Socialization as an Aim of Education
In its truest form, I believe the main purpose of education should be to promote socialization. Socialization refers to the act of inheriting and spreading standards, customs and ideologies, providing an individual with the skills and habits necessary for contributing in society. Socialization is therefore the way that social and cultural continuity are attained (“Socialization,”n.d., para.1). In a society that seeks to achieve its full potential and maximize its benefits, the aim of socialization through education has the potential to achieve these remarkable things. First, education effectively develops individuals into people who can contribute wealth and ideas in a society. Second, it has the power to broaden one’s perspective and promote awareness. This perspective and awareness has the muscle to enhance multiculturalism and lessen xenophobic attitudes.
The first aim of education should be to develop people’s abilities and strengths so that they can be assets within society. Education is the key to a nation’s progress. An education system that seeks to invest equally in the potential of all, is working towards beholding a powerful society that is fully maximizing its resources and functioning at its best. Education should function to literally not leave any children behind so they all can reach their highest potential and contribute to society with skills developed in the class.
The skills students learn in school gives them better opportunities outside the classroom. These skills create independent individuals who learn how to utilize their own resources making them competitive in society and the world. Without sophisticated education to keep up with technologically advancing times, the nation falls behind. Education creates beings who arenot only assets for the society, but also into people who enhance wealth creation in the country. When people make money, they are also creating monetary gains for the company they work for. With every profitable corporation, the government earns in the form of taxes. It is a cyclical system; the more that is put into education and the development of people, the richer society will be. Education should function to focus on supplying educational access to all, so that everyone can have an equal opportunity to exist as a positive component in their society.
On a deeper level, education should function to bring about awareness. Fundamentally, education is meant to teach individuals to read and write. Reading skills learned in classrooms allow students to obtain knowledge from books. This knowledge has the power to awaken and enlighten the spirit and mind. It is through awareness that people should be able to successfully apply their stock of knowledge to challenge injustices and change course. This awareness should not only portray the realities encountered daily, but also help individuals understand who they are and how they came to be. With that being said, education should be inclusive and provide a holistic view of the past for each and every person of every background to have the chance to be familiar with their cultural trajectories and identities. This helps spread knowledge to the collective population about other cultures and encourages students to see cultures and identities in a new way. We become sensitive and appreciative learning about others and ultimately ourselves.
This concept of honest awareness is powerful. Students are empowered when their cultures are embraced. When education does not portray the past honestly, it robs a part of a student’s cultural identity. Education when not oppressed in the classroom has the power to inspire. This spark can start a fire that burns down ways of the past and makes room for a new growth of change.
Culture is a part of our individual identity. If people are not able to fully practice their culture, it is oppressing everything they truly are as individuals; their values, their beliefs, and the mediums they use to communicate. When people are oppressed, not only does it violate humanrights, this challenges their identities. When identities are challenged, people are not able to live up to their fullest potential. Thus, education should function to celebrate rather than dismiss cultures.
Cultural continuity does more than preserve identities and equality, it also promotes innovation and cultural richness in a society. For example, Los Angeles is a culturally rich city. At the same time, it is a city that is famous for its wealth of the arts. It is not a coincidence that both realities exist. In many ways, culture promotes art and expression. Cultural continuity in its rawest form comes without expectations of assimilation thus allowing individuals to contribute their true selves to society. Delivering education this way, exposes ideas and adds value to community.
In a utopia, these aims for education may be perfectly practiced. However, it is not a perfect world and there are, and have been many injustices in the education system. In fact, these aims of education have been, or are being challenged at present.
Leonardo and Hunter’s Dialects of the Urban, discussed how the negative images and perceptions of the urban as a disorganized jungle has resulted in policy makers creating schools that are “appropriate” for urban students today (Leonardo & Hunter, 2007). Moreover, politicians have not been investing in urban schools to give all students an equal opportunity to learn how to positively utilize their true talents. Instead, policy makers consider any investment in the hopeless “urban jungle” wasteful. As a result, resources are not fully being maximized and students are not being challenged to be the best that they can be. Feagin and Vera’s (1995) White Racism, suggested that allowing all the talent of people to go unused is true societal waste (Feagin & Vera, 1995). This raises the question-What kind of talent has already gone to waste?
In the past, oppression has existed in the prohibition of awareness among certain groups. One example of this is found in the Compulsory Ignorance Laws that were passed in 1740 in South Carolina. These laws were created to keep African Americans illiterate and powerless in the south.These people were slaves left uneducated for the purpose of slavery. As a result, this inhibited African Americans and kept them unaware of their realities and eliminated any possibility for social change to take place.
In today’s classroom, American xenophobia is witnessed in many ways. One example is with Proposition 227. This policy stopped bilingual education in the classroom forcing students to speak only English and discouraged the use of their native language. This policy’s underlying purpose is to promote assimilation over multiculturalism counteracting against the aim for cultural continuity in education.
America was not built from one culture, type of earner, or from people who all come from the same status-quo. The United States is a country that succeeded through the joining together of people of various cultures and status-quo all uniting with a common goal: a better life. It is a nation built on the idea that united we stand, divided we fall. The pilgrims would not have survived that first Thanksgiving without the help of the Native Americans to teach them the ways of the land. When and where in history did the nation forget how to exist united in this way? With that said, if segregation and oppression continue to exist within the nation, resources will be used only minimally, awareness will be stunted, and the success of a large number of students in American schools will be eroded.
These aims of education are not invisible in the American school system. In fact, they are a significant part of what leaders portray the Education system’s purpose to be. The problem is, is that they do not exist in a structure that promotes equality for all. The goal of socialization through education should focus on reaching every person. As an economic super power in the world today, it is amazing to think how much more effective this country would be if these aims for education existed in a literal fashion for all, rather than an out of reach dream for some.
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