Political Science 362

Questions for Erikson and Tedin, Chapter 5

1. What are the two perspectives that can be taken on the study of political socialization? Why do all countries try to politically socialize their young? Why might it be a good thing that government attempts to socialize the young are not a complete success?

2. Discuss the attitudes of preschool children toward political authority and political community.

3. Discuss how the view of the president changes among children in the early childhood years. Is the view of politics at this point more affective or cognitive? What is the “spillover effect” of young students’ generally positive view of the president? How does this relate to diffuse support for the political system later in life?

4. Discuss the view of citizenship that develops in late childhood. How do children in late childhood feel about being critical of the government? How about being critical of individual politicians?

5. How do adolescents view the political system in general? How about individual politicians? How about their attitude toward democratic values? What happens to ideological thinking?

6. How do minority and poor children’s attitudes toward authority differ from those of white children? How did Watergate influence children and later generations?

7. Discuss how the family influences political attitudes. How about the peer group? Under what conditions does the peer group seem to have its biggest impact?

8. How did the time spent on political education in the United States compare with the time spent in the Soviet Union in the early 1960s according to Bereday and Stretch? What socialization lessons were best learned in the primary and secondary schools? What lessons were less well learned? What have some critics said about the National Civics Curriculum supported by Presidents Clinton and Bush?

9. What proportion of American adults had at least some college in 1990? What percentage of adults over 25 held college degrees in 2004? Discuss the three reasons that have been used to explain the liberalizing effect (on noneconomic issues) of a college education?

10. Distinguish between life cycle effects and generational effects on one’s political views. What age cohort seems to be most susceptible to major events of the time? Discuss the different impacts on party identification of generation effects and life cycle effects. What is a period effect?

11. Distinguish between the mobilization theory of partisan realignment and the conversion theory. Use these two theories to explain the 1930s realignment.

12. In recent thinking on socialization, up through what point are political attitudes quite malleable? Discuss what the panel studies of Bennington College by Newcomb, of gifted children by Terman, and the more general study by Jennings tell us about the effects of socialization.