COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF THE WARSAW’S YOUTH INTELLECTUAL COMPONENT OF ATTITUDES TOWARD THE PAST

Abstract

The article concerns the issue of the "collective memory", especially the collective memory of adolescents. It responds to the constantly increasing interest in the issues of social attitudes toward time, especially toward the past. The essence of the problem is not how the past affects the present shape of reality, but how the past is perceived by a contemporary youth, and how the attitude towards the past is subject to social factors. The article presents some results of research, which were attended by 684 graduates students from 17 public secondary schools in Warsaw. The research was conducted using quantitative methods, and the basic research tool was a questionnaire survey. Theoretical basis for the study was a structural theory of attitudes, focusing on three components of attitudes towards the past: intellectual, emotional and behavioral. The article presents the results on the intellectual component, including such issues as: historical interest, attitude to history as a school subject, historical knowledge and the importance of historical knowledge for the modern man. It turns out that young people are interested in history, although it should be emphasized that the interest isn’t uniform, both in space and time. Youth is definitely more interested in modern history, especially in the Polish history. It is important that the relatively large interest in history doesn’t go hand in hand with the actual historical knowledge. Moreover, attitudes towards the past are determined by social factors, especially political interests, class profile, historical interest of father and sex.