USING CONTROVERSIAL ISSUES TO DEVELOP DEMOCRATIC VALUES AMONG SECONDARY SOCIAL STUDIES STUDENTS1

WORKING together for the common good is the basic aim of our democratic society. The increas ing complexities of modern day living necessitate the relinquishment of many individual liberties which were formerly cherished. The evidence clear ly indicates, however, the prevailing attitudes are sometimes not consistent with present day realities. In previous factor and cluster analytic studies, Hoover and Schutz (4) have identified five basic ho mogeneous and reliable dimensions of democratic values. These dimensions represent basic values which individuals normally acquire during the natu ral acculturation process. They have been labeled: 1) assistance for the common good; 2) regulation for the common good; 3) private rights versus the com mon good; 4) the common good in case of ignorance, prejudice, or myth; 5) vested interest groups versus the common good. It is recognized that some of the foregoing values tend to contradict each other. Fur thermore, values three and five might be construed to be indicative of "short-sightedness". In attempting to determine the impact of a science curriculum upon the identified value structure, the authors conducted a subsequent study among univer sities representative of all sections of the United States (5). No significant differences were found between science and non-science majors. Further more, a sub-sample of 132 forestry majors from a number of selected institutions disclosed no consis tent differences between the three groups. An examination of the specific concepts contained within the five identified value clusters indicates that the values cut across conventional subject mat ter lines. One value dimension, for example, la beled "assistance for the common good", encom passes numerous aspects of assistance presently be ing extended to the culturally-deprived. Items with high loadings on this factor, for example, include public, low cost housing for those existing at the bare subsistence level; federal public works program for the chronically unemployed; aid to the depressed areas; medicare; and scholarship ass is tance for needy students. The general nature of value-attitudes and attitude change has been examined extensively over the past two decades. Among the more significant of the s e are the Yale University studies developed within the Hullian framework. Rosenberg and his associates (11), for example, have studied the affective and the cognitive components of attitudes. The evidence in dicates that a disruption of the affective-cognitive congruence sets in motion a restoration process which leads to attitude revision. Hovland and his col leagues (6) have found the order of presentation to be important in attitude formation. Studies by S he r if and Hovland (12) also have disclosed that various at titudes can be predicted from knowledge of one's ma jor reference groups and their value systems. The field approach to attitude research is charac terized by the studies of Newcomb (9), Festinger (2), and Lewin (8). Illustrative of this group is New comb's famous Bennington College study, in which the total impact of a college education toward a lib eralization of attitudes was investigated. He found that the impact of a liberal college setting upon rath er conservatively-oriented college girls was exten sive. In a similar study by Jacob (7), however, it was found that the impact of general education upon the beliefs of college students was practically nil. Lewin (8) studied the relative effectiveness of lecture and group discussion on changing the food habits of a group of women. He found that a lecture on the merits of the new food produced no change, whereas group discussion, followed by verbal commitment, did result in a change of food habits fora consider able portion of the women. Follow-up studies four to six weeks later revealed that the worn en were still using the new foods. It is seen from the foregoing studies that basic value-attitudes represent important determinents of one's behavior, and that they are relatively difficult to build through the normal processes of formal ed

Field of study: Education