Children are Passive Recipients of Socialization
It is a commonly held belief that children are passive recipients of socialization. Current traditional stereotypes of children psychology view them as tabla rasa, or blank slates. As a result, the majority of educational paradigms tend to be built around a curriculum that reinforces socialization in order to create typical replicas of society's desirables. However, this traditional assumption has been challenged within modern decades as research has indicated that children are in fact not passive recipients at all, but that they are actively questioning the benefits of conformity and that few if any children are in reality true "passive recipients". In order to show that unreality of this assumption, we have to first examine the understanding of socialization as a process. An examination of the meaning of socialization will reveal two distinct branches. In the first branch, the definition means that of "making a person fit to deal with others" or simply giving him certain inhibitions and a rudimentary stock of manners to operate within society (Margolin). The secondary branch intimates the idea to "organize or form in accordance with the principles and aims of socialism" (Bossard). Although it seems that the traditional
are all signs that point to the fact that socialization is not passive nor is it something that can be wholly taught. Rather the interpretative process is internalized and children will reach their own conclusions through both conscious and subconscious deliberation. Brim continues to argue that child development has strong influence in their social environment, mostly their parental influences, however that the majority of cognitive development and therefore social awareness is internally developed. In fact, childhood development is very much dependent on the development of cognitive and personal learning and interpretation skills rather than mass conformity. Therefore external influences have a tremendous impact on the development of social paradigms within children. This is the very reason that we do not have a society of brainwashed individuals who conform to strict social ideology. "Passive recipients" dictates that children completely and wholly accept what they are taught and told through the educational and social institutions that they belong to. The education curriculum established within the school environment teaches "communication, teamwork, and social skills" in the early years of childhood education more than anything else. Teaching models have been shown to be ineffective because each child learns differently, as a result, mass socialization attempts only work for a small number of students and even they approach their socialization through different cognitive directions. This process is meant to create uniformity and begin the process of socialization. The result is that they resist against such integration attempts and ultimately are labeled as misfits. The diversity of our current social order and the fact that there are so many different personalities, social beliefs, crimes, benevolence, etc. If this were not true than the entirety of the world would be dominated by pejorative and occult societies and single-minded individuals. The inevitable result of a mass conformist perspective on education has been that more than 30% of children from preschool to third grade are classified as "problem children", whether through learning disabilities or social difficulties. The central complaint against the myth that children are passive recipients of socialization is not that socialization occurs.
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