Learning the Student Role Kindergarten as - Sociology101netasTHEtheroasTHEtheroasTHEthero.Image.Marked文档.pdfVIP

Learning the Student Role: Kindergarten as Academic Boot Camp by Harry L. Gracey Human beings are culture-making animals and nearly all complex human behavior is learned and not inborn. Socialization is the term used to name the lifelong process by which people learn the ways of their communities. Some socialization is essential for both individuals and their larger societies, and neither could survive without it. The first important agency of socialization is the family where young children learn language, basic social skills, and the values of their culture. But in all modern industrial societies, children experience another major agency of socialization: the school. Children learn a great deal in school, although much of what they learn is not part of the formal curriculum. Equally important is the hidden curricu lum, for children also are taught how to fit in with a social system, follow rules, respect authority, obey, compete, and achieve success within the boundaries of the system. In this article, Harry Gracey compares kindergarten to a military boot camp – the initial phase of military training. He first describes and then analyzes a typical day in a kindergarten classroom, showing that what the children are really learning is the student role – a role they will play for many more years. Introduction At the beginning of the twentieth century, Emile Durkheim told student teachers at the University of Paris that education consists of a methodical socialization of the younger generation.” He went on to add: It is the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not ready for social life. Its object is to arouse and to develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual, and moral states that are demanded of him by the special milieu for which he is specifically destined To the egotistic and asocial being that has just been born, [all societies] must, as r