An interview where sub youth culture seemed to effect individuals was a boy aged 13 who told me that he always used to be in church and was even in the chior but when he got to secondary school he lost interest and now goes out with his friends instead. He was a townie and through out my interviews I have found the idea of church to be for “geeks and old people”. Even though I did find 50% of my questionairred townies to be christian 73% of these have not been to church for over a year.
Looking at my questionnaires it can also be seen that different sub youth cultures have an effect on youth but more on boys than it has on girls. Whereas with the same sub youth culture girls are more than twice as affected by pressures influenced their. This also ties in to the study by McRobbie and Garber how females react differently to the same stimulus. Although this does not seem to be the case with family which is pretty much equal.
Media is an influence that seems to be driving youth away more than welcoming it to the church. Every Sunday on the BBC is a religious programme called ‘Songs of Praise’ this programme is a filming of a traditional church service in a different church each week and always has lots of singing hymns and readings out of the bible. Although this is good for Christians that are unable to leave the house maybe due to illness or disability it is pushing youth away from the Christian church. In all of my interviews I did not find one person who said they either regulary watch or even enjoy things they see on occasion. In one interview with a 16 year old female when I asked for her views on songs of praise she asked me what it was and when I explained she just laughed. This is a perception on youth cannot watch things like thatand she thought it was stupid of me to ask that question in the first place.
Another form of media is Celebrities that practice the Christian faith. These are people like Cliff Richard, Britney Spears, Beverly Knight and Charlotte church which where all mentioned in my studies.
Religious education in school was also an influenced and for some it was a good one as they learnt about the religion and became interested in it like a boy I interviewed out of year 8.
In my participate observation I found out a lot about the youth sub cultures. This is how I got my descriptions at the start. By dressing like the group I was studying and going to hang around with the ones that didn’t know me I got brought inside the sub culture. I went to the park to find trendies and we went to hang in village precincts and small parks. I got into this group to introduction from a friend. I got into trendies by going to the local shopping Centre with a few trendy friends and dressing trendy and met a few more trendies there, which I could then study. For Greebo I went to the local rock club ‘The rock café’. Here I dressed in big baggy jeans and a bright pink top so as not to look out of place and behave as they would and Goths I also found up ‘The rock café’ so I studied them at the same time. This was a useful method of gathering data as joining in with the youth sub culture gave me a deeper understanding of them and why they do things.
Most people that I asked believed that R.E being taught in school was a waste. Especially in upper school where the only religion studied is Christianity. In lower people didn’t tend to kind it as they get a chance to learn about other religions such as Hinduism and the Jewish religion. It was the trendy youths that found R.E to be a useful subject and 4/5 enjoy the subject where in the other youth sub cultures only one or two out of five said they enjoyed it. Some people have stronger beliefs then others about R.E being taught in school such as Male, aged 16, Greebo describes R.E as ‘brainwashing’.
Parents work can outline the social class of an individual youth. For example the Year 11 interviews. Trendy = Middle class, Townie = lower class Greebo = Middle class, Goth = Middle class
Trendy = Christian
Townie = Not Christian
Greebo = No longer Christian
Goth = Christian beliefs
There is a link here of your families social class to the beliefs you have been brought up with. This ties into Marxist and his theory about how a belief can be brought in by life chances.
