EDUCATION FOR DEMOCRACY IN ARGENTINA - EFFECTS OF A NEWSPAPER-IN-SCHOOL PROGRAM

Democracy and tolerance for alternative viewpoints are truisms in the United States, only marginally affected by educational curricula. But in new democracies such as Argentina, schools can play a major role in building such norms. This field experiment (N=3,387) examines the eff ects on political socialization of a program involving the use of loca l newspapers in 5th- and 6th-grade classrooms during Argentina's natio nal election year of 1995. Participating teachers administered questio nnaires to their students near the end of the school year (October), a s did a control group of teachers in the same grades at the same schoo ls who were not teaching with the newspaper. Effects of the newspaper intervention on students included higher news media use, discussion of politics with friends and family, interest in politics, expression of opinions, support for democracy, and tolerance for diversity. Socioec onomic status (SES) was a strong predictor of these measures, particul arly of tolerance. The newspaper intervention interacted with SES, clo sing gaps between social strata in most indicators of political social ization.