The study of politics is extensive.

Many studies and much research has been conducted surrounding the topic of politics and education, but none have attempted to make a direct correlation between early childhood education and political affiliation. Nonetheless, scholars have made some notable assertions related to our field of study. In Theories of Political Literacy, the author tests how one’s education and understanding of politics affects party, awareness, expertise, and “civic competence”. The concept of “political cognition” comes up again and again, so they’re trying to understand how one’s political perspective is shaped. They also want to study how mobilizing the political masses can influence overall societal political expertise. The author’s primary research method was to conduct a panel study of youth and test their political literacy through multiple agent theories. These theories included cognitive mobilization, structural role, and socialization agents. They gathered their data from senior high school classes in the U.S. in 1965. When it came to measuring ability (political literacy), GPA was used as it was deemed closely related to IQ. The author found that while education and parent influence were notable, the determining factor in one’s political competence was direct involvement in organizations/demonstrations.

 

Another important scholarly article we considered was The Right vs The Left: How Does Political Ideology Affect The Workplace. The central question within this research paper asked if people acted differently in the workplace (toward colleagues and bosses) if they were aware of others’ political opinions. The author interviewed the employees of several companies to determine how they interacted with their liberal and conservative coworkers. In the end, they concluded that if workers were aware of political bias, then they did treat each other differently, so this study told us the importance political affiliation has in one’s life.

 

The last scholarly article related to our research we analyzed was Civic Education, Community Norms, and Political Indoctrination. The author analyzes civic education in communities of varying socioeconomic statuses to determine if there is a common political attitude/theme amongst these communities. They specifically want to know what effect school has on students’ political perspectives, which relates perfectly to literacy. The author went to major secondary schools in three big cities to analyze the texts these schools were using. Two to three paragraphs of text were randomly selected in each textbook and analyzed for 5 themes identified by the author. They also did in person interviews around the community that included administrators, teachers, business/religious leaders, and the chairmen of local political organizations. The textbook analysis revealed no major differences in democratic creed or treatment of minorities between schools. It seemed political attitudes within the texts remained largely indifferent and consistent. After conducting interviews within each community, the author’s final conclusion was that attitudes toward politics are “so strongly channeled through other agencies in each community that the civic education program’s efforts have little independent effect” (5). In conclusion, scholars have found that education efforts in the classroom have a small impact on one’s political idealizations. This made us even more excited about the results of our study since we are analyzing literacy before a child enters the school system, and it will be surprising to see if this has any significant results.

 

A “Crash Course” video about Government and Politics. Here’s a link to the video on Youtube.

Here’s another handy dandy link to the transcript for this video!