Skill Practice: Annotating Texts

Reading is an active process. To help stay engaged with a reading, it’s important to take notes and annotate as you read. This might include underlining keywords, noting a paragraph’s topic, writing questions, or circling important ideas.

By annotating a text, you may be able to remember key information better and review the information in the text more quickly. Overall, annotating a text is important; it’s why this book has so much white space around each of the readings, but how should students annotate? The answer depends on you. You need to create a system for yourself. You can highlight, underline, circle and star information. Whatever method you choose, you should be using your annotations to make sense of the text and to help you study it later. Fill in the table below. Decide how you will mark each of the following information.

Things to Annotate	Ways You Plan to Annotate Information
Main Points
Supporting Points
Keywords and Definitions
Confusing Information
Interesting Ideas
Other __________________________________

Practice

Look at the annotations below of “Reading 5.” Then, answer the questions below.

In the process of resocialization, old behaviors that were helpful in a previous role are removed because they are no longer of use. Resocialization is necessary when a person moves to a senior care center, goes to boarding school, or serves time in jail. In the new environment, the old rules no longer apply. The process of resocialization is typically more stressful than normal socialization because people have to unlearn behaviors that have become customary to them. The most common way resocialization occurs is in a total institution where people are isolated from society and are forced to follow someone else’s rules. A ship at sea is a total institution, as are religious convents or monasteries. They are places cut off from a larger society. The 6.9 million Americans who lived in prisons and penitentiaries at the end of 2012 are also members of this type of institution (U.S. Department of Justice 2012). As another example, every branch of the military is a total institution.

In what ways are people resocialized in a boarding school? Is that really so different from normal school life? ex. of total institutions: monasteries, prisons, military

1. What did the student highlight?
   1. main ideas
   2. supporting details
   3. confusing information
2. What did the student underline?
   1. main ideas
   2. supporting details
   3. confusing information
3. What kind of notes did the student make in the margins?

Pre-Reading

Pre-Reading Activity 

Discuss these questions with a classmate.

1. How have you changed socially or psychologically as you have grown older?
2. What are some life stages people go through?
3. Which life stage do you think is the easiest? Why?

Reading 5: Socialization Across Life ^[1]

Socialization Across Life Goals

• Explain how socialization occurs and recurs throughout life
• Understand how people are socialized into new roles at age-related transition points
• Describe when and how resocialization occurs

Socialization isn’t a one-time or even a short-term event. In fact, socialization is a lifelong process.

In the United States, socialization throughout life is determined greatly by age norms and “time-related rules and regulations” (Setterson 2002). As we grow older, we encounter age-related transition points that require socialization into a new role, such as becoming school age, entering the workforce, or retiring. For example, the U.S. government says that all children must attend school. Child labor laws, made into law in the early twentieth century, nationally declared that childhood be a time of learning, not of labor. In countries such as Niger and Sierra Leone, however, child labor remains common and socially acceptable, with few laws to regulate such practices (UNICEF 2012).

Big Picture

Gap Year: How Different Societies Socialize Young Adults Have you ever heard of gap year? It’s a common custom in British society. When teens finish their secondary schooling (high school in the United States), they often take a year “off” before entering college. Frequently, they might take a job, travel, or find other ways to experience another culture. Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, spent his gap year practicing survival skills in Belize, teaching English in Chile, and working on a dairy farm in the United Kingdom (Prince of Wales 2012a). His brother, Prince Harry, helped AIDS orphans in Africa and worked on a farm in Australia (Prince of Wales 2012b). In the United States, this life transition point is socialized quite differently, and taking a year off is generally not seen as a good thing. Instead, U.S. youth are encouraged to pick career paths by their mid-teens, to select a college and a major by their late teens, and to have completed all collegiate schooling or technical training for their career by their early twenties. In other nations, this phase of the life course is tied into conscription, a term that describes compulsory military service. Egypt, Switzerland, Turkey, and Singapore all have this system. Youth in these nations (often only the males) are expected to do a number of months or years of military training and service. How might your life be different if you lived in one of these other countries? Can you think of similar social norms—related to life age-transition points—that vary from country to country?

Many of life’s social expectations are made clear and enforced on a cultural level. Through interacting with others and watching others interact, the expectation to fulfill roles becomes clear. While in elementary or middle school, the prospect of having a boyfriend or girlfriend may have been considered undesirable. The socialization that takes place in high school changes the expectation. By observing the excitement and importance attached to dating and relationships within the high school social scene, it quickly becomes apparent that one is now expected not only to be a child and a student, but also a girlfriend or boyfriend. Graduation from formal education—high school, vocational school, or college—involves socialization into a new set of expectations.

Educational expectations vary not only from culture to culture, but also from class to class. While middle- or upper-class families may expect their daughter or son to attend a four-year university after graduating from high school, other families may expect their child to immediately begin working full-time, as many within their family have done before.

In the process of socialization, adulthood brings a new set of challenges and expectations, as well as new roles to fill. As the aging process moves forward, social roles continue to evolve. Pleasures of youth, such as late night partying and dating many different people, become less acceptable in the eyes of society. Responsibility and commitment are emphasized as the basis of adulthood, and men and women are expected to “settle down.” During this period, many people enter into marriage or a civil union, bring children into their families, and focus on a career path.

Just as young children pretend to be doctors or lawyers, play house, and dress up, adults also engage in anticipatory socialization, the preparation for future life roles. Examples would include a couple who live together before marriage or soon-to-be parents who read infant care books and prepare their home for the arrival of their new baby. As part of anticipatory socialization, financially able adults begin planning for their retirement, saving money, and looking into future healthcare options. The transition into any new life role, despite the social structure that supports it, can be difficult.

Resocialization

In the process of resocialization, old behaviors that were helpful in a previous role are removed because they are no longer of use. Resocialization is necessary when a person moves to a senior care center, goes to boarding school, or serves time in jail. In the new environment, the old rules no longer apply. The process of resocialization is typically more stressful than normal socialization because people have to unlearn behaviors that have become customary to them.

The most common way resocialization occurs is in a total institution where people are isolated from society and are forced to follow someone else’s rules. A ship at sea is a total institution, as are religious convents or monasteries. They are places cut off from a larger society. The 6.9 million Americans who lived in prisons and penitentiaries at the end of 2012 are also members of this type of institution (U.S. Department of Justice 2012). As another example, every branch of the military is a total institution.

Many individuals are resocialized into an institution through a two-part process. First, members entering an institution must leave behind their old identity through what is known as a degradation ceremony. In a degradation ceremony, new members lose the aspects of their old identity and are given new identities. The process is sometimes gentle. To enter a senior care home, an elderly person often must leave a family home and give up many belongings which were part of his or her long-standing identity. Though caretakers guide the elderly compassionately, the process can still be one of loss.

In other situations, the degradation ceremony can be more extreme. New prisoners lose freedom, rights (including the right to privacy), and personal belongings. When entering the army, soldiers have their hair cut short. Their old clothes are removed, and they wear matching uniforms. These individuals must give up any markers of their former identity in order to be resocialized into an identity as a “soldier.”

After new members of an institution are stripped of their old identity, they build a new one that matches the new society. In the military, soldiers go through basic training together, where they learn new rules and bond with one another. They follow structured schedules set by their leaders. Soldiers must keep their areas clean for inspection, learn to march in correct formations, and salute when in the presence of superiors.

Learning to deal with life after having lived in a total institution requires yet another process of resocialization. In the U.S. military, soldiers learn discipline and a capacity for hard work. They temporarily ignore personal goals to achieve a mission, and they take pride in the accomplishments of their military unit. Many soldiers who leave the military transition these skills into excellent careers. Others find themselves lost upon leaving, uncertain about the outside world and what to do next. The process of resocialization to civilian life is not a simple one.