Youth Culture Essay

669 Words3 Pages
Youth cultures are often distinguished by elements such as fashion, beliefs, slang, dialects or behaviours. Socioeconomic class, gender, intelligence, conformity, age and ethnicity can be important in relation to youth culture. With its script for certain kinds of behaviour, clothing tastes, music, and styles, it allows pupils to establish symbolic boundaries among ethnic and racial groups and to gain peer status. Most pupils think that it is important to make their peers think that they are strong, tough, or cool; and to do so they must establish their identity, try to find their place, dressing or acting in a certain way. Pupils defined their social groups by the interests they pursued at lunch and breaks, hanging out around the School e.g. the tuck shop, stairwells, bike sheds, buildings’ entrances etc. They formed bonds based on interests rather than race or ethnicity alone. However, some pupils from ethnic minority background e.g. Polish, do tend to gather together. Pupils usually make friends within the same year group; they very seldom mix with other year groups. Some black pupils are involve in the gangs in Derby, they hang out with others black youngster in their own community. Sometimes they do cause troubles, therefore the School works with Youth Team Worker, Youth Offending Team, and the Police to make sure pupils do not get into trouble. There are also some pupils do not belong to any group, they have friends in different groups and they mix around. Some pupils are involved in local youth sport teams, Duke of Edinburgh, and some voluntary works within their local communities. Sometimes, they would go to the cinemas or have sleepovers. They like to talk about gadgets such as iPhones, iPads, X-Box, and PlayStation. They also like social networking, most of them are on Facebook; however, they are cautious about what they put on it.
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