Political Socialization Of Youth

This book increases the awareness of youth political agency and how it relates to adults, governments, communities, and local and global discourse. It reveals the complexity of youth’s political lives as it intersects with social identifiers such as location, gender, and political status, and interacts with neoliberal discourse embedded in media, local politics, education, and religious idioms. This book fills a gap in existing research to provide a body of literature on the political socialization and its manifestation in youth political agency. The research findings aid in understanding the abilities of youth to reason, reflect upon, articulate, and act upon their political views. This research is not only pertinent to children in Palestine, but can also be applied to children living everywhere as global discourse of oppression is not limited to a location, age or a group.

The Fascist regime under Mussolini regarded its youth as its best hope for the future. Young people were courted more assiduously than any other group in the society and their political socialization became a central concern of the government. Believe, Obey, Fight discusses the various tools used by the Fascist regime from 1922 to 1943 to shape the political values and environment of the young. Tracy Koon focuses on the secondary agents of socialization, including the party, the educational establishment, youth groups, and the media of political communication. She shows that the response to this socialization ranged from apparent consent to dissent and finally to open opposition. The regime employed several methods to produce consensus among the young. Koon's analysis begins with a discussion of the rhetorical style of Mussolini's message and the key political myths manipulated by his propaganda machine: fascism as continuing revolution and social justice, the glories of ancient Rome, the hygienic function of war and violence, the religious spirit of the new creed, and the omniscience of the leader. She then describes the pre-Fascist educational system, the "most Fascist" Gentile reforms of 1923, and the later revision of those reforms by zealous party men engaged in the Fascist regimentation of teachers and students and the militarization and politicization of curricula and textbooks. Equally important agents of socialization were the Fascist groups organized for young people from their earliest years through the university level, including the annual national competitions and forums in which members could express their ideas on a range of issues. The regime provided physical, military, sports, and political training to strengthen the new Fascist society. Fascist socialization did for a time create a superficial consensus by appealing to both the love of conformity that marks the very young and the economic fears that caused students to conform in the hope of jobs. But Koon argues that the regime's attempt to exert totalitarian control over the young deprived them of personal identity. As time passed, the contradictions of the regime became clearer, the chasm between Fascist rhetoric and reality more obvious. In the end, the majority of young people came to believe that the regime had given them nothing to believe in, no one to obey, and nothing for which to fight. Originally published in 1985. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Engaging youth in civic life has become a central concern to a broad array of researchers in a variety of academic fields as well to policy makers and practitioners globally. This book is both international and multidisciplinary, consisting of three sections that respectively cover conceptual issues, developmental and educational topics, and methodological and measurement issues. Broad in its coverage of topics, this book supports scholars, philanthropists, business leaders, government officials, teachers, parents, and community practitioners in their drive to engage more young people in community and civic actions.

Scholars across several social science disciplines have indicated that the behavior described by the term "civic engagement" is girded by a set of attitudes that show knowledge about, and positive evaluations of, government and politics. Drawing on extensive interviews with high school students from a variety of socioeconomic backgrounds, Cultivating Democracy examines the sources of those attitudes, including individual characteristics, and the qualities of local environments that shape the experiences of late adolescence. The authors gathered data on adolescent attitudes by interviewing students in a wide variety of locations, from Baltimore's inner city and suburbs to the most affluent communities in Montgomery County, Maryland. Focusing initially on attitudes toward ethnic diversity and immigration, the authors expanded their focus to the political socialization of young people, including patriotism and political knowledge and participation. The authors demonstrate how political socialization is shaped through the social messages presented to citizens by others. According to Gimpel, Lay, and Schuknecht, while formal education as a means of socializing youth is critically important, other useful means for communicating positive socializing messages, through political parties, elections, and the media, have been ignored. They recommend compensatory strategies to promote civic engagement among those who are at risk to be nonparticipants.

The conventional wisdom according to which children’s lives should be safe from adult concerns tends to situate them categorically outside the political. Thus understood, children become political agents when they reach maturity and eligibility to formal participation. Alternatively, political skills and competences may be seen to develop gradually through political socialization. Both views are challenged in recent scholarship on youthful politics beyond the formal, adult-centered political world. This book considers politics as it appears and unfolds in children and young people’s everyday lives. The collection problematizes several key concepts in the research field and introduces a relational reading of youthful political agency based on social, spatial and political theorization. The chapters engage with youthful realities in Sri Lanka, Palestine, Sweden, New Zealand, the US and the UK, revealing a variety of ways in which children and youth are important political actors in their own right. The book also includes an extensive literary review on the study of children and young people’s politics in the past decade. This book was originally published as a special issue of Space and Polity.

This volume critically examines the multiple and contested meanings of ideal citizenship and reveal how children and youth craft active citizenship as they encounter and respond to the various institutions and organizations designed to encourage their civic and political development.