These are the normal definitions of a society.
- Family: The family is the center of the child’s life, as infants are totally dependent on others. The family teaches children cultural values and attitudes about themselves and others – Children learn continuously from the environment that adults create. Children also become aware of class at a very early age and assign different values to each class accordingly.
Current status in this country: Kids and parents have a phone stuck in their face most of the time. Kids need safe places most of the time.
- Religion: Some believe religion is like an ethnic or cultural category, making it less likely for the individuals to break from religious affiliations and be more socialized in this setting. Parental religious participation is the most influential part of religious socialization—more so than religious peers or religious beliefs.
Current status: Liberals, represented by the ACLU, have worked hard to remove religion from society.
- Peer groups: A peer group is a social group whose members have interests, social positions and age in common. This is where children can escape supervision and learn to form relationships on their own. The influence of the peer group typically peaks during adolescence however peer groups generally only affect short- term interests unlike the family which has long- term influence.
Current status. I’m not qualified to respond to this except to say when a speaker, who has positions that disagree with the majority of a young audiences, they are hooted down.
- Economic systems: There are basically two opposing positions. Conservatives: free enterprise Capitalism, Liberals: socialism with more government.
Current status: Evolving from a move to bigger government and European Socialism to Capitalism or Reagan economics.
- Legal systems: Children are pressured from both parents and peers to conform and obey certain laws or norms of the group/community. Parents’ attitudes toward legal systems influence children’s views as to what is legally acceptable. For example, children whose parents are continually in jail are more accepting of incarceration.
Current status: Prison populations are at an all time high. Moves to legalize drugs to reduce this. Black lives matter is a belief that cops are unfair to blacks. Chicago: murder is out of control
- Language: People learn to socialize differently depending on the specific language and culture in which they live. A specific example of this is code switching. This is where immigrant children learn to behave in accordance with the languages used in their lives: separate languages at home and in peer groups (mainly in educational settings). Depending on the language and situation at any given time, people will socialize differently The mass media are the means for delivering impersonal communications directed to a vast audience. The term media comes from Latin meaning, “middle,” suggesting that the media’s function is to connect people. The media can teach norms and values by way of representing symbolic reward and punishment for different kinds of behavior. Mass media has enormous effects on our attitudes and behavior, notably in regards to aggression.
Current status: Muslim immigrants are resistant to integration. Movements to have multiple languages is not always popular. Press 2 for Spanish irritates a lot of people. The cost to educate multi-curtural students is enormous. Old school: immigrants came here and learned our language. Liberal perspective: we must teach kids in their native tongues.
We no longer have news sources in this country. We have the equivalent of Tass?Pravda in the old USSR. News outlets are no more than propaganda machines for the liberal cause.
Hollywood has always been pushing sex and violence to sell their products. They absolve themselves for any increases in violence and blame guns. They advocate environmental causes while having the biggest carbon footprints in society. They lecture on politics while behaving like heathens. The news business is getting blurred with Hollywood.
Sports: spoiled highly-paid athletes are becoming political. Yet to see how this plays out.
- Learning:Despite spending more per student in EL-HI the test scores for US students continue to drop vs. the rest of the world. The unions have taken over the educational system. They drive higher and higher salaries, benefits, and demean the test comparisons.
Current status: there is a debate between Washington DC running the school systems and decentralized control. We have gone from ‘No Child Left Behind” to “Race to the Top” to “Every Student Succeeds Act” . Teachers excuse test results by pointing to the family breakdown saying parents don’t see a role in their kids’ educations. When accountablilty was put in place(Atlanta, GA) the teachers cheated and went to prison.
Educational institutions –College and Universities: There is no check on spending at these institutions. Student loans allow endless tuition increases and perks and raises for administrators and professors. The fall out level is high and too many go to college that don’t belong. Supply level is high to colleges and money is readily available to fuel that. Student loans now total more than the mortgages in the housing bubble: $1.4 trillion.
Current status: Kids drop out with huge loans and fall behind or quit paying. Kids graduate with huge loan obligations and forego marriage, a house, and getting on with life to pay the debt.
Medicine – hospitals and other health care institutions – ObamaCare is failing. The idea that medical insurance is a right seems to be hard to fulfill.
Current status: May be the hottest issue today. Government is trying to find a way to make it work and finding it’s not easy. The VA Hospitals are terrible but some progress is being made.
- Military As the framers of the Constitution believed this may be place where central government does the job best.
Current status. Renewed threats from North Korea and Iran are putting emphasis on a strong military. There will be a big cost to do this.
- Industry – businesses, including corporations . For a multitude of reasons manufacturing left this country. Trade agreements, environmental pressures and taxes the top three.
Current status: Trump is trying to bring it back by attacking all three.
Current status: Politics has always been a blood sport but seems to follow the trends in the other institutions and gotten uglier and uglier. Soon we may have several special counsels to sort out the corruption.
Summary: A country is only as good as the institutions underpinning that country. It is hard to find areas that seem to be going north in the USA today. We are the best in the world as a nation but we seem to be suffering in many key areas. Like the great nations of the past have shown : Roman, Dutch, and British Empires, it’s hard to stay on top. We are undergoing a big change with Trump as president. Time will tell.
