AN ANALYSIS OF THE VALUE CONSCIOUSNESS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN AND JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to clarify the actual conditions of value consciousness in children and to examine the position of mental faculty in their structure of value consciousness.In the study 1, Ss were 220 elementary school children(from 1st to 6th grader)and 84 junior high school students(1st and 2nd grader).Ss were asked to answer the following two questions in a group:(1)What do your parents want you to be?(2)What do you want to be?Main results were as follows:(1)Children thought that their parents wanted them to have a clear head, and to be healthy, sincere, gentle, honest and obedient.(2)Children themselves wanted to have a clear head, and to be a good sportsman, a good appearance, dear, favored by others and active.In the study 2, Ss were 507 elementary school children(from 3rd to 6th grader)and 357 junior high school students(from 1st to 3rd grader).From the results of the study 1, 19 characteristics were selected.Ss were asked to answer the following three questions in a group:(1)What do your parents want you to be?(Parents'Wishes:PW)(2)What do you want to be?(Children's Wishes:CW)(3)What are you now?(Self Image:SI).Main results were as follows:(1)Children thought that their parents wanted them to be polite, healthy, honest, patient, sympathetic, obedient, and to obey their parents.(2)Children themselves wanted to make a good record at school, and to be healthy, patient, honest, polite, and sympathetic.(3)Children's self image was to be healthy, active, sympathetic, polite, gentle, and to be a good sportsman.(4)Spearman's correlation between PW and CW was .800 and decreased with age, between PW and SI was.621 and increased with age, and between CW and SI was .489.(5)From Hayashi's quantification III, two significant axes were obtained in PW, CW and SI respectively.Two axes were almost the same in PW, CW and SI.One axis was interpreted as mental faculty and the other physical health, so children's value consciousness was classified into four types.(a)polite, honest and sympathetic children (b)active and healthy children(c)a good sportsman(d)intelligent children.From the above results, it was clarified that children strongly recognized the value of mental faculty(to have a clear head or to make a good record at school).This trend was similar to the previous study.However, they also recognized the value of other various characteristics developmentally.