Cultural Informational Components of Adolescents

Abstract

Much has been written about the appearance of a separate youth-culture or counterculture (Roszak, 1969; Scranton Report, 1970). Research has generally focused on the background, attitudes, customs, and values of adolescents, neglecting the cultural informational component. In an attempt to explore the extent to which adolescents share the same basic cultural information that is part of the American culure, a multiple-choice questionnairg was designed, covering the areas of business and economics, history, current events, music and art, and literature. All items were correctly answered by a pretest sample of adult high school graduates. The questionnaire was then distributed to 250 high school students in the New York-Metropolitan area. An over-all analysis showed that only 68% of the items were correctly identified by at least two-thirds of the students. The degree of cultural awareness among the five categories was quite varied. At least twothirds of the Ss correctly answered 80% of the items in the current events and business and economics areas. Ss did slightly more poorly in history, answering only 70% of the items. In the literature field, two-thirds were only able to correctly identify 60% of the items. Ss showed the lowest level of awareness in the music and art areas, with two-thirds of the Ss correctly answering only half of the items. Over-all, there seems to be a reasonable amount of participation in the current events, historical, and economic and business areas of the society. Perhaps there is less cultural stress on youth in arts. Further research would have to determine whether this lower level of participation by the adolescents in the literature, and music and art areas represents a turning away from h e arcs, a genuine counter-culture in the arts, or faulty teaching, and whether this observation was reliable across groups and time.