How Children Think and Feel about War and Peace: An Australian Study

Attention has been recently directed towards fathoming young people's responses to the nuclear threat, but the broader question of how they acquire and form attitudes to peace and war in general has been neglected. Based mainly on studies published in the 1960s and early 1970s, it is hypothesized that children's conceptions of, and attitudes towards, war and peace vary with age, gender, sources of information and exposure to media violence, perceived threats to Australian security and type of school attended. The hypotheses are tested using data obtained from a questionnaire and interview survey of 608 students aged 4-16 years in 10 government and non-government schools in NSW, Australia. By and large, the findings parallel those of previous studies on the age factor, though the assertions that children know more about war than peace and that older children are more likely to believe in innate human aggression are not confirmed. Some interesting differences emerge, however, with respect to the gender, school type, security and media exposure factors. Gender differences are unequivocally significant, as is type of school attended. Boys' attitudes are more militaristic, whilst girls' attitudes are more pacific, and acceptance of war is greater among children attending single-sex boys' and Private Protestant schools. But there are no strong connections between information sources or consumption of violent TV programmes and attitudes. The degree of security children feel is related to attitudes to war and some attention is given to discussing the paradox of children being generally threatened by war and non-accepting of it, yet supporting the use of violent defence. In this context, it is suggested that further research be conducted on children's ideas about just war. Additionally, it is suggested that more work be done on the dynamics by which school ethos influences attitudes, on media violence and attitudes and on the knowledge of very young children about peace and war.