Schools help children develop their character and social skills. Being around hundreds of people their own age teaches them how to interact with others and be part of society.
When choosing a school for your child consider the following questions. Do the teachers encourage children to be creative? Does the school encourage daily attendance?
Education
Education is one of the main goals of schooling. Students learn new skills and gain knowledge that can lead to a better future. This can also help them become more confident. In addition, schools can help students become independent and make good decisions.
Students may choose to attend college after graduation. Colleges provide a wide range of academic programs, including bachelor’s degrees and graduate degrees. Graduate schools offer master’s degrees or professional degrees.
Students can benefit from gender-equitable education systems, which can reduce school dropouts for girls and increase their earnings and health outcomes. Gender-equitable education can also reduce harmful norms around masculinity that fuel gang violence, child labor and recruitment into armed groups. Students can also benefit from the 9% increase in hourly earnings that comes with each additional year of schooling. This can improve their quality of life and build prosperity for their families. In addition, students can also benefit from being exposed to different cultures and ideas in school.
Socialization
School is one of the primary agents of socialization, alongside family. In schools, students learn societal norms and values and internalize them into their own behaviours.
This is primarily achieved through the formal curriculum of academic subjects, but also by the hidden curriculum of school culture. This includes implicit messages about the value of punctuality, obedience and conformity to authority figures. It may also include the value of achieving high grades and a competitive attitude towards others.
A major component of socialization in schools is the peer group, which typically consists of classmates in younger years and then becomes more specific to adolescent subgroups in the teenage years. Developing relationships with peers, especially positive ones, is important for children’s happiness and success in school.
Some of the current rules created and enforced in schools are not conducive to healthy socialization. For example, top-down rule making and reprimands put teachers on unequal social footing with students and encourage the creation of student resentment and rebellion against authority.
Discipline
School discipline is an important component of the educational process. It serves two primary purposes: to maintain a safe environment conducive to learning, and to teach children socially appropriate behaviors and attitudes. Serious student misconduct involving violence or criminal behavior defeats these goals and makes headlines, but most discipline issues in schools involve noncriminal misbehavior.
Disciplinary measures in schools often involve reprimanding students, placing them in “time out” or withholding recess, lowering grades and corporal punishment. The most extreme disciplinary action is exclusion, in which students are removed from the classroom and placed in special education or detention.
The most effective discipline strategies rely on logical consequences rather than simply punishing students for their actions. This allows them to see the impact of their actions and the direct effect on others. It is only when they understand that their behavior is not acceptable that they start to change. This is called supportive discipline. This comes before corrective discipline, which includes punishments like detention and suspension.
Community
A school is a large social hub in the neighborhood. It houses students, teachers, administrators, coaches, and other staff. Most of these people have a wide circle of family, friends, coworkers and acquaintances. These people are known as residents, because they live nearby. The school also provides social and health services for the community. These services may include free legal representation for students, counseling and mentoring programs, after-school sports and tutoring, food services and mental health clinics, and other educational programs.
Schools should promote community involvement by promoting an environment of trust, respect, and inclusivity. They should also create a positive relationship between students and their parents by emphasizing common goals and values.
At the micro-level, it is crucial to guarantee that formal decision-making organisations, such as school management committees, integrate minority populations and encourage their active participation (Flecha, 2015). Training opportunities should be developed, including strategies to tackle socio-cultural beliefs against education and discriminatory gender norms that affect children’s education and enrolment (consult Policy page on school-based initiatives for displaced communities). Also, flexible timetables should be arranged and transportation provided when possible to ensure everyone can participate in meetings and decisions.