Class Consciousness among Young Rural Children

Abstract

Summary The development of the cognitive, behavioral, and evaluative dimensions of social class consciousness among rural youngsters was the object of the present research. Data were collected in individual interviews with 378 white male and female children enrolled in kindergarten through the eighth grade in nine demographically similar public schools in middle Tennessee. The children's age and parents' occupational and educational attainment levels were generally found positively associated with their performance on a projective class awareness measure comprised of 18 pen-and-ink drawings of people, houses, and automobiles. Male and female responses were essentially the same. Results further suggest that the awareness of and response to stereotypic social class distinctions were fairly well developed by the time the children had entered their second year of school and that class-related perceptions of children as young as five years of age could be reliably and validly tested with projective-type measures.