130. How children are socialized today determines the destiny of society. Unfortunately, we have not yet learned how to raise children who can help bring about a better society.
WORD:493
Some people believe that the future of society will be determined by children’s socialization which can be converted by the way we raise them. Indeed, children are going to be the backbones of society, their way of living with other people will certainly be decisive to social development. And the guidance of education can help them avoid problems previously. Therefore I fundamentally agree with their assertion.
To begin with, the way children see the world will influence their behavior on it. Socialization can be defined as the formation of children’s consciousness of the society; it can reflect and counteract the objective world. Then, children with active social consciousness will contribute to reform the society. Like people born in 1960s in china, who had experienced the most turbulent time of the country, know the preciousness of the peaceful and wealthy life. That generation, now, form the current mainstream of society. And in order to avoid past tragedies happen again, they present hard-working and polite to make a better social atmosphere for the youth. While on the contrary, wrong social consciousness will make children the destructive generation. Many compelling examples can be found in the family firm. The second or third generation of the leader leads a too comfortable life to confront any strike from business.
Then, the function of education in children’s socialization is undeniable. Since social consciousness has the ability of counteraction, it is necessary for children to hold right beliefs in mind. Once they make mistakes in understanding the world, parents or others’ correction and instruction will help them out of the shadow, otherwise children will probably make big mistake in the future. A lot of juvenile offenders when being interrogated confess that they think robbery and theft are the quickest way to be rich. If anyone have taught them the principle of getting money, and kept them under supervision, these young people won’t have the life’s regret and society will be more stable. I think this is also the objectives of religions – to help people form good quality and bring benefit to others.
However, according to philosophy, social consciousness is determined by social being. Then the process of children’s socialization depends on rather society itself than education. During Chinese “Cultural Revolution”, numerous students were misled by the social trend. The world they saw is full of debates so they thought the most urgent issue for the society was to find out who’ s the right one. In that case, although government leaders had found the right way to educate the youth, it still took them ten years to pour oil on the troubled water.
To sum up, children’s socialization means how they understand the world and form their own social consciousness. It is instructional to their behavior so it will be determinative to the social destiny. But society is the origin of socialization. Even we have got the right way to educate children, our guidance would be rather helpful than crucial.