Agencies of Socialization

About this chapter

Agencies of Socialization revisits socialization as a life-long process — 'womb to tomb' — and explains how a young person is moulded into a functional member of society by interacting agencies at three levels. At the micro level it covers family, peer group and neighbourhood; at the meso level it covers school, religion and social class, with a long section on the teacher as an agent of change and on the hidden curriculum; at the macro level it covers global community, mass media, electronic media, social networking and virtual communities. For a CTET Paper II teacher working with adolescents aged 11-14, the most testable strands are: how peer influence overtakes parental influence in adolescence, Erikson's identity crisis, gender socialization in family and peer groups, the school as a 'miniature society', Brubacher's definition of school, the hidden curriculum, and the positive and negative effects of mass media and social networking. The four tests — Practice 15, Quiz 15, Hard 15, Mastery 30 — cover all six topic areas at CTET depth and difficulty, framed around the upper-primary classroom.