human, in acquiring uniquely human attributes from interaction with others. All men are socialised in the latter sense but this does not mean that they have been completely moulded by the particular norms and values of their culture.

(Wrong, 1961)

Wrong was highly critical of the conservative function of social determinism which stresses the preservation of society as paramount; he wished to draw attention to the active part played by the individual in developing personal attributes in interaction with others. Children are not to be seen as carbon copies of their parents but as active beings capable of innovation and change.

Psychological determination is to be seen in the work of learning theorists who also neglect innate factors and see socialisation as the ‘shaping’ of behaviour in response to externally applied reinforcements. Their tabula rasa view of human nature is well illustrated in the following:

Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed and my own specified world to bring them up in and I’ll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select – doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief and, yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors.

(Watson, 1924)

Lest it should be thought that such behaviourist views have been abandoned a more recent quotation illustrates how learning theorists see activit...