Children's Attitudes and British Politics

Messrs Dennis, Lindberg and McCrone have written an interesting article 1 in which they draw the conclusion that those of us who have written textbooks about British politics should modify some of our generalizations about British attitudes and traditions. But before we all rush to revise our next editions, I should like to raise some critical questions about thearticle. I will enumerate these to meet the editor's request for brevity, (i) Why are we not told anything about the composition of the sample? It has been shown that political attitudes among British children are related both to the social class of their parents and to the type of school attended, 2 and without any indication of the class background or schools of the children interviewed it is rather difficult to assess the results. It would also be helpful to know exactly when the survey was conducted.