The Civic Awareness of Five and Six Year Olds

Abstract

IT is generally accepted in the behavioral sciences that "reality" is perceived individualistically, that behavior is to a large extent based on the individual's perception of and interaction with his environment, and that adult affective and cognitive mental structures are the outgrowth of the child's development.1 Consequently, students of political socialization have in the last decade and a half given much attention to the political awareness of school children. However, most of this attention has been concentrated on children old enough to respond to the researcher's most efficient data-gathering instrument the written questionnaire. This has been true in spite of the seminal observation of Easton and Hess in 1962: