TEXT E 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 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 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 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 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. Which of the following statements best describes the organization of the author’s discussion of the rode of political knowledge in the formation of political ideology during adolescence
A．He acknowledges its importance, but then modifies his initial assertion of that importance. B．He consistently resists the idea that it is important, using a series of examples to support his stand. C．He wavers in evaluating it and finally uses analogies to explain why he is indecisive. D．He begins by questioning conventional ideas about its importance, but finally concedes that they are correct.