Socialization of Youth in a Changing World

Inducting children and youth into the prevailing culture in a modern, industrialized country is a complex endeavor which involves several institutions as well as grave burdens of responsibility for those engaged in the process. In what by some in the West is being called the post-modern world, fragmentation as well as contradiction of norms, of sociopolitical interests, and of life-styles and goals have partially obliterated traditions that once guided participants in such social institutions as the family, the school, and the wider community in their efforts to socialize the young. Today's often harsh evidence of social disarray surely testifies in part to the problem.