Political identity of student youth in terms of the goals of state educational policy

Abstract

The aim of the article is to highlight the challenges of political identification among youth that hinder the achievement of state educational policy objectives and to identify corrective measures.

Methods. The article summarises the results of an empirical study of the specifics of regional political identification of student youth. The author correlates the legislatively defined goals of educational policy with the representations of political identity that determine their achievement. The problems of regional political identification, which should be taken into account in the formation of the state educational policy, are highlighted. Those that require priority attention include: dependence of political identity on regional political elites, which negatively affects the willingness to be responsible for the country; nominality of identity, which manifests itself in the refusal to be active, indifference to the problems of state-building; low level of political competence, which manifests itself primarily in the immaturity of the motivation for political choice, ideas about the goals and values of political participation, willingness to give up rights and freedoms for the sake of stability, etc. uncertainty of political preferences, which manifests itself in the inability to recognise the affiliation of political ideas to certain ideologies, inability to predict the consequences of the implementation of ideas, vulnerability to manipulation; construction of a regional political identity from the opposition ’’friends or foes’’, which leads to negative emotions when communicating with people from other regions, a sense of prejudice on their part, dissatisfaction and irritation when interacting with supporters of other political forces, etc.

Results. The main directions and tasks of educational influences are defined: formation of subjective attitudes; ideas about ’otherness’ as a prospect, not an obstacle to development, about the needs and motives of people and the reasons for their differences; abilities to: make competent political and civic choices; self-organisation for solving common problems; analysis of own emotions, judgements, mistakes and identification of their causes; use of algorithms for verifying information and establishing cause and effect relationships; defining and observing boundaries, etc.