engleski

Is war a good or a bad thing: Children's attitudes towards war

It has been documented that children’s basic attitudes towards social questions are formed during the early school-age period. Besides the influence of parents, who play the most important role it that period, other sources of information like personal experiences, peers, school and media become increasingly more important in attitude formation as a child grows older. As a part of a pilot study of a larger project concerning the long-term effects of war on children’s psychological health and development, Punamäki’s attitude scale towards war was administered (Punamäki, 1987). The scale consists of 21 items clustered in four scales: a) Moral judgment of war in general, b) Justification of the own nation’s fight, c) Personal loyalty and the sense of duty in a state of war and d) Attitudes to the possibility of peace. The aim of the study was to examine attitudes of Croatian children after the war was ceased and to explore the relationship between the attitudes and children’s gender, age and amount of their experiences with war and violence. Sample consisted of 230 Croatian children aged from 11-14 years who are attending schools in Zagreb. Children’s war experiences were examined by the Questionnaire on children’s Stressful and Traumatic War Experiences (Franc, Kuterovac and Stuvland, 1993). The obtained data indicate that children's sex and war experiences are more related to their attitudes towards war than age. The results will be discussed in the light of earlier studies and compared to findings obtained with the same scale on children in Israel.

war; school children; attitudes

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