Natalia LENSKAYA 

Russia

 

Art education as a means of primary socialization: culture from the point of view of French and Russian teenagers.

 

How could one definite culture in the beginning of the XXI century? Opinions differ. Abraham Moles spoke about “mosaic” – or fragmentary – individual cultures. Yves Michaud proposes a concept of “multiple” culture where everyone appease his cultural hunger with “dishes” of his own choice. It seems that teenagers, who just begin to form their taste, must be in a sort of embarrassment when they have to deal with this complicated cultural “landscape”. That was the starting point of this research which aspires to show the modern adolescent at the intersection of “entertaining” or mass-culture, youth culture and – as a third component of this context – “high” culture which we can observe in groups of teens involved in artistic education. Another aspect to investigate is the specific of cultural orientation that teenagers develop on the basis of different educational traditions: those of West and of East for instance; in our case the French tradition of artistic education and the post-Soviet one. Analysing opinions given by teenagers themselves, by their parents and educators, we shall proceed to a comparative description of primary socialization in a multi-layer cultural context.