Political Socialization Among Youth A Comparative Study of English-Canadian and American School Children.

The article presents a brief summary of some of the major findings from the first explicitly comparative study of the political socialization process in Canada and the United States. Using a purposive sample of approximately 600 children in grades four through eight in both Belleville, Ontario and Watertown, New York, the areas like the child's affective response to government, the child's cognitive perception of the political structure, the development of political knowledge, the acquisition of partisan orientations, and the perception of similarity between Canadians and Americans will be investigated in this comparative analysis. Several major conclusions seem to be warranted by the data. On many indicators the findings ran counter to those of previous research. Moreover, in several important areas, the similarities in the patterns of political learning are very apparent for the Canadian and American children. A second major finding was that there were in specific areas important differences in the development of political orientations between the Canadian and American students.