Children from a given family background, when put in schools of different social compositions, will achieve at quite different levels.
The present structure of rewards in high schools produces a response on the part of an adolescent social system which effectively impedes the process of education.
The higher the social class of other students the higher any given student's achievement.
It is clear from all these data that the interests of teenagers are not focused around studies, and that scholastic achievement is at most of minor importance in giving status or prestige to an adolescent in the eyes of other adolescents.
If we refuse to accept as inevitable the irresponsibility and educational unconcern of the adolescent culture, then this poses a serious challenge.
It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.
