Wk5 Final Paper SOC 312

Reflective Paper
Saida Cabrera
SOC 312: Child, Family & Society
Instructor: Benjamin Wright
October 20, 2014

Reflective Paper
After I graduate Ashford University and obtain my bachelors in sociology I will be pursuing a teaching career at Teachers for America. This class has introduced lots of information that is definitely going to be useful in my teaching career. Understanding the nature of families and children and how they relate to society is very important as an educator. Being part of a child’s socialization is something that should be taken serious as the different agents shape the child’s behavior, morals, value, and other important attributes. Teachers, just as other socialization agents can help many aspects of a child’s life or it harm them. Families have their own set of customs, beliefs, values, morals, and these things are passed on their children. Through out our textbook we can see how this can become a problem when the child starts to associate with people that are not part of his or her family. Society sometimes imposes certain things that children sometimes do not understand. For example, when both parents raise a child and their values are different from that of the society in which they live in, people that are not part of their circle may misinterpret the child’s actions. In the child’s eyes, their actions are normal but to others this action might be something that is frowned upon in that particular society.
“Ultimately, socialization leads to certain outcomes that are shaped particular social groups of varying scopes” (Bojczyk, Shriner & Shriner, 2012). The knowledge that I attain about the theories of socialization, which in child development focuses of behaviorism and social learning, will help me a great deal when I become a teacher. Children tend to react to their world based on what they are presented with. Children react differently to what is presented to them and it may not be what you had predicted. Parents or family members do classic conditioning unintentionally and this is another important point that can be useful in my future career. Understanding child development is also going to very useful when I become a teacher. As an educator it is important to know, more or less, what to expect from the children you are teaching. Although some expectations are enforced, other expectations are not suitable for that age range. It is like expecting that a four year old should know how to tie his or her shoe or expecting them to be able to tell ‘white lies’. A perfect example that will help illustrate this is, in our class week two discussion one in the Theory of the Mind, Jacob and Patrick were at different stages in their cognitive development because of their age difference. While Jacob could not lie to the ‘mean monkey’, Patrick understood that the monkey needed to be deceived in order to get the object that he really wanted. This class is a big asset to my future career and it was very fun and interesting to learn these new things.

Reference:
Bojczyk, Kathryn E. Supporting Children's Socialization: A Developmental Approach. 2012. Pg. 10.3. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/books/AUSOC312.12.1/sections/sec10.3