David E. Campbell, Drs. David Magleby and Stan A. Taylor, Political Science
In the 1960s and 1950s, there was a flurry of research into children’s political socialization6what children know, and feel, about their political system and leaders and when they come to know, and feel, it. At the time, political scientists and developmental psychologists concluded that pre-adolescent children have a very positive view of things political. There was a mild resurgence of political socialization research following Watergate as political scientists sought to find out if children’s view of government could be affected by such a high profile scandal. While surveys of children found them with less positive feelings than recorded previously, generally most children still looked at government as beneficient.
Today, we live in a time of cynicism about politics surpassing even that of the Watergate era. Or at least, public opinion pollsters have found cynicism pervasive among adults. Little research has explored whether elementary-age children today have absorbed the cynicism of their parents. This study was designed to gauge the attitudes of fourth and fifth graders and their parents in the United States and Canada toward each of the three levels of government in the two federal systems. The comparative nature of the study has allowed for conclusions to be drawn which contribute to a general, not merely American, theory of political socialization.
The results of the study demonstrated that children and their parents do have a far more cynical view of government at all levels than did their predecessors thirty to forty years ago. More specifically, children in both Utah and Alberta express less confidence in their respective federal governments than the state/provincial or local government. Adults in both areas also express high levels of alienation from the central government. The children I surveyed also expressed alienation from the two nations’ political parties. Canadian children have long been found to have little sense of party identification, an observation my study confirmed. Surprisingly, children in Utah also expressed very low levels of partisanship or identification with a political party. This finding is in contrast to previous research into the political socialization of American children, particularly that of Fred Greenstein.
The long term implications for a generation of children alienated from politics are not known. But intuitively, it would seem that the depth of political cynicism among both parents and children does not bode well for the democratic ideal in either the United States or Canada.