Understanding Early Education Differences in the Support for Democratic Values Among Dutch Adolescents

Democracies benefit from a strong commitment of young people to democratic core values. Systematic studies on adolescents’ support for theses core values of democratic societies are however rare. Research into citizenship focuses on relatively horizontal ties: the relationship between the individual and its environment (e.g. ICCS). Significantly less systematic knowledge is available about vertical ties: the support for democratic values (state / government relationship with individual). Moreover, support for democracy and for the rule of law are often examined as abstract and separate entities without taking possible tensions and contradictions between values and principles into account (see Kranendonk et al., 2019). In a recent Dutch study, we collected data on support for democratic values and tensions between these values among 2,500 first grade students (12-year-olds) in 49 secondary schools in the Netherlands. We found that these pupils expressed great support for democratic principles. The majority of pupils favored a representative or direct democracy, a large proportion endorsed the separation of powers and reported a high willingness to vote (Thijs et al., 2019). At the same time, we observed striking differences in students’ support for democratic values according to the educational level at which they entered secondary education. Already, pupils from academic tracks endorsed democracy more strongly, were more politically interested and efficacious, and more inclined to vote in the future than pupils from vocational tracks. This paper elaborates on these findings and examines to what extent differences between adolescents on the basis of their educational level can be explained by sociodemographic characteristics, parental background, political socialization, and school characteristics. As such, this study provides a baseline to further investigate the role of the school and the classroom in adolescents’ socialization in democratic values, tensions between these values and differences herein.