Attitude of Undergraduate Youths of Democratic Values: Implication for Social Studies

Abstract

An active citizen must ensure that government policies truly represent people’s best interest and not those of a handful of rulers. Citizens are expected to play their functional role by seriously participating in the entire democratic process. But this decision to participate or not depends on their awareness, adherence and internalization of democratic values. This paper examined the extent to which Nigerian undergraduate youths are regulated by democratic ethos of equality (one-man-one vote), patriotism, honesty, respect, tolerance, rule of law, etc. while discharging their civic duties. To investigate the study, three research questions and two hypotheses were raised. The descriptive survey method was employed wherein 586 undergraduate youths from four universities in Edo State were sample for study using the purposive sampling techniques. Frequency count, percentages and t-test statistics were employed as analytical tools. At the end of analysis, the study concludes that undergraduate youths awareness, understanding, internalization and adherence to democratic values during civic practices is selective of institution types (whether public or private) but not selective of programmes (whether full-time or part-time). It was recommended among others that the majority of uneducated youths that has been noted for high level of incivility, undemocratic behaviours and attitudes in the various literature cited in this work be exposed to democratic values through Social Studies, Non-formal and Adult education programmes, all agencies such as National Orientation Agency(NOA), Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), etc. and civil society groups.

DOI: 10.5901/jesr.2014.v4n6p469