¹ For a concise summary of this problem and related bibliography, see Coleman, James S. (ed.), Education and Political Development (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 18–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

The reader should note that in societies where elites are interested in rapid modernization and political change, they may depend heavily upon the conscious manipulation of the formal as well as the informal environment of the school. See, e.g.: Dunn, Stephen and Dunn, Ethel, “Directed Cultural Change in the Soviet Union: Some Soviet Studies,” American Anthropologist, 64 (April, 1962), 328–339 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bronfenbrenner, Urie, “Soviet Methods of Character Education,” American Psychologist, 17 (August, 1962), 550–564 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Houn, Franklin, To Change a Nation (New York: Free Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

Yet within school systems where self-conscious indoctrination does not take a massive form there is evidence that curriculum and formal instruction do not have great effect upon student values. As a transmitter of social values, the classroom teacher may be in a relatively weak position. It is likely that those adults who are most significant in the high school socialization system are those who control role assignments which are important within the adolescent culture, for example, the athletic coach or driving teacher. Ullman, Albert D., “Sociology and Character Education” in Patterson, Franklin, et al, (eds.), The Adolescent Citizen (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960), 206–223.Google Scholar For experimental evidence on the dubious role of the college teacher as an agency of change see: Wilson, Everett K., “The Entering Student: Attributes and Agents of Change,” in Newcomb, Theodore M. and Wilson, Everett K. (eds.), College Peer Groups (Chicago: Aldine, 1966), pp. 84–87.Google Scholar

² See: Levin, Martin L., “Social Climates and Political Socialization,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 25 (Winter, 1961), 596–606 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Riesman, David, Faces in the Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), p. 559 Google Scholar; Newcomb, Theodore M., Personality and Social Change (New York: Dryden Press, 1943)Google Scholar; and Ziblatt, David, “High School Extra Curricular Activities and Political Socialization,” The Annals, 361 (September, 1965), 21–31.Google Scholar

³ I wish to thank Drs. Roberta S. Sigel and Irving S. Sigel for the use of their data, which was gathered from selected Detroit secondary and primary schools in 1964 during their study of school children's reactions to the assassination of President Kennedy. See: Sigel, Roberta S., “An Exploration Into Some Aspects of Political Socialization: School Children's Reaction to the Death of a President,” in Wolfenstein, Martha and Kliman, Gilbert (eds.), Children And The Death Of A President (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1965), pp. 30–61.Google Scholar

The multi-staged Jamaican sample was based upon a stratified cluster sample of unequal clusters collected in 1964.

⁴ Davies, James C., Human Nature in Politics (New York: Wiley 1963), pp. 170–172 Google Scholar; Verba, Sidney, Small Groups and Political Behavior (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 22–23, 90–109Google Scholar; Lane, Robert and Sears, David, Public Opinion (Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 33–42.Google Scholar

⁵ Coleman, James S., The Adolescent Society (Glencoe: Free Press 1961)Google Scholar; Theodore M. Newcomb, op. cit. Unfortunately, peer group is a term frequently used without definition. It does not always refer to a primary or face-to-face group, but is often applied to age, grade, and social class cohorts. In this study peer group refers to a face-to-face group of “best friends.”

⁶ Havighurst, Robert J. and Neugarten, Bernice L., Society and Education, 2nd Ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1962), chapter 5.Google Scholar

⁷ Hyman, Herbert, Political Socialization (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959).Google Scholar

⁸ Harvey, J. and Rutherford, J. M., “Status in the Informal Group: Influence and Influencibility at Different Age Levels,” Child Development, 31 (June, 1960), 377–385.Google Scholar

⁹ Remmers, H. H. and Radier, D. H., The American Teenager (New York: Charter, 1957), pp. 234–237.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Stendier, Cella B., Children of Brasstown (Urbana: Bureau of Research and Service of the College of Education, University of Illinois, 1949).Google Scholar

¹¹ The respondent's social class is determined by his position on an index composed of two items: the occupation of his father and the education of his mother or father—whichever is higher.

¹² It has generally been found that working class Americans have a lesser sense of citizenship duty and disposition to vote than those of higher social class: Lane, Robert E., Political Life (Glencoe: Free Press, 1959), pp. 157–160.Google Scholar

H. H. Remmers found that American high school students from the lower classes were less tolerant of civil liberties and less disposed toward the norms of a “democratic” order than were higher class students. See: Purdue Opinion Poll, Number 30, November, 1951; and Remmers and Radler, op. cit., chapter 8.

Both Remmers and Radler, op. cit., and Herbert Hyman, op. cit., pp. 34–35, found that students from low income and less educated families were less politicized than their counterparts from higher classes. The reader should note that the degree of class polarization on comparable political attitudes and issues can be expected to vary between countries. Moreover, it has been demonstrated that the degree of class polarization within a country is likely to vary over time: Converse, Philip E., “The Shifting Role of Class” in Hartley, E., Readings in Social Psychology, 3rd Ed. (New York: Holt, 1958), pp. 388–399.Google Scholar

¹³ Respondents were asked to express their opinions on the following:

General “democratic” orientation: “Economic security is more important than political freedom.”

Attitude toward voting: “It won't matter much to me if I vote or not when I become an adult.”

Civil Liberties: “Rastafarians (Jamaican minority group) should not be allowed to hold public meetings even if they gather peacefully and only make speeches.”

Politicization: Respondents' placement on this index was determined by the frequency in which they discussed politics with members of the family, school friends, teacher or politicians; and the frequency in which political articles were read in the national newspaper.

The differences between the position of the working class and the upper class on each of these four variables was 15, 12, 13, and 13 percent, respectively.

¹⁴ Almond, Gabriel and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁵ Respondents were asked: “Do you feel politics and the government have been honest, dishonest, neither honest nor dishonest?” This question might also be considered a measure of general political cynicism.

¹⁶ The questions were as follows:

“Do you think the rich should give up their privileges?”

“Should there be some upper limit, such as 10,000 pounds a year, on how much any one person can earn?”

¹⁷ In each case working class students in homo geneous class peer groups assume an attitudinal position which is farther from that of the middle and upper classes than is the attitudinal position of the working class in general.

¹⁸ The political differences found between working class students in homogeneous and heterogeneous peer groups is explained primarily as a function of the resocialization process in heterogeneous class peer groups. This difference might also be explained by a process of selection. Heterogeneous class peer groups may only select working class members who have the same values as they do or high I.Q. students may select or be co-opted into heterogeneous groups. However, this alternative explanation appears doubtful when the analogous influence of school class atmosphere is examined later in this paper. When using controlled selection, objective criteria of class atmosphere, and the same dependent variables, effects similar to those reported for the peer group are also found in the school.

¹⁹ All references to hompeers and hetpeers are for working class students only. Middle-class hompeers and hetpeers are not discussed in this paper but will be subjects for later analysis.

²⁰ Wylie, Lawrence, Village in the Vaucluse, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper, 1964), pp. 207–209.Google Scholar

²¹ Neugarten, Bernice L., “Social Class and Friendship Among School Children,” The American Sociological Review, 51 (January, 1946), 305–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar In her study in Jonesville, Neugarten found students in heterogeneous class environments continued to defer to the perceived “favorable characteristics” of upper class students from elementary school through high school. While in the higher grades in secondary school there was no tendency to defer to lower class students and deference to higher status students was still clearly operative, adolescents were increasingly disposed to defer horizontally in more complex ways. In other words, being the student council president or the captain of the football team might make one equally if not more subject to deference as being from an upper class family. However, as Mary C. Jones has so cogently observed, higher social status is strongly associated with access to prestigeous student offices in the high school: Neugarten, Bernice L., “Democracy of Childhood,” in Warner, William Lloyd, et al. (eds.), Democracy in Jonesville (New York: Harper, 1949), chapter 5Google Scholar; and Jones, Mary C., “A Study of Socialization Patterns at the High School Level,” Journal of Genetic Psychology, 93 (September, 1958), 87–111.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

²² Wilson, Alan B., “Residential Segregation of Social Classes and Aspirations of High School Boys,” American Sociological Review, 24 (December, 1959), 836–845 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Michael, John, “High School Climates and Plans for Entering College,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 25 (Winter, 1961), 583–595.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²³ It is possible, of course, that differences found between working class students in homogeneous and heterogeneous class schools could be due to selection rather than the operation of different school environments. In other words, working class students with the attitudinal syndrome found among working class students in heterogeneous class schools may actually seek out the more heterogeneous class schools to matriculate. Fortunately, the Jamaican Ministry of Education was able to provide information on this matter. Due to its local school policy, there is no evidence that differences in political attitudes between working class students in homogeneous-heterogeneous class schools is due to any significant degree to selection rather than the socializing influences of the school class environment. For an expanded discussion of this point see: Langton, Kenneth P., Civic Attitudes of Jamaican High School Students, Cooperative Research Project, United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1965, p. 198.Google Scholar

²⁴ The mean difference between the positions taken by the undifferentiated working class and working class hompeers in homogeneous class schools on the seven variables is 9.7 percent, with the latter group consistently taking a position farthest removed from that of the higher classes.

²⁵ Respondents' social class is based upon their father's occupation.

²⁶ Because of the reduced N resulting from the class control, it was necessary to include both primary and secondary schools in the index (i.e., grades 4, 6, 8, 10, 12). This may diminish the reported effect of school class climate to the extent that status consciousness is a corollary of the maturation process. See Harvey and Ruther ford, op. cit.