example, that the UN should increase its power over its Member States. It was seen primarily as an organization doing good works.

A survey of high school students and their parents, conducted in the late 1960's, found that more than 85% of both students and parents were in favor of continued U.S. support of the United Nations and that there was a moderately high level of agreement between students and their parents on this issue. 28 An important insight into the extent of students' familiarity with the United Nations is given by the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in its survey of Social Studies in 1972. 29 The educational level of achievement of 9-year-olds, 13-year-olds, 17-year-olds, and young adults (ages 26-35) insofar as it met various objectives of Social Studies education was ascertained.

Only two questions out of nearly 200 specifically focused on the United Nations and probed knowledge of its role in promoting peace. More than 67% of the 13- and 17-year-olds and more than 80% of the adults answered both of these two questions correctly. Only one question pertaining to the UN was administered to the youngest age group, and here 47% gave correct answers. This showing on the questions about the UN compared favorably to that on other questions under the heading of Major Developments in World History.

30

The questionnaire used in the IEA cross-national survey included UN related items to measure both cognitive and affective outcomes. In the cognitive area of civics, seven questions (out of the forty-seven multiple-choice questions administered to fourteen-year-olds) dealt with the United Nations. To give an example of the findings: among students in the United States more than sixty-five percent knew that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not guarantee the right to disobey national laws if one's family is in danger. (This question, also administered to high school seniors, had a nearly equivalent percentage of correct answers in that group.) More than sixty. percent of fourteen-year-olds identified the UN Charter as the document (out of five listed) which contains the most accurate description of the organization, structure and functions of the UN. Approximately fifty percent of the fourteenyear-olds knew that the Security Council (out of five listed UN units) is charged with major responsibility for the keeping of peace. The proportion of students in each country who answered these questions correctly is reflected in the ranking of knowledge of national and international processes reported previously.

In addition to these cognitive items in the area of civics, which measured knowledge of the UN, there were a series of ratings of the UN in a part of the IEA instrument called "How Society Works." There, students were asked to indicate what effect each of ten listed institutions had upon the realization of a series of values. These students rated the UN relatively high on achievements, such as "creates better understanding so that people can live and work together" and "settles arguments and disagreements.'

American fourteen-year-olds, however, see other institutions as equally effective or more effective in promoting values of creating understanding and settling disagreements; in particular, Police and Laws tend to be rated at as high as or a higher level than the UN in all of the participating nations (including the United States).

In the U.S. students see the United Nations as one of several institutions promoting harmonizing values. High school seniors tend to hold perceptions of the UN similar to those of fourteen-year-olds (if anything, the seniors are slightly less favorable).

We may summarize these data by saying that in the U.S. the majority of both fourteen-year-olds and seniors in high school have accurate knowledge about the major activities of the UN; however, it is not an institution about which they have extensive knowledge, a clearly developed image or have strong positive attitudes. There is a very small change between the fourteen-year-old and the high school senior level with regard to knowledge and exposure to information about the UN or clarity of attitudes toward it. This contrasts markedly with the considerable changes shown for this age period in responses to the many items with domestic political content.

If the years before the age of fourteen are thought of as a critical period for the acquisition of knowledge and attitudes about international organizations and processes, it is important to begin programs in these areas during the middle school years in order to have maximum impact. It follows that it is important also to meet more effectively the needs of the student in these respects during the high school years in order to avoid having that period become a kind of plateau so far as international knowledge and attitudes are concerned.

D. Attitudes Toward Human Rights

Although many UNESCO Associated School projects have focussed specifically upon the work of the UN's specialized agencies and upon the subject of human rights, there are not many sources of information about the existing attitudes of students toward these agencies or toward UN activities in the protection of human rights. Investigators concerned with political attitudes sometimes include questions about human rights in democratic society, but these items tend to focus on the realization of these rights within the domestic political system or as protected by the national constitution or laws. Those who have done research on political socialization, primarily Americans, may themselves be reflecting an impediment (common among those educated in this country) to the understanding of what is meant by international protection of human rights. Since American civic education presents terms like “rights and freedoms" almost exclusively in the context of study of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, there is a tendency among American students to think that the rights and freedoms guaranteed to American citizens in those documents are unique in the world society. This natio-centrism regarding human rights is reflected, for example, in the tendency of many children to

believe that ours is the only country in which the right to peaceful assembly or the right to a fair trial is guaranteed. This may conceivably lead young people to the mistaken impression that people in other countries do not really care about having such rights and freedoms assured to them. American students may have special difficulty in recognizing that they share a belief in human rights with people in underdeveloped countries whose appearance and language are very different from their own. If the language spoken sounds strange to American ears, does the speaker have the same right as Americans do to express his opinions freely? Some young Americans might think not. Weissberg, who has reviewed a number of socialization studies, concluded:

For young children democracy is America and America is democracy. . . other countries may have this democracy but for a variety of inarticulatable reasons other peoples' democracy is not as good as the American version.

31

The same may also be true for other people's human rights.

Those studies which have focussed upon American students' belief in democratic values are not particularly optimistic even with regard to their support for the political rights of groups with diverse opinions as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Another problem often associated with the matter of human rights is that although students may approve abstract statements in favor of such rights as free speech, they may nevertheless be willing to deny these rights in specific instances involving particular unpopular groups whose convictions do not agree with their own.

32

A study of American, British, and West German students found a substantial increase during adolescence in the understanding of the importance of the protection of individual freedom.

Not only is the eighteen-year-old more capable than the eleven-year-old of recognizing intrusions into the privacy of the individual, but . . . also . . . recognizing the need of safeguarding certain freedoms with formal legislation.

33

Students of high school age sometimes perceive that wars are fought over the denial of political rights, and express the desire to avoid such wars, but they seem unaware of the potential of international cooperation in preventing conflict. The matter of support for social and economic rights for those in other countries may have become confused for some children because the stress in the past has often been on American charity rather than on the complexity of economic redistribution. The support for the international protection of political rights is related both to a knowledge of the functions of the United Nations and to a perspective on the universal nature of these rights.

E. Perceptions of War and Peace

Children are aware of war at an early age most studies indicate by the age of six. Younger children's images are, of course, concerned with concrete

objects of war such as guns, tanks, and planes. As older children become capable of reciprocal reasoning and are able to see an issue as it appears from more than one side, they become more sophisticated about the causes of war. For example, a young child when asked how one can tell which side is right in a war is likely to say something like "the one who wins is right", or "they should look on a paper to see which one owns the country.' Older children can understand that one's own personal preference for one country over another may determine which side seems to be right. One twelve-year-old states his conclusion in this way: "No country is right or wrong. Each one believes that it is right or it wouldn't be fighting. But it depends on your point of view about which is right and which is wrong. Nobody can say for sure who is right.

Young people tend to define peace as the absence of war and not to see the active processes of cooperation and conflict-resolution which are necessary to sustain peace. Children's ideas also become somewhat more sophisticated with age on the subject of maintaining peace. One young child who was asked how wars could be stopped answered "no guns, no bombs, no hand grenades”, but when queried further about who could stop war by eliminating these things, he replied "the Army, the Navy, and the Air Force". Older children are somewhat less focussed on stopping wars by eliminating their concrete aspects. Some prescribe education (e.g., "teach people not to fight; get others to like us"), others focus on politics ("send letters to Congressmen, you have to work for it to get peace" or "elect the right government people - people who are for peace").

A less encouraging aspect of children's attitudes toward war is the evidence that many children see war as inevitable, necessary, and likely. Cooper in a study of English children found that 14- to 16-year-olds see greed, lust, hate; and desire for power as immutable human motivations which make war likely. 34 Tolley's more recent study found that many American children acknowledge the importance of fighting for national defense; somewhat fewer saw war as necessary to combat communism. However, more than ninetypercent felt that stopping war was "hard" or "very hard".

35

Tolley also commented on the apparent importance of the 5th and 6th grades in developing children's ideas about war. In these grades there was greater opposition to war than in either the higher or the lower levels; these grades also showed the greatest rise in level of information about specific wars attributable to television or newspapers.

The IEA survey also included some attitude items concerning war (e.g., "war is sometimes the only way in which a nation can save its self respect'; "talking things over with another nation is better than fighting"). 36 The large majority of the students in all nations rejected war as an instrument of national policy. War was most strongly rejected in the Federal Republic of Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

III. RESEARCH ON THE EFFECTS OF EDUCATION

A. The General Effect of Educational Programs on International Knowledge and Attitudes

There is evidence that the kinds of attitudes we can expect of adults in the future are determined in part by educational events in the present. It is true that the cognitive development of the individual takes place independently of specific educational input and that specific occurences of turmoil and conflict in the future cannot be predicted. Nevertheless we are presently educating children who will, by their actions as adult citizens in the 1980's, determine the shapes of law and the administration of justice, social and political institutions, and whether a state of war or peace will prevail. It is difficult to take such a long range view but we are, whether we realize it or not, creating our own future through the kind of education provided to young people.

The effect of education upon international attitudes and skills has received only limited study. Although estimates of the influence of general schooling and especially of civic education on the acquisition of political knowledge and attitudes vary considerably, there is general agreement that even when influences such as home background are held constant, classroom practices and teacher attitudes still play an important part.

The IEA data, however, indicate the complexity of the influence of civic education practices. For example, there appears to be a certain degree of incompatibility between some positively-valued outcomes of civic education. A stress in the schools on patriotism and nationalism, which seems to contribute to adolescent support for the national government and active civic participation in many countries, may foster those outcomes at the expense of support for democratic values. 37 The possible incompatibility of certain attitudinal outcomes makes the task of program reform in civic education an especially difficult one. If practices increase one positively valued civic outcome at the expense of another, we shall have to find imaginative new approaches and new practices, ones which will foster intended positive effects and minimize the unintended negative ones.

In the IEA study the only school-based variables that seemed to contribute in what may be called a consistently positive direction to the students' achievement of three identified positive outcomes of civic education were measures of what is often called classroom climate in particular, whether there are indications that students are encouraged to express their own opinions. Reports of this type of classroom functioning were characteristic of the students who were more knowledgeable, less authoritarian, and more participant. The large majority of those who have written on the subject of education for the fulfillment of human rights and international education since the 1920's have pointed out the importance of this influence, for which the IEA study has provided research evidence. It is this aspect of the school experience which is probably most difficult to modify, however-requiring as it does considerable change in teachers' orientations.