The essay provides background material for a junior high school unit, The Emergence of the New American. The unit deals with the colonial period in America in terms of the evolution of the political American. Separate sections of the paper discuss the format of the course, the Englishman in the 17th century, the lure of the new world, changes over…

The paper investigates the qualities which distinguish representative democracies from other forms of government, particularly direct democracies, dictatorships, and oligarchies. Representative democracy is based on the precept that political authority should be located in offices which are specified by a popularly ratified or accepted…

Perceived ethnic discrimination was studied by surveying 388 members of the Latino community in Chicago (115 Puerto Ricans, 162 Mexicans, and 111 Cubans). A factor analysis of how these Latinos perceived the treatment they got from 19 private and public social organizations (such as churches, libraries, and landlords) produced four dimensions of…

To achieve competency as consumers in the marketplace, young people need to acquire specific consumer skills. To determine the influence of such socialization agents as television, family, peers, and school on the acquisition of these skills, 607 middle and high school students in Kentucky and North Carolina completed self-administered…

The current political conflict over school policy making is raised as a source of political learning for the young. It is hypothesized that the current politicization of educational issues influences students as never before and that this influence has great potential for re-shaping perceptions and evaluations of the political world. In the last…

A conceptual framework and a unique data collection technique are proposed as a means for studying the relationship between cognitive structure and political awareness in children. Most researchers have dealt with cognitive development and political socialization research by examining children in different grade levels at one point in time.…

Endeavoring to reach a goal of economic literacy, this K-12 economic resource guide provides the teacher with a context, concepts, and content about the economics of American society and the study of economics in general. Its purpose is to shorten the amount of work and time that a teacher needs to spend on reading and locating material. Based…

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if there are differences in level of student aspirations between students in segregated and those in integrated schools. There are other highly related and interacting variables that may influence levels of aspirations; namely, student performance, significant others, and significant others'…

The effect of Catholic schooling on the religious behavior of Mexican American and Anglo American graduates of 3 Catholic high schools in El Paso, Texas was compared with the religious behavior of Catholic Mexican American and Anglo American public high school graduates. Focus was on the following types of religious orientations: (1) doctrinal…

Research techniques for measuring political learning during a campaign are examined. Micro-analytic techniques involve intensive analysis of individuals. Large amounts of data on the psychological and sociological settings of subjects are gathered, along with information on opinions toward past and emerging political situations. Macro-analytic…

Reflections on the fundamental problems of teaching political science in community colleges are outlined. Facing the stark reality of a student population deficient in reading and writing skills, the teacher must make difficult concepts and material comprehensible in order to create a sense of attachment for the nation, its Constitution, laws, and…

The effects of both vertical and nonvertical dimensions of fathers' work on family relations and vocational socialization are explored through a multivariate analysis of data collected from several hundred male student participants enrolled in a Michigan College from 1962-1967. Social class and occupationally-related differences in family…

The paper describes the American immigrant experience, discusses the process of acculturation, and recounts the evolution to a value of cultural pluralism from the melting pot concept, as background to a consideration of the problem of educating the adult immigrant in the U.S., focused specifically on the current U.S. immigration experience with…

Psychosocial adaptations are sometimes affected by experiences that are ordinarily considered to be amusements. In 1974, a field study was undertaken by the Program on Psychosocial Adaptation and the Future to determine if it is possible to measure the effect of television on adult viewers. A sample of 260 couples, controlled for demographic…

This study was designed to assess the extent to which certain parent-child interaction variables (particularly those concerned with socialization) and the child's language background, influenced early school achievement. Subjects were 106, 4-year-old children and their parents who participated in a compensatory preschool intervention program. The…