Abstract
This investigation was carried out among the final-year classes of 12 educational institutions: 3 State schools, 3 Protestant schools and 6 Ca tholic schools. The research is subdivided in three parts. The first part includes a content analysis of the courses of philosophy, religion and one called 'Columbian institutions', as well as an opinion survey dealing with the subject matter of the courses and the way it is taught.
The second part sets out to determine which type of ideology attracts the pupils. The analysis was limited to a study of the pupils' attitudes with regard to certain dimensions of democratization and secularization, and their opinions on the social meaning of religion.
The third part tries to see how far the family reinforces (or does not reinforce) the communication of the values transmitted by the school environment; with this in mind the head of each family was asked to explain the motives which lead him to choose a particular school, and also to give his opinions on social change.
In general, it can be concluded that the values transmitted by education are socially traditional, even if it is possible to detect certain more liberal or democratic tendencies in some institutions.
On the other hand, the survey among the pupils shows that even at the level of secondary education, some of them already hold critical opinions with regard to the cultural content which is transmitted to them by the family and the school. These channels of cultural transmission are inevi tably, today, competing with others, as for example the mass media, whose development is increasingly generalizing an ideological pluralism.