During adolescence, the development of political ideology becomes apparent
in the individual; ideology here is defined as the presence of roughly consistent
attitudes, more or less organized in reference to a more encompassing, though
perhaps tacit, set of general principles. As such, political ideology is dim or absent
5 at the beginning of adolescence. Its acquisition by the adolescent, in even the most
modest sense, requires the acquisition of relatively sophisticated cognitive skills:
the ability to manage abstractness, to synthesize and generalize, to imagine the
future. These are accompanied by a steady advance in the ability to understand
principles.
The child’s rapid acquisition of political knowledge also promotes the growth
of political ideology during adolescence. By knowledge I mean more than the
dreary “facts”, such as the composition of county government that the child is
exposed to in the conventional ninth-grade civics course. Nor do I mean only
information on current political realities. These are facets of knowledge, but they
15 are less critical than the adolescent’s absorption, often unwitting, of a feeling for
those many unspoken assumptions about the political system that comprise the
common ground of understanding - for example, what the state can “appropriately”
demand of its citizens and vice versa, or the “proper” relationship of government to
subsidiary social institutions, such as the schools and churches. Thus, political
20 knowledge is the awareness of social assumptions and relationships as well as of
objective facts. Much of the naiveté that characterizes the younger adolescent’s
grasp of politics stems not from an ignorance of “facts” but from an incomplete
comprehension of the common conventions of the system, of what is and is not
customarily done, and of how and why it is or is not done.
Yet I do not want to overemphasize the significance of increased political
knowledge in forming adolescent ideology. Over the years I have become
progressively disenchanted about the centrality of such knowledge and have come
to believe that much current work in political socialization, by relying too heavily
on its apparent acquisition, has been misled about the tempo of political
30 understanding in adolescence.
Just as young children can count numbers in series without grasping the
principle of ordination, young adolescents may have in their heads many random
bits of political information without a secure understanding of those concepts that
would give order and meaning to the information.
Like magpies, children’s minds pick up bits and pieces of data. If you
encourage them, they will drop these at your feet - Republicans and Democrats,
the tripartite division of the federal system, perhaps even the capital of
Massachusetts. But until the adolescent has grasped the integumental function
that concepts and principles provide, the data remain fragmented, random,disordered.
1. The author’s primary purpose in the passage is to
(A) clarify the kinds of understanding an adolescent must have in order to develop a political ideology
(B) dispute the theory that a political ideology can be acquired during adolescence
(C) explain why adolescents are generally uninterested in political arguments
(D) suggest various means of encouraging adolescents to develop personal political ideologies
(E) explain why an adolescent’s political ideology usually looks more sophisticated than it actually is
2. According to the author, which of the following contributes to the development of political ideology
during adolescence?
(A) Conscious recognition by the adolescent of his or her own naiveté
(B) Thorough comprehension of the concept of ordination
(C) Evaluation by the adolescent of the general principles encompassing his or her specific political
ideas
(D) Intuitive understanding of relationships among various components of society
(E) Rejection of abstract reasoning in favor of involvement with pragmatic