Social Change and the View of Students on Life Perspectives.

The peaceful transition of the political systems in Central Europe created a rather unique and contradictory situation. While these nations reached one of their long-term aims, a greater level of independence and freedom, in everyday life there are few signs of positive changes; in fact life has become even harder. In this socio-political context data were collected on how students cope with the contradictions of the transitional process. In the framework of a larger study, high-school students and their mothers were asked about their views on some consequences of the socio-political change. Results show that both students and their mothers are more pessimistic concerning the next few years than about the long term, and mothers think the coming years will be even harder than the students do. For the long term expectations, mothers' and students' answers are closer to each other. No significant correlations were found between the answers of students and mothers, thus the beliefs and views of students about the consequences of the transition are not determined by their family, rather they are influenced by other factors. (Author)