Prague, Feb 1 (CTK) – Czech secondary school students clearly prefer democracy to other political systems and those whose parents are university graduates show the highest support for democracy, according to a survey that the Sociology Institute and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation organised in June 2017.
Seventy percent of students perceive democracy as a good system. Only a small portion of students considered democracy bad.
Children of university graduates showed markedly higher support for democracy (79 percent) than children whose parents attended a high school (71 percent) or an apprentice school (55 percent).
Within the survey, 1,634 students were asked whether they perceived four political systems good or bad. Most of them rejected a military rule and 42 percent viewed a government of non-elected experts as good. The rule of a strong leader is considered good by 18 percent of students with a university background and 29 percent of those with an apprentice background.
Though a rule of non-elected experts may seem a rather attractive alternative to democracy, the respondents might not fully realise that there would be no elections in this political system, the authors of the survey write.
If the students aged 15-17 were allowed to vote, half of them would take part in the elections. Eight years ago, three in five said they would cast their votes in such a case. Students with an apprentice background are markedly less interested in voting themselves than those with a university background.
Two thirds of the students are not interested in politics. In general, the students follow online servers more than television, the survey showed.
One fourth of the students knew how many member states the European Union had and one fifth of them knew that the Czech government coalition was comprised of the Social Democrats (CSSD), the ANO movement and the Christian Democrats (KDU-CSL) las summer when the survey was organised.
