Students Are "Voting With Their Feet"

Teenage troubles: Youth and deviance in Canada
From Chapter 4: Schools, Delinquency, and Youth Culture:
Questions of Conformity, Deviance and Resistance, Julian Tanner, 1996

Excerpts:

Social Bonds: Travis Hirschi (control theory): "individuals are either encouraged to deviate or deterred from doing so on the basis of the strengths of various affective and emotional bonds that they have to society. He identifies four elements as making up the social bond:

attachment: emotional contacts that we have developed with parents and friends, whose opinions and evaluations of ourselves we value.
committment: investments - in time, money, and effort - that we have made with regard to conformist behaviour. Our investment in conformity is potentially jeopardized by excursions into deviant activity.
involvement: participation in conventional pursuits: in school, for instance, it includes joining sports teams and the debating society rather than smoking behind the bicycle sheds; or attending the math class rather than visiting the shopping mall.
belief: the endorsement of pro-social values supported by parents, teachers, and friends.

The stronger the bond that a person has to society, the less likely he or she is to become involved in deviant activities."

Musical/Media Preferences: Roe (exploring media usage): "the real conflict between school and the mass media is not that between school and television, but that between school and hard rock, school and punk or, we hypothesize, between school and any socially disapproved media form (such as viewing violent video films)" (1983)... "unequivocably" concludes that school achievement determines musical preferences, and not the other way around... Punk may therefore be a form of rebel rock that is principally attractive to bored and alienated high school students, but it is by no means the exclusive voice of working-class underachievers."

School Resistance: "There is recognition that the ways in which schools organize teaching and learning, and the nature of the interaction between teachers and students, contributes to delinquent outcomes. While schools are obviously not institutions completely separated and cut off from the wider society, they can and do have an influence upon delinquency that is not simply reducible to the background characteristics of their students, or to the environmental qualities of the catchment areas in which they are located. That schools have an effect upon patterns of adolescent deviance independent of other factors has been demonstrated by several studies."

Arthur Stinchcombe: those adolescents under most pressure to do well in school will be the most rebellious...

Kenneth Polk: culture of failure: low grades, the labelling and stigmatization of inadequate students by teachers, the imposition of what is perceived as unfair and arbitrary punishment, and so on.

Hagan, Toronto high school 1991: survey questions suggested that adolescents who were least controlled by parents and had the weakest attachment to traditional school values, were also most involved in two distinctive subcultures: a subculture of delinquency and what Hagan refers to as a party subculture. The delinquent subculture included theft, vandalism, fighting, and running from the police, while the party subculture embraced partying, rock concerts, dances, dating, driving around in cars, and drinking... He found that for those individuals with middle-class social origins, both male and female, there was no significant long-term effect of identification with either subcultural adaptation... However, for those whose social roots lay in the working class, involvement in delinquency, but not partying, had a levelling effect upon occupational attainment in early adult life.

Political Challenge to School Authority: Paul Willis, Learning to Labour 1977: The antischool peer culture created by these boys is more than a repository for delinquent acts, it is the spark for an essentially political challenge to school authority.

Drop-Outs: Nelson (regarding school disaffiliation in Thunder Bay, Ontario, 1987: It is these youth (the vandals, the school skippers, and the early school leavers) who, in questioning the authority of the school to command their time and attention, are acting both responsibly and rationally. For it is they who are squarely facing both the reality of school boredom and the clear evidence that there is not much compelling opportunity beyond school. By skipping and leaving school at an early age they are "voting with their feet" to give up the frivolous fantasy of school life.

Harvey Krahn and Tim Hartnagel (study of drop-outs in Edmonton early 1980's): factors associated with schooling were the most important reasons for quitting. These included objections to particular teachers, teachers in general, specific subjects or the curriculum as a whole; a smaller number reported poor grades or learning difficulties; and some had even been expelled (sometimes for hitting teachers)... Edmonton drop-outs do not condemn book learning, reject white-collar jobs, or anticipate and celebrate the masculinist culture of manual labour. While they had not liked school very much, their complaints and criticisms did not culminate in an inversion of school culture... Drop-outs however do not always feel that high school helps them in this regard, and are therefore less tolerant of that institution than other students. But their intolerance of schooling should not be confused with a complete rejection of it.

Resistance: Davies: 1- province wide investigation of the drop-out problem in Ontario 1994: He operationalizes resistance as overt behavioural and attitudinal opposition to schooling. In behavioural terms, it refers to patterms of dropping out that are accompanied by rebellious acts, such as (self-reported) disruptive classroom behaviour, low levels of effort with regard to academic work, and having drop-out friends. Attitudinally, resistance is indicated by a perception that scchooling is irrelevant to future life goals, and a less attractive alternative to employment. Finally, resistance involves some critique of education and schooling, as inferred by dissatisfaction with streaming, teaching, the curriculum, teacher biases, and so forth.

2- resistence survey measured by the use of alcohol and other drugs, involvement in a network of delinquent friends, disrespectful attitudes to the police and the principles of law and order, antischool attitudes, dislike of teachers, and so on...

He concludes by suggesting that the high school system in Canada appears to be a relatively autonomous source of deviance and resistance for both high school graduates and high school drop-outs.

As Davies is well aware, his findings are essentially the same as those reported on previously by Stinchcombe, Hartnagel, and Tanner... regardless of whether it is called rebellion or resistance, antischool behaviour has its origins in factors and experiences located inside the schoolyard gates rather than in the wider world beyond them.

Buy This Book At Amazon.com

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws