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Education and the Political Order pp 114–141Cite as

Youth Culture and Political Discontent

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Abstract

The development of political discontent amongst school-students is a severe embarrassment not only to the school authorities but also to those theorists who hold that the school forms part of a harmonious learning experience producing largely harmonious results. Ironically, this group includes both bourgeois political scientists and Marxist sociologists. On the one hand, political socialisation theorists maintain that the school reinforces the learning of supportive attitudes already begun in the family and on the other hand, many Marxist sociologists argue that the school is an instrument of social control perpetuating the hegemony of the ruling class. Both assume the socialisation experience to be an integrated process in which the various component parts interlink without too much difficulty. Yet as we have shown in Chapter 5, political opposition has emerged within the school itself and among those who should be passing without complaint along the socialisation conveyor belt — the school-students. It is a clear example of the inadequacies of integrated models of socialisation which do not allow for diversity and discontinuity at both the individual and system levels of analysis.

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Notes and References

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Authors
  1. Ted Tapper
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  2. Brian Salter
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© 1978 Ted Tapper and Brian Salter

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Tapper, T., Salter, B. (1978). Youth Culture and Political Discontent. In: Education and the Political Order. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15873-7_6

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