Introduction
The family and education are major socializing agents in society and to be particular the United States of America. The majority of the citizens in America go through these two important institutions in society before becoming law-abiding and patriotic citizens of the United States. This follows then that for this goal to be achieved the two institutions must be in the appropriate states to facilitate the upbringing of the younger and future citizens into American citizens.
The family
To begin with, the family is the fundamental basic unit of society. This institution is supposed to play its role well before handing over the children to teachers in the various educational institutions. The condition of the family in the United States is not all that well as expected. In Central America, there is poverty and congestion. These families are also characterized by social and political instability. Due to these factors, the family in the United States can be said to be in crisis. In terms of structure, the conventional nuclear family is being transformed into a larger unit with several nuclear families. There is also the creation of a mobile household setting instead of the usually fixed households. With such settings, the family is not in a better position of fulfilling its societal responsibilities. The family as a unit has undergone diversity. For instance, most of the families in Central America are based on de facto unions which tend not to be formal. Methods of generating family income are changing with women and children also being involved. This is done through seeking self-employment and informal business activities. Women in the families are taking male roles by becoming administrators and organizers of the homes. (William and Julian,2008). Adolescents in the family are also engaged in income-generating activities such as selling in the streets and even some in covert prostitution. This impacts negatively on the socialization of the children. The absence of the father in some of the households modifies the head of the household with the mothers taking up the roles of their husbands. In the units which have emerged, the family has to come a unit of conflict. Inter-family relations have been tampered with. This is because of inequality and violence which exists in the family between generations and the gender. As s result of these changes, the family cannot be said to be fully in charge of fulfilling its responsibilities to society. The family is not achieving what is expected of it in terms of socializing individuals into better citizens in the future. On the other hand, education is yet another socializing agent in the United States has also attracted the attention of many and who have ended up criticizing the situation of education in America.
Education
The education system in the United States is not doing all that is required to fulfill the objectives of education to the American citizens. Education is supposed to bring about social integration in society. This aim of education has not been well catered for by the education system. There is an outcry that education in the United States has lost creativity and innovation. The curriculum has reverted to the old traditional education which has been overtaken by time. This does not go well with the products of this kind of education. There tends to be a mismatch between the education provides and what is required by the employers in the job market. According to studies carried out on several college and university students, their teachers are feeding them with past theories instead of current events like the war in Iraq which can be very important to them.
Issues of inequality between black and white students are also evident in the education system. The white parents tend to look down upon the integrated public schools and prefer taking their children to the so-called big academies.
This negatively affects the education of the children especially when parents are advocating and widening the gap between the rich and poor and the blacks and whites.
The whites still take their children to expensive schools even though they do not admit to the fact that they do so because of racism. Affirmative action in the universities in the United States is an issue that has not been well addressed by the education system. Affirmative action is a very important issue that determines how well the education system socializes the students into responsible and productive citizens. Failure by the education system to adequately address this issue shows that all is not well with the state of education in America.
In conclusion, even though the family and education system in the United States is the main socializing agents of the society, there has been negligence on the part of leadership in as far as providing the required direction towards institutions that can efficiently fulfill the objectives they are created for.
If the current leadership does not look into the state of family and education then the society should be prepared for products that are not well socialized into better citizens of the country.
References
William Kornblum and Joseph Julian. Social Problems: (thirteenth edition). Prentice Hall. (2009).