The Impact of Societal Structures on the Development of Children

Structure, Family and Children: An Inquiry into School Education

Every child is born into and grows up in a specific society. Each of these civilizations has a significant population of people who are united by shared institutions and economic, governmental, and political structures. Many of the actions and behaviours that those humans participate in throughout their daily lives are facilitated, shaped, regulated, and constrained by these societal institutions and processes. Understanding these societal structures and systems is an important part of the growth process for the developing youngster (Barrett and Buchanan-Barrow, 2005).

Education is a process that tries to help people develop biologically, emotionally, mentally, socially, and morally (Thornburg, 1984). This process has been transformed into a regular and planned structure that is carried out in a planned and scheduled manner in today's world. This structure's most significant element is the school. One of the most important hubs of educational institutions is the school where learning is carried out collaboratively. To comprehend the behaviours of students, instructors, and organisation in these centres, it will be helpful to grasp and apply some sociological ideas (Willower and Carr, 1965).

The purpose of this essay is to understand the influence of the structure of the school in a child’s life in an attempt to understand how an institution which is made keeping in mind the needs of children as a whole can cater to individual learning needs of children. This will be done keeping in mind the family and extended family background of the child in an effort to determine if the family has any influence on children and vice versa.

Discussion

Schooling has been acknowledged as a critical component of the state all over the world. Even countries with insufficient means to fund a mass educational systems frequently include the right to education in their statutes (Kurian 1982). Education is readily accepted even in places where it is mainly absent since it is seen as a part of modernity.

This widespread acceptance of education as a major ideological element of the state contributes to the development of a global, standardised, and highly rationalised educational system (Benavot et al 1991). While education is a phenomena that connects society and the different elements that make up society, it is also influenced and formed by them. The current improvements in communication and transportation technologies of their day have had a significant impact on both developed and developing countries, and all of these challenges have reignited the argument over how schools and education should be organised (Turkkahraman, 2015; Billhan, 1996).

A significant signifier of the effect of the structure of schooling on children is looking at the happiness of children. Happiness is an emotion that is paired with other pleasant feelings, resulting in perceptual well-being when an individual's good feelings outnumber his negative emotions and his life motivation is increased (Diener 2000). Happiness is usually thought to play a vital and necessary role in the well-being and drive of schoolchildren (Datu et al. 2017; Frey and Stutzer 2002; Moos et al. 2005; Oreopoulos 2007; Soleimani and Tebyanian 2011). The dearth of enjoyment in schools is a big issue in many educational systems, although it is rarely addressed in depth (Guilherme and de Freitas 2017; Salavera et al. 2017). Considering the significance of the cognitive, emotional, psychological, and social progress qualities and skills that develop during this timeframe, happiness should be emphasised as early as feasible in childhood, but no later than puberty (Mahon et al. 2010; Parker and Asher 1989).

Family and Children

Families have a tremendous impact on children's learning behaviours and academic accomplishment since they are the child's primary and most significant surroundings. According to Coleman's report (1966), families may play an even bigger effect in a student's academic success than schools and society. Since then, empirical study on family background and children's achievement has discovered that family socioeconomic status may have a greater impact on child's educational accomplishments than the effects of schools (Coleman et al. 1966; Sirin 2005; Cheadle 2008).

Parental educational involvement, such as reviewing school topics with children, inspecting their assignments, and participating in school activities, has been shown to increase academic performance of the students in scientific investigations. It is not strictly related to parents, as the results can be replicated for other forms of guardians or extended family as well (Pong et al. 2005). Outstanding teaching tools and classmates concentrated in key schools have a significant impact on children's access to next-stage educational possibilities. Families with a higher socioeconomic position can take advantage of their privileges to improve their children's educational options and increase their chances of attaining a higher education. This is because these families may not just able to devote more time to their children’s education, but there are good chances that these guardians and/or parents are educated themselves and will find it easier to educate their wards themselves (Li 2006; Liu 2008; Zhao and Hong 2012). Hence, literature makes it clear that the structure of the family is an essential element in the education of the child. It also explains why there is a good possibility that parents and/or guardians from better socio-economic backgrounds are more capable of participating directly into the education of their children, hence the cultural and economic structure of the family could be a good advantage or a disadvantage for the child.

At present, there is an increasing approach to the reduction of the role of the family in the education efforts of children. But there needs to a lot more research to make concrete claims as the structure of family is also evolving, constantly. Simultaneously, the family as a social institution faces certain socioeconomic issues that have resulted in the emergence of certain social phenomena that have a significant impact on the children's development in the family, such as a growth in divorce rates and, as a result, a rise in the number of single parent families or parents leaving to work overseas. Taking into account these socioeconomic realities, understanding all educational trends, and enacting genuine educational reforms that benefit the entire society is impossible without an effective school-family relationship (Catalano and Catalano, 2014).

Structure of Family and Children

The structure of the family and extended family structure has a profound effect on the educational outcome of the student. There is a lot of research which has been done which elucidates on the relation between the family structure and its effect on children. Although schools and teachers are sometimes blamed for certain kids' inability to develop (Rivkin et al. 2005), students' living standards outside of school often have a role in their future direction in school. Living with two married, opposite-sex birth parents, for example, is frequently linked to better educational and well-being achievements (Pong et al. 2003; Furstenberg 2014). Staying with a single parent, step-parent, or cohabiting adult, on the other hand, has been connected to poor academic performance (Breivik and Olweus 2006; Dufur et al. 2010, 2013). Of course, the results of these researches need to be taken with a grain of salt, as it needs to be realised that all kinds of research are done in a particular socio-economic strata and is backed-up on results which they have achieved within the sample that they have collected. It is possible that these are results which may not apply to everyone.

However, contradicting results of parental involvement have also been found by research. School-based parenting, particularly involvement that includes direct school interaction, has been linked to higher academic achievement, improved behaviour, and a more optimistic attitude and attitude toward school, according to studies (Hornby and Blackwell 2018). A tiny body of evidence refutes the notion that parental participation leads to higher academic achievement, suggesting that such links are fictitious and can be explained by other family factors or processes. Desimone (1999), for example, found that parental participation had detrimental consequences. They found that excessive involvement of the parent in the educational endeavours of the child pushes the child towards being more negligent towards their education, than they would’ve been had the parent not been involved in the education of the child.

However, some research appear to show no link between parental participation and child development. Direct tests of academic performance show beneficial impacts. There was no immediate effect of parental participation on primary education outcomes, but there was a later effect. There was a link between improved social competence and fewer behavioural difficulties, which led to a beneficial outcome. Influence on future academic success. Furthermore, numerous researchers concur that parent involvement may be more advantageous for young kids than for adolescents (Kurtulmus 2016). Hence, research has also shown that parental involvement has little to no effect on the performance of the child in school.

Parental participation in children's life at home and at school is complex, multidimensional, and tiered (Hornby and Blackwell 2018). While several studies show that parental participation affects children's educational results, it's unclear which child and family variables support or generate stratified access to this vital social resource. Pribesh et al (2020) hypothesised that family structure and transition influenced parental participation and educational results stratification. Their literature is significant because it is one of the most recent pieces of literature on the subject. After controlling for a variety of factors, the results showed that biological single parents were less invested in their children's school lives than families with two biological parents, either married or cohabiting. Thus, when we evaluate a resource justification, that a single parent has fewer resources to dedicate to the kinds of activities we label parental participation, and its intersection with a change, levels of parental participation simply vary. Hence, the reason they discover that single parents are not involved in the educational lives of their children is because they lack time and energy to devote to their wards. Hence, they don’t discover whether this lack in time investment is because of the structure of their family (either a single parent, non-biological parent, same-sex parent, married parents etc.), it could be related directly to the time which parents allot to the child. Since the responsibility of providing financially falls on a single parent instead of two, it is likely that the parent is not able to give as much time to the education the child as two parents would. There is not enough evidence to corroborate that the marital status or presence of two parents is directly responsible for an advantage or disadvantage of the child in the school.

Conclusion

The purpose of this report was to look at the structure of school and education and analyse it in the context of the development and happiness of children. The report discovered that education is an essential part of the structure of any society and the social environment of the school can be a factor in the happiness of the child, and can effect it both positively and negatively. Additionally, it is to be noted that these conclusions are mostly drawn from studies where children were very young, and not pubescent children. With regards to family, this study discovered that there are many contradicting accounts about the effect of a family on a child’s life. While some research discovers that the family structure has an overwhelmingly positive effect on the education of the child, other research discover that parent intervention in a child’s educational life may actually produce contrary results. Then there are results which elucidate that the effect of the family structure has no direct bearing on the educational success and performance of a child; it is all about the access to time and other resources which the child can get.

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