An Analysis of the Relationships of Selected Educational Variables with the Political Socialization of High School Students.

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]