Schooling and family Status: Race, Class, Culture, Gender, Immigrant Status, and Difference
It is no doubt that an individual is a product of multiple influences subjected to him or her by the society over her lifetime. From a very young age one becomes receptive of the things happening around them, and initially ones mind being more of a vacuum he slowly feel is up with values, concepts, beliefs as well as behaviors of those around them. It so happens that when this individual grows up he starts to exercise these set of behavioral contributions which are now a part and parcel of his life. It is quite unfortunate if these were inferior in any way as these will mean inferiority for this individual unless a stronger force acts on him. This is practically seen in the bringing up of people in the society, we realize that children brought up in oppressed families and whose families have accepted this position in the society will inmost cases have more less the same attitude as their parents or other members of the family.
This characteristic within individuals becomes a defining trait for the rest of his life unless he takes a deliberate effort to change his mindset and obviously this has to be done with the help of another who has a believe in change. Unless this happens these individuals will always follow while others are leading, they will post poor results while others seem to be doing exemplary well. Such are the effects the society as well as immediate relations has in an individual. They set a base for an individual and consciously or subconsciously determine how these individuals will live, interact and perform in the social setting.
This brief introduction seeks to summarize the foundations, influence as well as the effects of a society in an individual. From it we appreciate that one can see a society through a person’s character, and attitude, as we all reflect our society through our behaviors. A person who is confident of himself and does things diligently will reflect a solid society, and will in most cases represent a supportive and encouraging family. On the other hand an individual with low self esteem, is shaky and is always reluctant in what he does will reflect a poor family background and a shaky society which does not support its people and which has failed to teach its people self believe.
In this case the society is representative of those people beyond the family but who directly interact with an individual, either as carefully designed units such as may be the case with schools or subconsciously created units such as neighborhoods. These units will in most cases adopt the values held by those people who make them up, for instance a school built in a racially segregated neighborhood has a higher chance of distinctive treatment along racial lines for attending students than a school in a cohesive environment where racism is disregarded. Within the text the role of these units has been discussed in detail especially their effects on the life of an individual.
The initial unit is the family, this creates the base for an individual and helps instill initial values which this individual demonstrates all along his life. It is most important for the family to support an individual as he grows as it is from this support that an individual learns to be receptive of the society or looks at the society as the enemy. Just to cite an example most minority groups will negatively portray the majority groups mainly based on past or even current treatment. This creates a feeling of resentment in an individual and getting rid of this belief becomes difficult as one grows up, the very same results when inferiority is communicate to an individual as he grows up. He believes he is inferior and it becomes very difficult to post better results in subsequent events even when this individual is inherently capable of doing much better than those around him.
Thus it becomes important for the family to identify those values and beliefs which would impact positively in the life of an individual, this positive impact would mean a positive outlook in all subsequent activities that these individuals participate in. Thus in summary the family defines what an individual is and the society can only reinforce or oppose the values exhibited as the individual grows depending on the outlook of these values.
On the other hand the society particularly schools in my case have the uphill task of ensuring all individuals have the same positive outlook irrespective of the multiple backgrounds that they hail from. In one of the topics there is an attribute of low performance and the constitution of ones tribe. Even if this is empirically proved the schools being the common denominator among these different races is expected to instill a positive drive into the individuals at least to achieve a status quo among various students. In summary the family is suppose to mould children in the best way possible, the society representative of the school should strive to preserve the best values and change the negative values existent among the children in order to create a competitive platform where no one is alienated on the bases of one’s background.
