This article essentially addresses one specific question: Why do some adolescents actively and sometimes flauntingly use socially disvalued media contents? Using the empirical examples of use of heavy metal rock and video violence, particular emphasis is first placed on the role of the school as a generating context for both delinquency and (popular) cultural dispositions. Second, by combining these parallel fields of inquiry, a theory of “media delinquency” is proposed that places the use of socially disvalued media within a wider theoretical context of adolescent development.

Adolescents' Use of Socially Disvalued Media: Towards a Theory of Media Delinquency.

This article surveys the field of British youth cultural analysis since the development in the 1950s of a so-called specific identity and distinctive set of experiences for young people. It outline...

From classlessness to clubculture: A genealogy of post-war British youth cultural analysis

We report the methodology and some first year results of a 5-year longitudinal study of smoking. In 6330 Derbyshire secondary schoolchildren aged 11-16 years, 6% of boys and 2.5% of girls were smoking one or more cigarettes per week. Higher rates of regular smoking and of children who had tried smoking were found in secondary modern schools, followed by middle, comprehensive and grammar schools. The results clarify the relationship between children's smoking habits and those of the parents and siblings. Boys were more likely to smoke if their fathers smoked and girls were more likely to smoke if their mothers smoked. Irrespective of parental smoking, whether or not siblings smoked had a great influence on whether the child would smoke. Having more money to spend, working at a part-time job, spending more evenings out with a mixed-sex peer group, at a youth club, or out dancing, and playing truant from school were all associated with an increased risk of smoking.

https://adc.bmj.com/content/archdischild/53/1/12.full.pdf

Long-term study of smoking by secondary schoolchildren.

This discussion emphasizes the centrality of the school in considering policy for delinquency prevention and control. Several general processes are suggested whereby schooling itself contributes to youth alienation. A major problem identified is an apparent growth in the number of marginal youth resulting when less successful students are confronted with not only an unpleasant school experience, but a future of limited hope in terms of an occupational career. This situation is seen as having its origins in the rapid changes occurring in the world of work, whereby limited opportunities for long-term work careers are available to those without higher education and technical credentials. As a counter to the resultant alienation, forms of youth action are proposed that both engage young persons in useful and paid work, and integrate marginal youth into the mainstream of school and community life.

The New Marginal Youth

The success story The findings from three major national surveys, all sponsored by government departments, into sport, schools and young people in England and Wales, were published during 1995 (Department for Education, 1995; Hunter, 1995; Mason, 1995). These enquiries investigated school sport facilities, the participation of children aged 6-16 in sport in and out of school, and overall uses of leisure by 11-25 year olds. Together the investigations offer a comprehensive, nationally representative picture of the position of sport in schools and young people’s lives in England and Wales in the mid-1990s. The evidence, which is reviewed in detail elsewhere (see Roberts, 1996), shows that in the years up to 1994 Britain’s schools were improving their sports facilities, that young people

Youth Cultures and Sport: The Success of School and Community Sport Provisions in Britain

Adolescence is a point of great structural vulnerability for the modernized society. As its members go through this phase in their lives, the survival of the society requires that most of them should gain a certain basis of knowledge and social values, as well as certain intellectual and social skills. Yet at this phase of their lives, it seems that the young are undergoing considerable psychic strains (partly determined by the structure of their society) and are exposed to the temptations of a youth culture that encourages at the least a considerable diversion of time and energy from these educational pursuits and at the most an inversion of the related values of deferred gratification, academic achievement and conformity to rules. From the perspective of the young themselves the same basic facts have a different significance. Their futures are in the balance during the years of youth. It can be a future holding career success, prosperity and high status or the opposite; it can be a future of rebellious rule-breaking, conventional conformity or many alternatives inbetween. In modernized society the advantages or handicaps of social background are not automatically translated into certain kinds of career and adult life. Career success depends to an ever-increasing extent on educational certificates.' To acquire these even children

Barry Sugarman

Papers

Involvement in youth culture, academic achievement and conformity in school. An empirical study of London schoolboys.

The School and Moral Development