The Educational Shaping of Development
Whether women are better than men I cannot say—but I can say they are certainly no worse.
Of my two ‘handicaps,’ being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black.
Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.
One is not born a woman—one becomes one.
Personal development is a process of being and becoming. Individual development takes place in the context of social settings (family, school, church, college, work, etc.) aimed at socializing the individual. The above four quotes are useful in helping me explain how culture shaped my own socialization and development process. The social setting context on which I will focus is education, i.e. my schooling. After a brief gloss of my background, I will use the above quotes to explain how the culture into which I was born has shaped my own personality and development.
My major is elementary education and also involved myself in high school athletics. This experience filled me with a lifelong commitment to healthy living and staying fit, including regular exercise and diet. My family was a traditional upper-middle class family with good social standing in the community. I am Jewish and Catholic, a white female. During my socialization process in junior high and high school, I realized that being a female comes with it own set of issues compared to males. I spent my adolescent years concerned with the typical preoccupations of teen girls, i.e. my appearance, clothes, friends, and, of course, cute guys. However, I realized that guys were not treated like girls when it came to academics or even athletics. It seemed that boys were always favored or given special treatment. This inspired in me a willingness to work harder because I craved the attention and affirmation given to the boys. Their sporting events were better attended and given more attention. In class they ...