Socialization question?

Question

i have this assignment in sociology on socialization and the question is, "how are native children socialized differently than the rest of society" i don't even know what that means, i thought they were the same. any ideas on how to answer this? (if you even know what i'm talking about)

Answer 1

native to what.? probably they learn to live in poverty and predudice.

Answer 2

native, as in children in villages etc.

If this is the case than I think the answer is basically the fact that villages and tribes have an incrediably different social system.

It's not so much of 'us and them' (being family vs. non-family) and more of a community experience and upbringing. In that way socialisation would be completely different, especially since social values in non-western culture seems to be held much higher.

Answer 3

There can be two different answers to this question.

First, Native children have been socialized differently because of the residential schools that existed a while ago. Look up "residential schools" and you'll learn all about what they had to go through. Basically, they couldn't speak their native language, they were converted to Christianity, and basically assimilated into the Western culture.

The second answer to that question is that Native people have different values than the rest of North America. For example, one of the agents of socialization is the family, which is very important in Native culture. When the child is young, he is always near or with his parents, which enabled him to learn the values, beliefs, languages, customs, skills, etc of his community. In a video I saw in Sociology class where Natives were shown videos of how other North Americans raise their children, they couldn't understand why the parents and the children were so distant. They thought the parents didn't love their children! So that's one aspect that plays an important role in Native socialization: the family.

Naturally, since Native people live in a completely different setting than other North Americans, they place values on different things. How to deal with the extreme cold, the need to learn how to hunt and fish properly, how to build igloos, canoes, etc, has more of a value than more Western values, like getting a job, going to school, etc.

Hopefully you've realized that I'm talking mainly about Indigenous Natives in the North of America, but the general concept applies to most Natives.