ABSTRACT
This chapter examines data on whether people of different age groups say they have followed major political events. Political knowledge, they argue: fosters civic virtues, such as political tolerance; helps citizens to identify what policies would truly benefit them and to incorporate this information into their voting behavior; and promotes active participation in politics. Important political events often fall on deaf ears among many young people today. Young adults today can hardly challenge the establishment if they do not have a basic grasp of what is going on in the political world. If young people are tuned out from current events, then one of the results should be that they won't know as much about politics as their elders. The advent of academic survey research in the 1940s, probably the most dramatic sociological development has been the tremendous increase in public levels of formal education.
