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• Editorial Staff
• Associate Editors
• Editorial
• Bibliographical Essay: Isaac Kramnick, English Middle-class Radicalism In the Eighteenth Century
• I: I Social and Political Thought
• Community, Individuality, and Freedom
• Rousseau's Social Thought
• A Sociological History of Utilitarianism
• Spencer and Comte In American Labor Thought
• Bureaucracy In Weber & Kafka
• Bergson's Political Doctrines
• Oakeshott's Political Theory
• Oakeshott's Political Philosophy
• Undermocratic Liberal Republicans
• Wilkes and Radical Politics
• Late Liberal Imperialism
• Kant and Reason In Politics
• II: Education, Politics, and Values
• Schools and Political Socialization
• Schooling For Imperialism
• The Political Economy of Public Schooling
• Federal Education Policy
• The Problems of Federal Education
• William James As Individualist
• Existential and Phenomenological Education
• Early Federal Educational Policy
• Education, Labor Markets, & Controlled Youth
• Government Control of Universities
• III: Economic Thought and Values
• Business and Legal History
• Schumpeter's Economic Theories
• Menger and Entrepreneurship
• Saint-simonian Economic Ideas
• The Free Market & the Third World
• Democratic Capitalism, Justice, & Religion
• Property, Law, and Economics
• The Economic Analysis of Law Vs. Values
• IV: Foreign Policy and Ideology
• The Attractiveness of War
• Walzer On International Morality
• Eduard Bernstein and Imperialism
• Roosevelt Vs. His War Critics
• American Preconceptions of Japan
• The Marshall Plan and Russia
• V: Self-knowledge, Autonomy, and Liberty
• The Self In Political Thought
• Autonomy, Self, and Will Power
• Self-knowledge: Goethe, Kant, and Hegel
• The Egoist As a “psychopath”
• The History of Social Psychology
• Psychology, Self, and Society
• Free Will, Responsibility, and Motivation
• Free Will, Purpose, and Responsibility
• Political “groupthink” and Reality
• Personal Freedom and Autonomy
• Research Fields
• Economics
• Education
• History
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• Political Philosophy
• Psychology
• Sociology

Schools and Political Socialization

Lee H. Ehman

• Indiana University

The most recent assessment of the political knowledge, attitudes and participation rates of American students found significant declines in each of these areas compared to previous studies. Since one of the major arguments for public education is that it is necessary to provide the educated citizenry supposedly required for the survival of a democratic society, these declines pose the question of what impact schools have on political knowledge and attitudes.

Available research studies support the following conclusions:

• 1.Schools are the major sources of political knowledge available to students.
• 2.While special curricula can have distinctive impacts there is little evidence that current textbooks and curriculum have little impact, especially on student political attitudes.
• 3.Students of low socio-economic status seem most responsive to changes in political attitude brought about by schooling. These same students are also more receptive to changes in political attitude induced by teachers.
• 4.Teacher impact on student attitudes generally varies with the teacher's personal credibility among the students.
• 5.The most important impact on political attitudes and participation rates among students are classroom and school “climate.”
  • (a)Open, responsive climates tend to foster students that have positive attitudes
  • (b)Authoritarian climates result in cynical, alienated students.