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The Stratification Beliefs of English and American Adolescents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Alan J. Stern  and
Donald D. Searing
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Extract

Tocqueville described the eventual progress of equality as inevitable; today its prospects seem less assured. The main engines of equality's modest advance are to be found in contemporary welfare states, where politics concerns who gets what and why. Governments are deeply concerned with these matters even when beguiling themselves, as well as the rest of us, into overlooking the cumulative results of their actions. By shoring up and gradually reshaping stratification systems, they help provide frameworks within which we live and plan our futures. Ordinary citizens are more attuned to the facts of inequality than to speculations about its origins. This essay investigates when and how citizens learn about stratification in England and the United States.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , April 1976 , pp. 177 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 This was demonstrated by Roberta G. Simmons and Morris Rosenberg who, in their study of Baltimore children, asked: ‘Have you ever heard about ‘social class’, or haven't you heard this term?’ Percentages responding ‘Yes’ were as follows: elementary school, 15 per cent; junior high school, 39 per cent; senior high school, 75 per cent. ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, American Sociological Review, XXXVI (1971), 235–49, p. 244.Google Scholar

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5 Regional differences appeared only in specific activities dependent upon climate or special geographical features: Douvan, Elizabeth and Adelson, Joseph, The Adolescent Experience (New York: Wiley, 1966), p. 311Google Scholar. For a comparison of adolescents in northern and southern English schools see Tapper, Ted, Young People and Society (London: Faber, 1971).Google Scholar

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13 In their Baltimore study, Simmons and Rosenberg used the same item we have reported here. And, their results come very close to our own: 75 per cent of their high school students said they had heard the term, compared with 79 per cent in the present study. Simmons, and Rosenberg, , ‘Functions of Children's Perceptions of the Stratification System’, p. 244.Google Scholar

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15 From the perspective of item validity, less than 5 per cent of those claiming they had heard the term ‘social class’ denied that there were social classes in their country, or agreed that ‘There are no such things as social classes nowadays’. While this falls short of a satisfactory validity assessment, it does suggest that the students’ responses reflect consistent and meaningful usage of the class concept.

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41 Hollingshead, , Elmtown's YouthGoogle Scholar; Warner, W. Lloyd et al. , Democracy in Jonesville (New York: Harper and Row, 1949).Google Scholar

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