This article examines the comment culture that accompanies documentary films on YouTube as a site of (geo) political education. It considers how viewers try to teach each other about the proper "place" of critique in response to the global, national, and local rhetoric featured in one environmental documentary film. YouTube viewers use…

Political activism cannot be explained in terms of the socio-economic characteristics of the participants; rather, demonstrators can best be distinguished in terms of their alienation from the political system, i.e., their lack of confidence in it. (Author)

The relative influence of stages of political socialization on the adult political orientation and activities of former American and Japanese student activists is examined. A causal model of the stages of political socialization, including family and school, student activism, and adult roles, is compared with the political fate of student…

Four interrelated questions in this paper provide a framework for examining the rationale of a model for developing a political laboratory which would fulfill meaningful objectives for civics and government instruction. The first question, why make the school the focus of the laboratory, offers reasons for preferring the school over the classroom…

The relative importance of government as measured in a sample of French secondary students is examined. Drawn from four different schools, 481 Parisian pupils served as the sample for the study. The students responded to a questionnaire ranking the importance of their relationships with the government and the police with seven other specific…

The lab activities described in this project, designed to help students integrate knowledge with action, are presently in the early developmental stages. Providing a setting for laboratory civics instruction, the school is viewed as a micro/political system offering a series of purposive participation experiences in which a transfer of knowledge…

Three separate teacher and student books for the Project 18 course are included in this packet. The objective is to help students develop a positive attitude and to motivate them toward political participation. Teaching strategies for six sections, which run the gamut from simulation to lecture, focus on practical politics. The six sections are as…

This paper illustrates three different, but interrelated approaches to investigating the role of formal schooling in the political learning process from survey data. The assumption is made that the formation of students' political beliefs are affected by factors which are both internal and external to the school setting. Data from which…

A program description of a social studies curriculum development project supported by an ESEA Title III Grant is presented in this paper. The course, designed for secondary students who will soon be voting, focuses on the importance of active involvement and citizenship responsibility for participation in the democratic process. The major…

This essay is the first of a series of occasional papers written by members of the Humanistic Education Project. The purpose is to examine the possibility that philosophy might in fact provide a foundation for educational practice; that philosophy would provide practical knowledge concerning what ought to be done so students and teachers could…

This dissertation suggests that the role of social studies teachers should be to introduce new alternatives, values, and ways of thinking in civic education. One thousand three hundred seventy elementary teachers responded to a questionnaire on: 1) background; 2) liberal-conservative attitude; 3) degree of political and professional activity; 4)…

The purpose of this paper is to develop a rationale for the conscious integration of a political component into professional practice. The rationale involves a re-definition of professional roles in the human services as a powerful means of political struggle. The aim of the political strategy is to eliminate the sources of social, economic and…

This paper analyzes a study designed to determine if students understand the concept of democracy and can apply democratic principles. It also compares the study with related investigations conducted in Europe and calls for improved teaching to make the concept of democracy comprehensible. In 1974, 1,000 high school seniors in Pennsylvania…