The main objective of education is to maximize the integral development of students by attending to different areas or dimensions of development: motor, affective, cognitive, communicative and social. It is necessary to educate whole persons, not only in academics, but also to educate you in the personal and social. Therefore, education has two basic purposes in the student body; on the one hand, the human formation oriented toward the socialization and training in the norms, values, and attitudes to develop as an active member and participation of the society in favour of its improvement; on the other, the formation of cognitive or academic-oriented training of the individual. It is the first purpose to which we are referring when we speak of school as an institution for socializing and we can say that at present this falling into oblivion as we find frequently to subjects with lack of values, absence of critical ability, etc
When we speak of the school as an institution for socializing we are referring to the social dimension of the learner. One of the great purposes of education is to integrate socially the student in the community in which it is immersed, as well as, prepare you to manage successfully in the same.
J. DEWEY defined school as a social institution whose life was to be a faithful transcript of the characteristics and positive experiences in real life. The school provides its students with the experience of socialising in an educational community that you must enter your students in the society, in behalf of which it works and seeks to achieve its objectives. Thus, in the traditional school the main agent of socialization was the teacher, which constituted the only route by which they came to the disciple stimuli and unique educational institution school. In the school of contemporary has lost that look specific, but obviously offers its students socialization experiences more rich and, of course, consistent with the requirements and needs of the current society.
Today is conceived the school as a social institution which constitutes an educational community within which to integrate both the students and teachers as the family and the own entities of the environment. If the school integrates groups and individuals of different social experiences it offers to its students are more rich and varied than the school closed in on itself. If the exchanges with the environment are common and are part of the curriculum organized, the prospects and possibilities of socialization offered by the school is expanding and its role as agent for social educator is facilitated and enhanced.
The school as an institution provides, through the functions of socialization, opportunities to acquire and consolidate the sense of “I” or the self-esteem, to be integrated as an active member of the school community and to maintain social relationships at different levels of coexistence.
The school is conceived as an institution for socializing since it was transmitted social norms and values that will help the student to live in a group and be integrated later to the society respecting their rules, laws and values. Therefore, since the school is socializing the students, understanding socialization as the process by which it helps the child to become an adult member, active and responsible within the society in which it operates. Socialization is a process of continuous and gradual. While the child is educated, is socialized.
Therefore, the school is one of the main agents socializadores since in it the child acquires a set of norms and values for their subsequent integration in society as an adult. Escolarizarse means to integrate properly in a social group; it’s going to school to obtain autonomy and status in daily life, and learn what is needed to live in society.
However, it is important to note that traditionally the values and patterns of behavior that are considered to be implicit in the task of education. It is assumed that the faculty, transmit the contents of the different subjects, was at the same time the student’s values. But nowadays it has been seen that it is necessary to propose intentionally the education in values and, therefore, the transmission of them by the school if what you want is to achieve specific objectives in this regard. In this sense, it is essential that the school develop programs of social skills, values education, conflict resolution, and thus develop in the students the social and civic competence and the competence of autonomy and personal initiative included in the curriculum of the different stages of education. However, it is not picked up in the curriculum no specific time for the development of these skills, so it would be very advisable that you provide at least one hour of tutoring weekly in Primary school, because in high school if that exists, very suitable for the development of these competencies as in the framework of the mentoring will cover different lines of action tutorial to be especially interesting in this sense, the teach to be a person, teach them to be and teach to live together.
An education centred on the transmission of social norms and values is an education centred on the person, because the person is your own call to the socialization and the realization of values.
The transmission of values in school has to be done in the framework of the culture and the specific needs of the society to which education must respond. In this sense, the global society to which it belongs a school is present in the educational relationship that occurs in the classroom. Therefore, the school as an institution for socializing will attempt to instill, among others, values such as truth, freedom, love, solidarity and critical sense, responsibility, creativity, and the moral sense.
Rosa Elena Gil Álvarez December 26, 2011