Objectives:
When you finish studying this chapter, you should be able to:
- Identify the major agents of socialization for children in the United States, including the family, the peer group, the school and the mass media.
- Identify and analyze major trends affecting the nuclear family and the implications of these trends for education.
- Describe the functions and influence of the peer group.
- Cite and discuss research about the existence of a school culture in elementary and secondary schools.
- Discuss and analyze problems related to sex roles that boys and girls experience in school.
- Describe and analyze recent trends involving gender differences in the achievement, ability, and educational and occupational attainment of boys and girls.
- Identify and discuss the youth problems of drugs and drinking, suicide, teenage pregnancy, delinquency and violence, and examine the implications of these problems for education.
Focus and Refocus Questions:
When you finish studying this chapter, you should be able to answer the following questions from your textbook:
Focus Questions
- What cultural patterns influence instruction in schools?
- How does the culture of the schools socialize the young?
- How have television and other mass media affected students?
- Do sex roles and sex differences influence learning and achievement? If so, how?
- How do aspects of youth culture affect the schools?
Refocus Questions
- What are some steps you might take as a teacher to work effectively with children whose families differ from the traditional nuclear family?
- What are some ways that you, as a teacher, might shape your students' peer relationships in positive directions?
- To what extent did your high-school teachers emphasize active learning? Were there obvious obstacles to active learning that emphasized higher-order goals?
- What might you do as a teacher to encourage girls, or boys for that matter, to overcome tendencies they might have to be too passive?
- How do you think your teaching will be affected by the problems of adolescence, such as violence, drug use, and pregnancy? What kind of help might you need in dealing with such problems?
