Sending the right messages: How comunities shape young people’s attitudes towards politics
Cultivating Democracy, a new book supported by CIRCLE, chronicles the political socialization process of over 3,000 high school students from 29 economically, politically, and demographically diverse communities in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. Written by James Gimpel, J. Celeste Lay, and Jason E. Schuknecht, the book offers a new framework for understanding how young people form their attitudes toward politics and civic life. The book suggests that for Generation Y adolescents, the characteristics of the community in which they grow up profoundly affect the political attitudes they form. These attitudes, in turn, influence how civically engaged they will be as adults.
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