Le recours à la peur dans la socialisation de l’enfant muKóóngo

Child education is of great importance in the African social universe, particularly in traditional Kongo society. With this in mind, everything is done to support the child in the development of his varied and diverse abilities. To do this, the “elders” had to develop a relevant dissuasive technique so that socialization produces the expected results. Based on this reading, the objective of this article is to show interest in using fear as a governor of belief to socialize the child. To this end, what is the importance of using fear to educate a child? How does this emotion manifest itself in the functioning of socialization? To answer this dual question, we have opted for the Cultural studies of Chris Barker (2003) and the relativized functionalism of Robert K. Merton (1968), two theoretical approaches that also allow us to analyze our corpus consisting of eight (8) prohibitions and seven (7) proverbs. The articulation of this work is as follows: firstly, we will define fear in order to better understand its importance at the heart of educational action. Secondly, we will show, based on the prohibitions and proverbs in our corpus, the essential character of fear in successful socialization. Finally, we will see the challenges of applying pedagogy through fear in modern societies.