ABSTRACT
Every society is faced with the need for the socialization of its children, that is, for making them acceptable members of the society. In preliterate systems this process is carried out by the family and by various informal institutions such as kinship groups, "the old men", the Impi. With increasing social complexity, sometimes including literacy, more and more formal institutions develop and many of the functions of socialization devolve upon them. In this sense an "education system" becomes a formal agency created within the society, sometimes by the government, sometimes by other major institutions such as religious organizations, to undertake certain aspects of socialization. Some functions are taken away from the family and other groups, and are formally passed to the school system. In most modern societies these functions are exercised by agencies of government at a national, provincial or local level. The functions themselves do not change, although the method of exercising them may take many different forms. The functions remain:
to provide enough people with the necessary skills, knowledge, attitudes, and values to fill the economic and social roles necessary to maintain and develop the society (this is the "social function" of socialization and obviously includes manpower aspects);
to meet the intellectual, emotional, social, and physical needs of the human organisms of which the society is composed (this is the function in relation to individuals as such, called loosely the psychological, or personality, function);
to give to the potential members of the society the values and attitudes characteristic of and essential for the preservation and development of the mores of the society (this is the cultural function in the anthropological sense of "culture").
