The Role of Primary School in Shaping Children's Identity
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This essay analyzes the ways in which primary schools contribute to the construction of a student's identity. It explores the role of age discourse, gender discourse, and sexuality discourse in shaping children's perception of themselves. The essay also highlights the impact of language discourse on children's self-identity.
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Running head: EDUCATION EDUCATION Name of the student: Name of the university: Author note:
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1EDUCATION During early childhood, children begin to develop their concept of ‘self’ including the attributes, attitudes and values. Children develop self-identity by who they believe to be and start forming a relationship with it through peer relationship and play that helps in their social, emotionalandcognitivedevelopment(Sanford,2017).Theseaspectsconsciouslyand unconsciously shape the person they become in future. Through this process, primary school plays a significant role as children play a major amount of the time of their day in primary school. In a similar discussion, the essay aims to analyze the ways primary school attempt to contribute to the construction of a student’s identity. Childrenintheprimaryschoolbeginonlybegintounderstandselfwithlimited knowledge which gradually increases when they play or interact with their peers. They begin to define them by themselves in “this or that” labels. For instance, children label themselves in the categories of age, gender, sexuality or social class. They begin to label themselves as child or adult, boy or girl, upper class or middle class and related (Armstrong et al., 2014). Various activities and various education lessons that children learn become part of their physical, emotional and cognitive development through the process of socialization. Socialization can be defined as the lifelong process of inheriting and disseminating customs, norms and ideologies that provide individuals with necessary skills and habits required participating within the individual’s own society. Socialization can be divided into two categories, primary socialization and secondary socialization. The primary focus of this paper is the primary socialization. Primary socialization is significant in human life as it sets the groundwork for all future socialization. It involves the formation of a child’s attitude, values and actions according to the child’s particular culture. School is an educational institution that tends to perform a very crucial role with the purpose of socialization and cultural transmission. It is the most important
2EDUCATION institution after home and family. Educational system introduces new knowledge to the children by imparting insights about culture, races, religions, beliefs and other disciplines (Dimitrova, Johnson & van de Vijver, 2018). One of the important contributions of primary school towards children’s socialization is thediscourse of age. Children learn to identify themselves as children as they are influenced by education. They learn their role as children and begin to understand adults by the roles of adults. In a primary group, a peer group can be identified as a group with similar attributes that make the children understand the concepts of society. A primary school has a specific set of rules and norms that gradually develop children’s perception of age. According to the theory of social behaviorism created by George Herbert Mead, the self is created by social experiences. Self- image and self-consciousness is the two important portion of the self. As individuals interact with other individuals, they build up this self. According to Mead, 'self' is solely created by societal influences.When children are grouped and placed in a class as per their age, they gradually develop the concept of their age and their role along with their peers who belong to the same age group (Simpson, 2014). As they pass each year and climb the higher ladder they realized they are ageing and growing up and change their behavior accordingly with higher responsibilities and studies that the school teaches them (Molenaar & Chiu, 2014). The old saying ‘school is the second home’ is certainly true which is the reason school plays a vital role in shaping children’s perception of human life. The way discourse takes place, it forms the perception of children’s mind.Gender discoursein school is one of the ways children shape their perception of the two prominent genders of society. A child does not know the difference between the ways a girl run or a boy run however when they grow up, they learn a difference between the way a girl run and a boy run. It is the outcome of gender roles perceived
3EDUCATION by the children in a different setting, including school (Arar, 2014). Gender roles are the pattern of attitude, behavior and expectations that are associated with a particular sex, either male or female. Often, as adults too, people are oblivious to the fact that the chunks of words they produce are capable of having a serious impact on the people around them. When a gendered language is used in primary school, it impacts the way children from their perception about the two genders. Based on the structural discourse analysis, several forms of discourse can be inspected at sentence levels that are used regardless of their underlying meaning in primary schools. A piece of discourse may have many hidden channels of communication which are open for interpretation. Class talk is the key to understanding the gendered discourse. According to studies, it has been noted that teachers talk to male students more than the female students, asking the male students questions than female students consciously or unconsciously not producing equal opportunities discourse to both the gender (Dervin, 2015). Also, often teachers are found showing more concern for the boys as according to the boys will be faced with a difficult situation more than girls. This leads to less likelihood among the girls to embark discussion and participation in the classroom. Girls’ achievement in the class cannot be credited, and the boy’s poor performance is overlooked since they are faced with difficult challenges than girls. Also, teachers’ attention and time are more focused on boy’s performance than girls for the notion that boys will be holding a more powerful position than girls and help in solving bigger problems of society. Similar to gender discourse where the discourse is biased towards the male gender, the sexuality discoursein an education setting is often from the heterosexual perspective. Schools have potentially contributed to making heterosexuality normalized in society. Anything different fromheterosexualityisconsideredunusualandoutofthenorm(Shannon,2016).The
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4EDUCATION intersectionbetweenlanguage,sexualityandeducationcanbeobservedintheschools. Understanding sexuality is a difficult process among humans and when perception is imposed and considered normal, anything different begins rising conflict with self. Through many researches, it has been observed that sexual identity is linguistically enacted and it is prominent in the educational setting. It is often found that teachers tend to talk about heterosexual relationships in a more acceptable way than talking about lesbian, gay, bisexuals or queer. Considering the discourse on sexuality, there are two prominent categories. One is focused on discriminatory language practice associated with sexuality, specifically homophobic language. Two, ones who investigate more broadly in the construction of sexuality in education are presented with discriminatory language. In primary school, however, it is very uncommon to find the second category. Teachers’ way of representing the relationship between the two genders is spoken in a manner that seems more acceptable. According to researches, it has been found that in many educational setting, homophobic language is used. Causing students to believe it as unnatural or unusual if felt that way. There is a growing body of work which examines that there is a discursive construction of sexual identities particularly focused within the language of the educational setting. In situations of explanation regarding homosexuality and other forms of sexuality, it is found that teachers are uncomfortable and avoid getting in such conversation (Liew, 2014). Often studentsare labelledwith nameswhen they are found indulged in homosexualityfollowedby sessionsinordertochangetheirperceptionaboutsexuality. Classroom discourse on sexuality in primary schools is often conducted in a hidden manner that makes understanding of sexuality difficult for the students. These discourse unclear to the students but also creates the inappropriate perception of sexuality on the students. The identity practice of the classroom setting has been biased toward the one form of sexuality which results
5EDUCATION in a vague perception of other forms of sexuality. Therefore, when a child is attracted to the same sex, it begins to develop a conflict with self-thinking it to be unnatural. As discussed above, during early childhood, children begin to develop their concept of ‘self’ including the attributes, attitudes and values. Children develop self-identity by who they believe to be. Primary school is the first step towards growing up. It is also found, that language plays a vital role in the socialization process in the human being. The type of language discourse has a profound impact on children’s perception of viewing the world. They build their ‘self’ on the basis of the language they are exposed in their classroom. Therefore, with various forms of discourse taking place in the classroom of a primary school, children develop their self-identity. The way they should act according to their age, the way they should behave as per their gender and the way they should understand their sexuality gets formed through theses language discourse.
6EDUCATION References: Arar, K. (2014). Gender discourse in an Arab-Muslim high school in Israel: Ethnographic case study.Journal of Educational Change,15(3), 281-301. Armstrong, E. A., Hamilton, L. T., Armstrong, E. M., & Seeley, J. L. (2014). “Good Girls” gender, social class, and slut discourse on campus.Social Psychology Quarterly,77(2), 100-122. Davies, B. (2017).Life in the classroom and playground: The accounts of primary school children. Routledge. Dervin, F. (2015). Towards post-intercultural teacher education: analysing ‘extreme’intercultural dialogue to reconstruct interculturality.European Journal of Teacher Education,38(1), 71-86. Dimitrova, R., Johnson, D. J., & van de Vijver, F. J. (2018). Ethnic socialization, ethnic identity, life satisfaction and school achievement of Roma ethnic minority youth.Journal of adolescence,62, 175-183. Liew,W.M.(2014).Sex(education)inthecity:Singapore'ssexualityeducation curriculum.Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education,35(5), 705-717. Molenaar, I., & Chiu, M. M. (2014). Dissecting sequences of regulation and cognition: statistical discourse analysis of primary school children’s collaborative learning.Metacognition and learning,9(2), 137-160. Sanford, N. (2017).Self and society: Social change and individual development. Routledge.
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7EDUCATION Shannon,B.(2016).Comprehensiveforwho?NeoliberaldirectivesinAustralian ‘comprehensive’sexualityeducationandtheerasureofGLBTIQidentity.Sex Education,16(6), 573-585. Simpson, B. (2014). George Herbert Mead (1863-1931).The Oxford handbook of process philosophy and organization studies, 272-286.