situations. The hidden curriculum prepares children for the adult world.
it's very facinating and sad that our whole youth is just us learning and training to be adults and to function in society. Humans don't just exist, we are always learning to prepare for the next "segement" of our lives until we die. I feel like don't learn to be a kid, we just experience childhood whille we learn to be adults if that makes sense.
Schools also serve a latent function in society by socializing children into behaviors like practicing teamwork, following a schedule, and using textbooks.
This is why I think education beyond high school is almost important. from K-12, most of us remain with the same people in the same community, however, when we go off the college we are introduced to new people in a new environment. We learn so much more than just educational material, we also learn more about other cultures through this socialization.
Moral development prevents people from acting on unchecked urges, instead considering what is right for society and good for others.
Socialization just makes us cooperate in society. If every person did not have socialization until they were older, I think society would be complete chaos. We are taught from a young age how to act, and this is for the function of society, and in hopes that we reap the benefits of a smooth functioning society.
Harlow found that the monkeys, when subjected to isolation, exhibit disturbed behaviors, including self-harm, and had a difficult time integrating when reconnected with other monkeys.
It's really faciniating how similarly brains work in monkeys and humans. We are able to perfrom experiments on monkeys to see how a similar experience or development would humans. I feel like it may unethical to isolate young monkeys from their mothers, but the information we have found is very interesting.
Erikson believed the personality continued to change over time and was never truly finished.
I agree with this. I think a lot of our personailty and opinions are infleunced by the people around us and what we are exposed to throughout our lives. I know there are core things about my personality that are the same as from when I was a child, but as I started to be on the internet more and spend more time with my friends, my personality changed. I will expect it to change more as I meet new people and as I get older and have more experiences.
Some statuses are ascribed—those you do not select, such as son, elderly person, or female. Others, called achieved statuses, are obtained by choice, such as a high school dropout, self-made millionaire, or nurse.
I wonder in which societies which status defines you more: ascribed or achieved? By this, I mean which ones people will recongize or celebrate more. I feel like in America we tend to value acheived status more than ascribed, but there may be other cultures that value ascribed status more.
With a theoretical perspective focused on the symbols (like language, gestures, and artifacts) that people use to interact, this approach is interested in how people interpret those symbols in daily interactions.
Humans did just make meaning out of random symbols that can be identified by large masses of people. I think people need to put meaning behind as many things as possible to explain the world around them, and to feel connected with others around them. I know other species have symbols to communicate with one another, but humans are very unique in the fact of having to put meanings behind everything.
Similar to Marx, Weber saw class as economically determined. Society, he believed, was split between owners and laborers. Status, on the other hand, was based on noneconomic factors such as education, kinship, and religion.
I can see this possibly being suported, but I do think, unfortunately, money is the determining force of status. Money "talks" very loudly today and as of current day, it feels like money is more taken seriously than education in America. Those who have money have more control, more status, over people who have high education degrees but may have a lot of debt.
Postindustrial Society
Posindustrial times have given us access to articipate in so many more societies. With access to the internet and technologies that allow us to comminicate with others, we are able to connect with people who have similar beielfs or intertests all around the world. For example, this could allow for a book society to form with people on 6 different continents.
many societies also share a political authority.
For religion would the equivalent to a political authority be the religious figure/ diety, to prophets and church leaders, or other religious figures? Relgious soicieties are similarly set up to societies that have a goverenment. These societies have a heirarchy of power.
In Canada, women can smile and say hello to men on the street. In Egypt, that’s not acceptable.
I think it's very interesting to how different social norms can be so different in different parts of the world. I wonder how long social norms take to change? I wonder what influences social norms the most (politics, religion, etc.)?
culture shock
I definitely experienced a culture shock when I got to college. I grew up as basically an only child, with much older parents, in a very rural community. When I got to college I had to live with a peer, in a noisy dorm, in a closer to suburban city. This was a change and it was disorienting and frustrating sometimes.
Ethnocentrism is believing your group is the correct measuring standard and if other cultures do not measure up to it, they are wrong.
I feel like this is very prevalent in America and I think it may be because there are so many different cultures that occur here. And I think with how media does or doesn't present certain cultures is how xenophobia is so common. I think a lot of history textbook/ professors do not teach students/ youth enough about how to not look at other cultures through your own culture.
What happens when we encounter different cultures?
Do you think the more humans participate in trade gloabalzation, and as travel becomes easier and easier, that culture will be more homogenized? I wonder how some cultures feel when a practice of their culture is adopted by another culture; I know with some cultures, they love to share while others do not.
Almost every human behavior, from shopping to marriage, is learned.
it's hard to completely teel which behaviors are completely learned, instinct, or a combination of both because we are such social creatures. It would be inhumane to not socialize children to see how they behave instinctually. But I would definitely agree that most behaviors are learned, especially where it comes to gender roles or behaviors related to "trends".
experiment
I want to push back on the idea that all studies having experiements. There are many papers that I have read that are purely observational studies such as case studies. Although these studies are not likely to be replicated, any knowledge we can get on almost anything is powerful.
case study
in my psych class I took over the summer, we looked at a lot of case studies. It's really interesting to see very specific senerios or individuals. I found the Andrea Yates case very interesting, and even though it only looks at one person, we can use our findings from that case to help us look at other cases of ppd.
closed-ended questions
I think that these types of surveys would be the easiest to categorize for a results/ findings section in a paper. Open ended questions may leave too much interpretation to researchers if subjects do not give a very direct answer. This may then make results not as reliable.
literature review, which is a review of any existing similar or related studies.
I think it's important to look back on similar studies for multiple reasons. I think it's important to see if you can perform the study again and get the same or similar results, or to see if you gte new findings. This ensures if the past studies were reliabile or not. Secondly, if you want to perform a similar study, looking at old works can help you to design experiements that can look at more or different factors.
They are interested in—but not attached to—the results.
This is the hope, that their results are based off of what happened in the study and not biased towards what the sociologist was hoping to find. In my research capstone last semester, we read about a bunch of different biologists/ zoologists who made their findings more biased towards what they wanted to find rather than presenting all the data. I wonder how common that is in sociology or other research?