Search

This paper examines the relationships between social studies instruction and political attitudes of high school students. Based on questionnaire responses of a random stratified sample of students, the data confirm previous findings that exposure to social studies classes alone has little apparent relationship to students' political efficacy, cynicism. participation, and sense of citizen duty, although this is not as true for black pupils as it is for their white peers. Two classroom variables—the treatment of controversial social issues and classroom climate—interact so that in an open classroom climate, exposure to controversial issues is inversely related to political cynicism and directly related to political efficacy, participation, and sense of citizen duty. In closed classroom climates, the opposite relationships obtain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors will critically examine a central, though neglected, aspect of political socialization research--the learning concept. Following a discussion of the current status of the learning concept, they propose a research strategy towards the operationalization of the concept in political socialization research and exemplify the approach with a specific learning paradigm adopted from experimental psychology. In a field such as psychology which evidences a long history of research in the study of learning as a general concept, there is a sharp disagreement as to what precisely is meant by "the learning process." Since psychologists differ with regard to the learning process, the unqualified utilization of the concept within political socialization research is highly questionable. Moreover, the failure to explicate clearly the meaning of the learning process in political socialization research has precluded the establishment of the "empirical import" of the concept. Inclusion of the term "political learning" as an integral element in a synthetic mode of discourse requires that the empirical import of the term be established.

The article discusses the problems that theorists of liberalism face when attempting to derive characteristically liberal conclusion from a particular premise. It focuses on dilemma faced by professor John Rawls when in his book he attempted to advance priority of liberty while rejecting the ideal of human character. Moreover, it offers an overview of liberalism in relation to inherent values of society and posits that the dilemma arises when an unscrupulous conclusion is made. The author further contends that although freedom is the tenet of liberalism and majority rules in the society, respect to minorities life, characters and values must be afforded.