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School Context and Peer Influences on Educational Plans of Adolescents

The prolongation of adolescence in the United States suggests that the educational plans of adolescents may be more affected by peers than was formerly the case. Years ago, Karl Marx claimed that workers would become more class-conscious when they moved from rural areas and villages to the working-class districts of large cities. He foresaw a greater degree of mutual influence when workers were thus removed from the influence of persons of a different class. In a similar vein, Kerr and Siegel (1954) found evidence that the more militant labor unions are composed of members of occupations whose place of work and residence removed them from frequent contact with the middle-class world. An analogous situation has resulted in part from the long-term trend in high school attendance. In the United States in 1870, about two percent of persons seventeen years of age graduated from high school; today the figure is more than seventy percent. Today's adolescents are more likely to be influenced by each other than would be the case if they were to begin working soon after completing elementary school. While high school and college students are subject to adult influence, they are subject to that influence in the company of a large number of other adolescents. Indeed, the emergence of an "adolescent subculture" has been noted by a number of social observers, although there is some dispute as to the extent to which this is simply age-graded or adult-expected behavior or is behavior that conflicts with the expectations of adults. In sum, it seems highly probable that to a greater extent than formerly, adolescents in the United States are influenced by other adolescents. Whether this influence extends to a given kind of behavior does not automatically follow. However, some recent studies of the relationship between the social class composition of high schools and the educational plans of students suggest a peer influence explanation