Those who have read any of my previous articles will know that I try to address issues of social concern in Cambodia. As a police officer, I am often the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.
If we genuinely want to address the issues of crime in our society, we need to address the root causes. The causes are almost always found in childhood, particularly when the social environment is heavily emphasized. Socialization is a term we all need to understand and acknowledge. Even if we don't have children, we should question our roles in the socialization process as adults.
A simple definition of socialization can be explained as follows. Socialization is how individuals learn and adopt the norms, values, behaviors, and social skills appropriate to their society. It is a lifelong process that starts in childhood and continues throughout a person's life, influencing their development and integration into their community. Socialization occurs through various agents and mechanisms:
First is family, the primary agent of socialization, where individuals learn about social norms, values, and behaviors. Second is school, which provides formal education and teaches social skills, discipline, and cultural norms. Third is peer groups. This involves influencing behaviors, attitudes, and social skills through interactions with friends and colleagues. Another one is mass media. This imparts cultural norms, values, and knowledge through television, the internet, books, and other forms of media. Second to last is workplaces. The workplace reinforces professional norms, values, and behaviors specific to occupational roles. Lastly, it is religious Institutions. These institutions impart moral values, ethical behaviors, and community norms.
Below, I will try to explain in detail how each point influences individuals. First, as adults, family and schools are perhaps the areas where we can have the most influence.
Within our families, we need to make a special effort to appreciate how our actions affect the next generation. If a child goes off the rails, rather than blame the child, we need to consider where we might have failed. No one can be the perfect parent; all we can do is try our best and not let our imperfections stand in the way of raising the best child we can.
Cambodia has made tremendous strides in the schooling of the young. Indeed, many more developed nations have far more issues with the behavior of children attending schools than Cambodia does. Most Cambodian children are very keen to learn. We must not allow ourselves to fail where other nations are failing. As parents, we can play a supporting role in school activities. A teacher's lot is not always easy, so anything we can do to support the school and its staff has a payback to us in creating a better society we are a part of.
Peer groups are one of our biggest challenges as parents.
Children and young adults desperately need to be liked and accepted by their peers. We can go the extra mile and teach our children how to take those who are not just like us. A child may be isolated because they don’t have nice clothes or are sad often. We need to teach our children empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and share another person's feelings. It involves recognizing and sensitivity to another person's emotions, thoughts, and experiences.
We have to do our best to ensure that our children are empathetic, and this is something we must teach for a cohesive and compassionate society.
So, in terms of peer groups, we can help young people avoid putting up substantial barriers to accepting others who are not just like us. If only this could be done on a Worldwide adult scale, then most of the World’s troubles would disappear overnight.
More of a concern to myself as a police officer are anti-social peer groups. Where issues of violence, drugs, and property crime can and do form. This is perhaps one of the most significant issues of our time, and this is not only to be found in Cambodia. It is a worldwide problem that seems to be getting worse. As a society, we all have a responsibility to tackle this issue.
These anti-social peer groups could more easily be identified as gangs.
It is the police's responsibility to tackle gang issues, but it is also our responsibility to ensure that we do our bit to prevent the social conditions that can give rise to gangs. Hence, my efforts to offer insight into the importance of socialization.
Mass media, which has morphed into the Internet, has never seen such a transformation in information delivery and availability in human existence. We are all subjected to a mass of information, opinions, news items, etc, often with little or no safeguards against false information. False information can be overt or covert. An example of overt false information is misrepresenting or even making up a statement and attributing it to a government.
A covert example of false information can be a photo of a male and female desirable model that has been photo-shopped. Both, in their ways, can be very damaging. It is becoming increasingly more challenging to know what it is now. Suppose I was to drop back to socialization's family and school aspects. In that case, in both these areas, we have a responsibility to teach our children how to think objectively and critically. That is to be able to stand back and question if what we are being told through mass media is correct and, if we are concerned about the credibility of what we are being presented with, to seek and search for supporting or otherwise additional information. Mass media is a danger to all societies. The best way to counter this danger is to ensure our children have the skills to filter out what is right from wrong.
Workplaces are a central part of a family and society. It is from this we earn the ability to survive. The civil war damaged so much of Cambodia’s infrastructure and destroyed businesses. It has been a long, hard path to regain what has been lost. After the Civil War, Cambodia was left with little more than subsistence farming. As a country, we have started to grow again – in some areas very fast. But there is little history of industrialized work for the young and maybe the not-so-young. Workplaces have a role to play in socialization. Good business will mentor their employees to gain new skills and to improve. Workplaces provide routine, financial security, and a degree of permanence and order. Industrialization in Cambodia is continuing as fast as is practicable. We need to see this as part of socialization and thus is more important than just as a means to produce a product.
Meanwhile, religious institutions are also crucial. But how did you last hear a politician mention religion? You hear more about this in Europe, given some regions' riots and social collapse. Buddhism is the most passive religion. I have never heard of a radical Buddhist – maybe they exist? I do not know. In the past, religion has given people a moral framework by which to live. It can also give hope where there would otherwise be no hope. We must be careful religion in Cambodia does not become a divider of the people. In terms of younger people, those who we might consider at risk (of crime) youths are unlikely to be following a particular religion.
Knowledge is power. But knowledge alone is not enough. I will define wisdom as the intelligent application of knowledge. How wise are you?
