Parental education and socialisation of the child: internality, valorisation and self-positioning

Résumé En

1. Positing the problem In an individual's first years of life, parental education constitutes an essential determining factor in development and self-construction. The content communicated by the parents on primary socialisation appears to the child to be the components of an "only world possible" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). The social world's reality is perceived by the child as the reality of the natural world, as an objectively valid truth. Although the child does not remain passive in socialisation, it does not choose its educational partners and, indeed, it is those partners that define the content to be passed on to the child. Primary socialisation leads to relatively irreversible forms of interiorisation, all the more so insofar as the child will be linked affectively to its partners and will build up its identity by identifying with them. Socialising influences will, of course, depend on the cultural context in which individuals evolve. This explains why it seemed to us to be important to analyse the "sensitivities" characterising society in approaching the socialisation process. The pulsional economy has changed over the centuries, leading to the emergence of new values and to different conceptions of socialisation. Thus, in western societies, the individualist model of the person considerably influences practices and expectations in terms of socialisation (Vanandruel, 1991). This model valorises the individual's personal development to a greater extent than social conformity and submission to collective rules. Becoming a person, in western societies, means taking into account one's own interests and needs within an overall aim of fulfilment and happiness, and it also means showing oneself to be available to others, capable of listening. Socialising means personalising oneself-"On the social stage, the individual only truly seeks to adapt to his social milieu, to integrate insofar as he has the feeling that he can find achievement therein, not only through the satisfaction of his desires, but also thanks to the possibility of making an impact, transforming such and such an aspect of physical or social external reality in line with his own projects" (Tap, 1991, p. 53). Qualities such as autonomy, independence, creativeness and authenticity are currently highly valorised and constitute essential educative objectives. Even if normative pressures and socialising influences remain strong, they appear less clearly and are more difficult to unmask. Self-esteem and internality would appear, to use Vanandruel's expression, to provide a rating for successful socialisation. The theoretical interest given to these two concepts is the mark of an individualistic (and thus quite relative) orientation. At the same time, study thereof is of interest as what the child interiorises or becomes will depend on the cultural values that are effective in its living environment (Bouissou, 1996). From a historical point of view, the authors have observed a change in the socialisation process. The Renaissance period marked a turning point in that process of change, bringing with it an increasing interest in the human person, his sensitivity and behaviour. This change in sensitivity leads to a different pulsional economy: during socialisation, socially undesirable pulsional trends are repressed and the social nature of feelings (of shame, malaise, well-being, pleasure and displeasure) is forgotten, thus making these natural feelings seem to be the result of the "ego" expressing itself. We can draw a parallel with the notion of social utility (Beauvois, 1982): social adaptation thus appears to be a personal choice by very reason of the value currently attached to individual autonomy. Internality, as an overestimation of the personal role in explaining psychological events (standing in opposition to externality), seems to us to illustrate strikingly the concept of autonomy. Internality's normative aspect can be explained by change in the socialisation process. As a social norm, internality answers to four criteria. On the one hand it is a socially shared belief: we can see that individuals belonging to dominant social groups are those who show strongest attachment to that norm (Dubois, 1987). On the other hand, the norm of internality is subject to a social learning process: the training arrangements take part quite significantly in its interiorisation and cognitive development cannot alone provide an explanation for that learning process (Dubois, 1988). Further, the norm of internality intervenes in evaluation and judgement practices: when individuals attempt to show themselves in a favourable light, they describe themselves as responsible for the events that arise in their lives; and in this case they effectively receive positive evaluations (Dubois & Le Poultier, 1991). Finally, the norm of internality is more open to interpretation in terms of social utility than in terms of truth: its integration will correspond to acceptance by the individual of certain socially dominant representations (Tostain, 1991). In our view, apprenticeship of internality and self-valorisation, which are strong values in western society, are processes at work in the contemporary affective dynamic of socialisation. They are moreover essential to analyse, as the institution of the school is strongly attached to them: the child who succeeds in schooling will be both fulfilled, conscious of his personal worth and responsible for his acts. "Without wishing to state that the mode of attribution constitutes a criterion for evaluation on a par with using and mastering the French language, we believe that the internal-external dynamic cannot be dissociated from production or from the evaluation of the individual's schooling behaviour" (Deschamps et al, 1982, p. 150). Another dimension concerning the child's personality is taken into account here. This concerns self-positioning, corresponding to the way the subject "situates himself in relation to others and the degree of community he feels in relation to them" (Meyer, 1989, p. 443). Positioning refers back to self-other differentiation, to the distance the person establishes between himself and others. This is a dimension of personal and social identity. Identity implies both searching for and recognising one's worth and the need to assert oneself (Tap, 1980); it is built up in the comparison between the subject and others; the subject must resemble others while differentiating himself, allowing him to try out the feeling of his unicity, his originality (Tap, 1988). In a psychosocial approach, we can consider that the building up of identity "is subjected to the particular conditions of the group to which one belongs, situated in a larger inter-group context" (Durand-Delvigne, 1992, p. 64). According to their social position, individuals define themselves specifically in relation to others, particularly in relation to the groups they belong to. Socially dominant individuals exercising power (social, economic or symbolic) present a "personal identity" rooted in their specific characteristics, thus expressing their singularity, their unicity. Socially privileged, adhering more than others to the dominant norms-individualist norms, in particular-they define themselves as singular individuals. Individuals occupying less privileged positions present rather a "positional identity" (Lorenzi-Cioldi, 1988), anchored more in the social group, founded on characteristics defining the groups they belong to in a general manner. While it is a cultural value in our western societies, the individualist model of the person has, however, a social differentiation function. It translates "the identity of dominant individuals and situates the members of dominated groups in a relationship of alterity. In group interdependence relationships, the dominated make what the dominant are not into a reality in a complementary fashion" (Durand-Delvigne, 1992, p. 64).