Introduction

Long before "political socialization" became designated a field of study and part of the domain of psychologists and social scientists, philosophers and political thinkers were asking how it is that children come to feel themselves members of a particular political system. Plato's Republic asserts that the state must take an active interest in the upbringing of children, whom Plato perceives first and foremost as future citizens. Rousseau addressed the relationship between family life, schooling, and the larger society in Emile, as well as in his posthumously published The Government of Poland ("When a Pole reaches the age of twenty, he must be a Pole, not some other kind of man."). Another Frenchman, Napoleon, remarked in 1808 that "as long as children are not taught whether they ought to be Republican or Monarchist, Catholic or irreligious, the State will not form a Nation." How does this process of becoming a member of a particular nation—with its unique history, preoccupations, ideals—get under way? And how best to examine childhood in such a light?

I asked these and related questions in the striking world of East and West Berlin, where two deeply opposed political systems (sprung from a unified German nation more than forty years ago) confront one another so visibly and unrelentingly. There I spoke with children living on either side of the Berlin Wall, in the hopes of better understanding the sense they make of the efforts of their respective nations—The German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany—to secure the allegiance of their children. These are young people who share a linguistic, cultural, and historical heritage, as well as family ties that transcend political borders. Yet they are coming of age in two radically different political and economic systems. How do they come to terms, emotionally and cognitively, with this unique, frequently painful and frustrating reality? What are the lessons intended for them? And what are the lessons they in fact learn? How do these children persist as Germans while at the same time becoming something else—socialist or capitalist Germans?

This is the first generation of Germans to grow up with the Berlin Wall. They know nothing, through experience, of a physically undivided Berlin. They are left to grapple with the questions such a stark reality elicits from them. In so doing, they make observations that illuminate their political, moral, and psychological concerns. What or who does this barrier keep out, or protect us from? What is included within its reach? Who are we, and what do we believe in—as opposed to those people "over there"? In their efforts to address these questions, children look carefully at their surroundings, listen to what they are taught (formally and informally), and often find themselves somewhere between the demands of rhetoric and the persuasiveness of experience.

Certainly I chose an environment that by no means can be considered "normal" or representative of cities elsewhere in the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, or West Germany) or the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany). These are indeed special political circumstances in which these children find themselves. It appeared likely to me that here certain aspects of the child's developing sense of ideological and national allegiances might stand out in sharp relief. Nowhere else in either nation is a child confronted so early with such a striking manifestation of East-West political divisiveness. Yet, as Freud knew, a careful consideration of pathology can be useful in illuminating the vicissitudes of normalcy. Likewise, I suspect that a clearer understanding of childhood in extreme conditions might also offer us a greater appreciation of the political and moral life of children elsewhere.

I decided to spend my time with latency-age children—ten to twelve years old, by and large. Though certainly not a period of visible Sturm und Drang as can be the later, adolescent years, this is nonetheless a very crucial period in the child's life when he is beginning to make increasingly complex connections with the larger social world. Anna Freud refers to latency as "the post-oedipal lessening of drive urgency and the transfer of libido from the parental figures to contemporaries, community groups, teachers, leaders, impersonal ideals, and aim-inhibited, sublimated interests." In his extensive work with children in this country and abroad, Robert Coles has pointed again and again to the fact that young children are not only able but quite willing to maintain an active involvement with the world of politics and ideology.

I felt it was important to continue looking at this period of the child's life in "the field" in order to better understand the process whereby children come to feel increasingly related to their social and political milieu. How do children make use of the particular elements of political life in a setting as ideologically charged as that of Berlin, East and West? How do they use or discard various pieces of information in their efforts to establish an allegiance to their group? In such a setting do children readily establish national or ideological allegiances, or do they develop a more ambivalent sense of national or ideological affiliation?

There is a growing body of research devoted to various aspects of the child's "political socialization" that is widely divergent in focus and theoretical conceptualization. Researchers have looked at the relationship between family life and the child's acquisition of political values; they have examined the impact of formal education and the media on these same values. At the same time, several researchers have tended to limit their discussion to elements of the child's political life that can be "measured" in some fashion. They speak of the child's "sense of political efficacy," or of the child's "attitudes toward political authority," or "party identification." Not surprisingly, attempts to isolate specific sources of political and ideological influence have revealed the fairly conservative influence exerted by any one source, be it family, school, or the media. Common sense, along with close observation of children, points to the need for careful scrutiny of a range of such "influences"—family, education, social class, media, historical and political circumstances—as they bear down on children. This is a herculean task, yet one that approaches the complex reality of the political life of children.

I discovered in the field how difficult it is to establish a firm correspondence between the "message" children receive from various "sources" and the political views of those children. In addition, it became clear that an "agent of political socialization" that may be especially influential in East Berlin may play a relatively negligible role in West Berlin, and vice versa. For example, the fact that western television programs can be picked up in East Berlin homes is of enormous significance for the...