Views On War and Peace Among Students in West Berlin Public Schools

Abstract

The present study undertakes to (1) clarify relationships between certain international orienta tions and independent variables as age, sex, and socio-economic background and (2) compare data with previous findings from England, Japan, Norway, and Sweden.

The questionnaire was administered to 565 public school students of ages 10, 12, 15, and 17 in West Berlin. (A purposive sample was selected with overrepresentation on extreme values as to age and sex. Subjects also distribute nicely on the socio-economic dimension insofar four schools in a middle class part of the city and four schools in a lower class part were selected for data collection).

76 % of the sample chose the Allies as being more right in World War II and 7 % chose the Axis as being more right. 81.6 % of the former and only 2.4 % of the latter managed to be consistent in giving a rationale for their decision. Consistency also seems to be related to higher socio-economic levels, higher degree of interest in politics, and belonging to the high IQ-group.

The 'meaningfulness' of the terms war, peace, prevention of war, and causes of war is measured by the frequency of associations given to each term. Expansion of connotative meaning seems to be associated with increased age, higher socio-economic level, interest in politics, and being a girl.

The image of 'war' viewed developmentally shows the younger subjects to be less concerned with negative effects of war on people. Further, the younger subjects view war more as an activity and process. The concept 'peace' is decreasingly defined as the negation of war with age whereas 'peace' defined as coexistence is more common with older subjects. No clear sex differences exist.

An overall reaction to provocation when a subject imagines a threatening situation regarding family, city, native country, and ally of own country is that a war should not be started. Previous findings that older subjects tend to justify war to a greater extent is not supported. 90 % of the sample display the belief that there is something inside people that causes war. However, in giving reasons for their predictions of the probability of future war few references are made to man's bad qualities. No clear trend emerges between the independent variables and the probability ratings. The general trend for the total sample is that quite low probability exists for having a war in 5 years whereas the ratings for 100 years indicate a much greater probability.