Industry versus Inferiority

This is the fourth stage in Erikson’s psychological task. This stage Erikson sometimes referred to as asexual or the latency period. In this stage the children began to have the development of a sense of competence or industry, they are absorbing in the ‘tool world’ of their culture or also known as the workaday world – which prepares them the learning experiences they gained nurtured with the help of cooperative peers and instructive adults. Children operating at t
In the previous stage, children like to experiment with new things around them but in this stage, the children become industrious and will try to accomplish their task successfully and wanted to gain recognition for creating new things. Children at this stage focused on accomplishing their tasks correctly. The problems that might arise in this stage are, some children might leave the age level from six to eleven years old without this sense of industry. They might have the feeling of failure at everything. The feeling of failure includes academic achievement, hobby, sports, positive relationship with teacher and developing friendship. For example, it is important to develop positive peer relationships. Peer rejection tends to carry over from primary school age to secondary school and it may later among the factor that become the factors in academic difficulties and problem in adjusting themselves later in life. This social skills and attention to social problem solving may contribute to developing student competence in making friends and developing social skills. Another problems that might occur at this stage is the crisis of inferiority when they children perceive their skills or status among peers to be inadequate. This perception arises because of failures at establishing competence in some specialized way such as establishing friendship. Inferiority can also yield regression to the hopelessness of over-concern about the opposite-sex parents. The success of the inferiority will lead to an obsession with work, which gives the children the status and identity. As quoted from Erikson, “If the overly conforming child accepts work as the only criterion of worthwhileness, sacrificing too readily his imagination and playfulness, he may as an adult become a slave of his technology. (Erikson, 1968a, p. 289). When the children have developed some sense of competence, the children are then ready to cooperate in some part of the culture that surround them.