There are three different agencies of socialisation. The family, the education system and the media. These all have different roles in socialisation.
The family effects people in their younger years, before they attend school. It teaches children the appropriate behaviour for their gender. A child’s behaviour is also influenced by how they observe their parents. Parents are influential in shaping basic values such as manners. Margnet Meed (1934) said parents are significant others who receive respect on their opinions and values from the children. Norms differ between families but the family teach children how to address family members, how and where to eat and sleep and the difference between good and bad behaviour. The roles in the family are quite limited and adults have more roles. There are also positive and negative sanctions in the family. These sanctions are informal in the family. Some positive sanctions include facial expressions, verbal approval and physical rewards. Some negative sanctions include being grounded, smacked or disapproval through language. Bernstein suggested that there are differences in how we learn to use language based on the social class of our family and Haralambos and Holborn (2000) claimed that compared to working-class families, middle-class parents emphasise high achievement at school and reward success.
Another agency of socialisation is the education system. This teaches us the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for later life. Jackson (1968) said hidden curriculum is things we learn from the experience of attending school, such as dealing with strangers. It teaches us the historic knowledge of our societies past and the geographic knowledge of our society and other societies. It also teaches us the values of our society. For example, getting good grades and qualifications and that we should work hard for those qualifications. Bowles and Gintis (2002) said there is a