ABSTRACT

A PARTICIPANT OBSERVER INVESTIGATION OF THE STUDENTS
AND THEIR.SOCIAL WORLD IN AN URBAN, INTEGRATED
AND INNOVATIVE HIGH SCHOOL

BY

Stuart B. Palonsky

This dissertation details a field research study which was
conducted in a public high school during the period of November 1973
to March 1974. The name of the school and the names of the students
used in the reporting are fictitious in order that their anonymity be
preserved. The school was selected for the study because it was urban,
racially segregated and educationally innovative and special attention
was given to these factors.

Participant observer field work is more of a qualitative than
a quantitative research design. Instead of studying some social
phenomenon as an outsider replete with statistical models and testing
instruments, the participant observer attempts to approach knowledge
by becoming an "insider" and by being a part of the social reality of
the individuals and groups he is studying. He attempts to discover
and explain group perspectives and individual relationships in complex
social settings by assuming the role of a group member and taking
part in the daily lives of his subjects.

Guided by a series of research questions, I "attended" high

school in order to investigate the informal social world of students

Stuart B. Palonsky

and the relationship of that world to the formal structure of the

\0

‘xj school and the process of education. The exploratory questions

which guided this research were:

1.

What is the nature of student groups? What unites the
members of a group? What is the extent of social
interaction between various groups?

What is it like to attend high school from the perspective
of the students? What are students' concerns? What are
their fears, hopes, and aspirations? What do they want out
of school?

What is the effect of educational innovation on the students'
social reality in the school? How do students and student
groups perceive these innovations?

What is it like to attend an integrated school? What is
the extent of black-white interaction in the school?

Why do students use drugs? What are the social effects of

drug use on the student, the school and the process of

education?

Two black and two white groups were studied and an analysis of

the data generated the following responses to the exploratory questions:

1.

The students were divided into distinct and voluntary peer

group associations. These groups were isolated from one another and

they all viewed the school differently. They responded to the school

on the basis of the perceptions of the individual members and the

perspective created by their social interaction. The various groups

Stuart B. Palonsky

experienced little interaction with one another in their informal
‘world and the formal organization of the school did not encourage the
groups to interact.

2. The high school was a different place and it served a
different function for each of the groups studied. Although they all
maintained different social realities, three common concerns of students
emerged throughout the study. The students wanted the school to provide
them with an opportunity to: (1) engage in a serious exploration of
self, (2) develop their academic skills or at least require the
students to perform "academic work," and (3) help them with a career
choice.

3. Educational innovations which emphasized student-initiated
learning often exposed the students to conflicting role expectations
of the school and their peer group. The peer group was found to
exert a greater influence on student behavior than the expectations
of the school. The students were also found to have some difficulty
making the transition from the teacher-initiated instruction of the
junior high schools they had attended to the student-initiated
learning of the high school. Because the studennsdid not plan the
innovations or have any part in the decision making process of the
school, they viewed innovations as instructional changes which merely
required their compliance.

4. Although blacks and whites attended the same school and
went to many of the same classes, they really ex1sted in two separate
'worlds. There was a white world and a black world and there was

very little formal or informal contact between them.

Stuart B. Palonsky

5. Students claimed that they smoke marijuana--the principal
drug used--for two reasons: because they were bored and because it
was fun. There appears to be a high correlation between smoking
marijuana and boredom. In addition to the cut rate, student
absenteeism. failure rate, and drop out rate, excessive drug use
indicated that something was not going on in the school. Excessive
drug use may be considered an epiphenomenon; it may be symptomatic
of a school which is not addressing the problems, concerns and
aspirations of many of its students.

In general, it was found that although conflict was evident
in the lives of all the students, the school followed a policy of
conflict avoidance. The school encouraged the students to remain in
their groups and avoid social situations or dialogue which could
potentially be abrasive. There were no mechanisms for the resolution

of conflict and no school—provided focus for student activity

A PARTICIPANT OBSERVER INVESTIGATION OF THE STUDENTS
AND THEIR SOCIAL WORLD IN AN URBAN, INTEGRATED

AND INNOVATIVE HIGH SCHOOL

by

5“ K '
Stuart B1 Palonsky

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

College of Education

1974

C)Copyright by
Stuart Barry Palonsky
1974

DEDICATION

This volume is dedicated to the students of South High

School who made the research a warm, personal experience and to

Whitney who constantly encouraged me to do it.

ii

AC KNOWLEDGMENTS

It is easy to cite the aid received from books but it is
very difficult to acknowledge the support and criticism received
from individuals. May I simply say thank you to a committee of
patient advisers and constructive critics: Drs. Stan Wronski,
Sam Corl. George Ferree and Justin Kestenbaum.

The friendship and editing of Paula Knudson, Howard Seiler.
and Paula Stein are also warmly appreciated. Thanks also to Don
Freeman, Fred Ignatovich and to my friend and typist, Judy James.

A special word of appreciation goes to Phil Cusick who

encouraged and supported my efforts throughout the study.

iii

Chapter

1.

2.

3.

4.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION .

NEED

PURPOSE . . . . . .

EXPLORATORY QUESTIONS .

DEFINITION OF TERMS .

OVERVIEW . . . . . .

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

ADOLESCENTS IN SCHOOL .

PARTICIPANT OBSERVER STUDIES

SUMMARY . . . . . . .

METHODOLOGY . . . . . . .

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

PARTICIPANT OBSERVER IN

METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

ENTERING THE BUILDING .

LIMITATIONS .

SUMMARY . . . . .

PRESENTATION OF THE DATA

INTRODUCTION. . . . .
THE CITY

THE SCHOOL

iv

Page

12
12
24
32
34
34
39
42
46
51

52

53
S3
54

56

Chapter
ADMINISTRATORS
STAFF .
THE STUDENT POPULATION
"The Grand and Glorious Hempie
Javiar

Tonv

Jeff, Kim and other Hempies .

Ray . . . . . . . .
Hempies in School . . . . .
BLACK STUDENTS
Black Jocks (BJ) . . . . .
Bob . . . . . . . . . . . .
Dwight . . . . . . . . . .
William . . . . . . . . .
BJ in School . . . . . . . . .
Black Academics (BA) . . . . .
College Bound Boys (CBB) . . .
Isolates . . . . . . . . . . .
SCHEDULE CHANGE . . . . . .

5. ANALYSIS OF DATA . . . . . . . . .

6. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS . .
CONCLUSIONS . . . . . . .
IMPLICATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

APPENDICES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Underground".

Page

59

65

67

68

69

72

75

77

79

92

94

94

97

98

102

106

115

121

126

143

176

176

180

183

189

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Need

Until very recently, it was assumed that the purpose of school
was to prepare students for later life. The student was regarded as a
formless creature who was to be shaped, poked, molded and socialized for
productive life in the society. He was to be graded, sorted and shined
up in much the same way that we commercially prepare apples for the
market. What was long ignored, in this future-oriented training,
was that students were already living in.a social world--the social
world of school. They live in a unique sociocultural environment,
populated almost entirely by adolescents, with its own mores, sanctions,
reference groups, needs, concerns and aspirations.

Today, curriculum planners and educators generally recognize
the existence of this social world; but, while they call for programs
of instruction that are directly related to the "concerns of students,"
they in no way resolve the problem of how to identify these student
concerns. It is necessary to do more than engage in speculation;
research must be designed to explore the needs and concerns of high
school students. This research should seek a first-hand look at the
student world from the students' perspective. While carefully designed
surveys of students' interests have long been a part of the educational

literature, comparatively few studies have been conducted which explore

the school from the perspective of the students and view the educational

process as the student views it.

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to employ the research method-
ology of participant observation in order to gain a first-hand look at
the student world and to explain that particular sociocultural phenom-
enon as it relates to the process of formal education. The research
is an attempt to understand the social reality of students by directly
participating in the social world of the public high school and assuming
the role of a participant within that sociocultural setting.

This is not designed to be a case study of individuals, but
rather the unit of analysis is the group and the social reality
generated by the interaction of the group. Reality, as used here,
refers to the social reality which is constructed by the interaction
of individuals. It is defined by Berger and Luckman, as that "quality
appertaining to phenomena that we recognize as being independent of
our own volition (we cannot 'wish them‘way')."1

For the purpose of this study, the reality of high school
students will be defined as those events and factors which are present
in the everyday life of school. According to Mead and Dewey, this

reality results from the interaction of the individuals within their

 

1Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckman, The Social Construction
of Reality, A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York:
Doubleday and.Company, 1966), p. 1.

 

 

social groups.2 It is the dynamic social process by which individuals
interpret and define the actions of others. This concept of reality is
referred to as the "interactionist approach" in sociology and social
psychology and it is characterized by three central propositions.
l. The individual's personality--the distinctive patterns
of behavior that characterize him as an individual-—
results from and is reinforced by his day-to-day
association with those about him.
2. The individual's behavior or conduct follows a
direction that is the result of reciprocal give-
and-take of interdependent men who are adjusting
to one another.
3. The culture of the groups is a reflection of those
agreements about preper conduct that emerge and
are reinforced by man's continual communication
as people collectively come to terms with life's
conditions.3
This view considers man's social interaction.with his fellow
man to be the creating and sustaining force of any group or societal
concept of what is real. This concept of reality requires the valida-
tion of other peOple and their continued interaction to define and
interpret their world. By implication, if an individual wants to
explore the social reality of individuals or groups, he should subject
himself to the dynamics of the social environment and actually become
a part of the group as it engages in the processes of creating and
sustaining that reality. The participant observer methodology allows the

researcher to assume the role of a participant in the social setting

and engage in the interactions of individuals and groups. He is

 

2George H. Mead, Mindl Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of
a Social Behaviorist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934). John
Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston,
1922).

3John W. Kinch, Social Psychology (New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Company, 1973), p. 11.

 

able to take part in the group interactions which create the social

reality for that group.

Exploratory Questions

Researchers who use the participant observer methodology
maintain that the formulation of hypotheses is an ongoing process.
Only tentative hypotheses can be formulated before being exposed to
the group dynamics and the data provided by the group interaction. Once
in the field, the researcher develops working hypotheses which he
continually tests and refines, accepts or rejects, depending on subse-
quent field data or outside information such as library research.
According to Geer,

working hypotheses are a product of the field data

itself and whatever ideas the field worker can summon.

The initial stimulus may come from repetition or

anomolies in the data which catch the observer's

attention so that he searches his mind for explanations.

Or he may start from the opposite end--what is in his

head--and search the data for evidence or stereotypes

from the general culture or notions derived from discussions

with colleagues, previous research, and reading.4

The participant observer methodology is less structured than
ordinary quantified research. Its flexibility increases the likelihood
that the researcher will find facts he had not previously considered

and develop hypotheses he had not formulated when he began his study.5

 

4Blanche Geer, "First Days in the Field," in Sociologists at
Work, edited by Philip E. Hammond (New York: Doubleday and Company,
1964), p. 384.

 

5Howard S. Becker and Blanche Geer, "Participant Observation:
The Analysis of Qualitative Field Data," in Human Organization Research,
Field Relations and Techniques, edited by Richard N. Adams and Jack J.
Preiss, (Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1960), p. 268.

Rather than entering the school with hypotheses to test, this research
design allowed the data to present hypotheses for examination, but

the research was not totally unstructured. The literature indicates
that student social life is centered around age-grade peer groups and
that these groups occupy most of the student's energies and time.'
Previous studies also indicate the centrality of the status afforded
by group membership. It was also known prior to the field research,
that the school used for the study was educationally innovative and
racially integrated. This study, therefore, was guided by exploratory
questions which focused the research toward an exploration of student
groups and the group perspective in an integrated and innovative high
school.

The research was conducted with the following exploratory
questions in mind.

1. What is the nature of student groups? What unites the
members of a group? What is the extent of social interaction between
various groups?

2. What is it like to attend high school from the perspective
of the student?

3. What are students' concerns? What are their fears, hopes,
a8pirations? What do they want out of school?

4. What is the effect of educational innovation on the students'
social reality in the school? How do students and student groups
perceive these innovations?

5. What is it like to attend an integrated school? What is the
extent of blackdwhite interaction in the school?

Soon after the research project began, it become evident from

the field data that drugs and drug use were significant factors in the

students' social world. The exploratory questions were expanded
to include:
6. Why do students use drugs?
7. What are the social effects of drugs on the students, the

school and the process of education?

Definition of Terms

 

The terms used in this chapter, and elsewhere in this study,
are subject to a variety of definitions. For the purpose of this

reporting, the following definitions will be maintained:

Adolescence--As Friedenberg points out, this is a value laden

 

term for the period of an individual's life from age fourteen to age

twenty-one. He wrote: "Adolescence is conceived as a distinct stage of

life in societies so complicated and differentiated that each individual's

social role and function takes years to define and learn. When years

of special preparation for adult life are required, those years become

a distinguishable period with its own rules, customs and relationships."6
Elsewhere, Friedenberg writes that the central developmental

task of adolescence is "self-definition." "Adolescence is the period

during which a young person learns who he is, and what he really feels.

It is the time during which he differentiates himself from his culture,

though on the culture's terms. It is the age at which, by becoming a

person in his own right, he is capable of deeply felt relationships to

other individuals perceived clearly as such."7

 

6Edgar Z. Friedenberg, The Vanishing Adolescent (12th edition;
New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 21-22.

7Ibid., p. 29.

Differentiated Staffing--an educational innovation which is

 

designed to provide more effective utilization of school personnel.
As used in this reporting, it refers to the employment of non-teaching
paraprofessionals aides) who supervise resource centers, libraries,

and who also assist teachers with their classroom teaching assignments.

Educational Innovations—-planned changes in content and/or

 

process of education conducted within the structural framework of the
school. It is designed to provide new ways to meet the goals of the
educational system and the society. Innovation differs from school
reform in that the latter usually implies changes in the society as

well as the school.

Flexible Modular Scheduling--an educational innovation which

 

provides a system of scheduling instructional classes. It departs

from the usual division of the school day into courses of equal
segments of time. Classes are scheduled in modules (mods) of twenty
minutes each and the school day is nineteen modules long. .Students

are expected to attend class only during those mods when they have a
class scheduled. The remainder of the day is called "unscheduled

time" during which the student can work on independent studies, receive

remedial help or leave the school to engage in on-the-job work experience.

Group--According to George Homans, a "'group' is defined as a

number of persons, or members, each of whom, while the group is meeting,

interacts with every other, or is able to do so, or can at least take

personal cognizance of every other."8

Group Perspective—-as defined by Becker, it refers to "modes of

 

thought and action developed by a group in a particular situation. They
are the customary ways members of the group think about situations and

act in them."9

Learning Resource Centers--an integral part of flexible modular

 

scheduling, these refer to areas within the school where students can
go during their "unscheduled time" to pursue special interests or

complete specific class assignments.

Participant Observation--a scientific field-research technique

 

which affords the researcher opportunities to explore social situations

from the perspective of the peeple in that situation.

Reference Groups--the group whose norms and values an individual

 

may use to evaluate or judge himself. It is possible to have more than
one reference group. In the case of a student in high school, his

friends constitute a peer group which may serve as one reference group

10

 

and his family may constitute another reference group. Various

 

8International Encyclopedia of the Social Studies, edited by
David L. Sills, Vol. 6, p. 259. Copyright 1968 by Crowell Collier
and Macmillan, Incorporated.

 

9Howard Becker, g£_ 21,, Boys in White (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 36.

10Wilbur B. Brookover and Edsel L. Erickson, Society, School
and Learning (East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University
Press, 1969), pp. 65-66.

 

 

reference groups expect the individual to assume differing patterns
of exhibited behavior. When two or more reference groups place similar
role expectations on the individual, he is said to experience 5219
congruence. When each of the various reference groups expects the
individual to exhibit different role characteristics, he is said to

experience role conflict.

 

Role--a social position which is characterized by a set of
personal qualities, activities, and expectations. The set is norma-
tively evaluated to some degree by both those who occupy the role and

those in other social positions.

Social Reality-~the ordered view of one's world that is created

 

and sustained by the interaction of individuals and groups.

Subculture--according to Brookover, all members of a society

 

share a common culture but these members are also part of sub-societies
‘with subcultural patterns that differ from the culture of the society
and other subcultures. These subcultures may vary in respect to

language, values, norms, aspirations and/or patterns of behavior.11

Symbolic Interaction--the dynamic social process of individuals

 

and/or groups by which they interpret and define the actions of others.

Overview
This study details a field research project that was conducted

in a public high school. The name of the school and the names of its

 

11Brookover and Erickson, Society, School and Learning, p. 40.

 

10

students used in this reporting are fictitious in order that their
anonymity be preserved. The methodology employed is participant
observation. Unlike standard quantitative studies, participant
observation is a qualitative methodology which is largely exploratory

in nature and it is often reported in the first person singular. Guided
by a series of research questions and working hypotheses, the researcher
is able to investigate public education from.the perspective of the
student.

During the period from November 1973 to March 1974, I was a
"student" at South High School. With the knowledge and permission of
the administrators, teachers, and students, I attended classes, ate
lunch in the cafeteria and associated with students regularly. I also
attended dances, ball games and an occasional party. Insofar as it
was possible, I entered into the everyday routine of attending high
school and I became a familiar and accepted student of the school.

Although I am.reporting this in the first person, as individual
research, I have had the benefit of sharing data and perceptions with
John Butler. Mr. Butler, a fellow graduate student and former school
administrator, began his field study at South High School on the day
my field research was concluded. Our collaboration has added to the
longitudinal dimension of the study as well as giving us some confidence
when we ask ourselves if we really saw what we think we saw. We
believe if two researchers, working independently with the same data,
arrive at similar conclusions, a certain degree of validity can be

claimed.

11

This study focuses on the student as the client of public
education. It attempts to explain the student perspective and the
influence that perspective has on the student, the school, the teachers
and the educational enterprise.

Chapter Two contains a review of the literature on adolescents
in school, participant observer studies, and those participant observer
studies that deal directly with education.

In Chapter Three, there is an amplification of the participant
observer methodology and the social theories which have guided the
research and reporting. This chapter also contains a statement of
limitation that applies to this study.

A description of the school, the community and the students
is found in Chapter Four. This chapter also contains descriptions
of the activities of various student groups in their day-to-day lives
as public school students. During the period of field research,
the school abandoned the flexible modular system and adopted a more
traditional scheduling model based on five classes a day, five days
a week. This study will focus on the effect this change had on student
perceptions and interactions.

Chapter Five contains an analysis of the field data and responses
to the questions posed in Chapter One. The conclusions and implications

of the study are discussed in Chapter Six.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

The literature reviewed in this chapter has been divided into
two sections: the literature of adolescents in school, and a summary

of participant observer studies in both school and non-school settings.

Adolescents in School

 

The literature selected for review includes studies by
psychologists and educators but the emphasis has been placed on socio-
logical investigations. The sociologist, unlike the individualisti-
cally oriented psychologist, considers man's relations to society
within the context of his human group. My study is not a case study
of individuals but an exploration of group interaction and the social
perspective generated by that interaction. Sociological explanations
also help to explain how social and cultural forces influence the
behavior of the individual and the group.

Sociological investigations of adolescence are often traced
to Margaret Mead (1928).1 Her study directs attention to the cultural

forces which define status within society instead of viewing only

 

1Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (New York: Morrow,

 

1928).

12

l3

physiological factors as the determinants of adolescence. Not long
after the appearance of Mead's book, Willard Waller introduced the
concept of a "youth culture" in the Sociology of Teaching(l93l)2.
He identified a subculture based on mutually acknowledged group norms
and values which set adolescents apart from adult society.

Waller portrayed the gap between the adolescent culture and
adult culture in schools as a polarization into "warring camps."
He claimed that,

the teacher represents the adult group, ever the

enemy of the spontaneous life of groups of children.
The teacher represents the formal curriculum, and his
interest is in imposing that curriculum upon the
children in forms of tasks; pupils are much more
interested in life in their own world than the
desiccated bits of adult life which teachers have to
offer. The teacher represents the established social
order in the school, and his interest is in maintaining
that order, whereas pupils have only a negative
interest in that feudel superstructure. Teacher

and pupil confront each other with attitudes from
which the underlying hostility can never be altogether
removed.

Waller's conception of a youth culture was reinforced by
Talcott Parsons (1942)4. Parsons characterized youth as the creators
of humanistic social patterns which emphasize fair play, athletic

prowess, social graces, irresponsibility and rebelliousness toward

 

2Willard Waller, The Sociology of Teaching (Russel and Russel,
(1931) 1961).

 

31bid., pp. 185-186.
aTalcott Parsons, ”The Social Class as a Social System: Some
of its Implications in American Society," in Education, Economy and
Society, A Reader in the Sociology of Education, edited by A. H. Halsey,
Jean Floud, C. Arnold Anderson (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, Inc.,
1961), pp. 434-54.

14

adults. He also considered it to be one of the "hallmarks of the
American education systemV'because, he believed, student subcultures.
were far less prevalent in most European education systems than in
the United States.

The notion of an adolescent subculture, although not universally
accepted, has been distinguished by a great many researchers including
the very influential James Coleman (1961)5. Coleman portrays adolescent
subcultures as collections of groups which are in Opposition to adult
authority.

He recognized that teacher and parent approval or disapproval
no longer constituted effective "levers of control" regulating adolescent
behavior. Students are now more concerned with the approval or
disapproval of the peer group within their own subcultural society. It
was perhaps remotely possible to break down that society and reinstitute
adult controls but Coleman did not think this would be desirable.

"The major thesis of this book," he wrote, "is that it is possible to
take another tack, to learn how to control the adolescent community,
23 a community, and use it to further the ends of education."6

Coleman linked the emergence of an adolescent subculture to
the emergence of formalized educational institutions. Adolescents were

set apart from the rest of the society and as an unintended consequence

 

5James S. Coleman, The Adolescent Society, The Social Life of
the Teenager and its Impact on Education (New York: The Free Press
of Glencoe, Incorporated, 1961).

6Ibid., p. 12.

 

 

15

of this separation, society was presented with new socialization
problems. "The society," he wrote, "was confronted no longer with a

set of individuals to be trained toward adulthood, but with distinct

 

social systems which offer a united front to the overtures made by

"7

 

adult society.
The most enduring finding of Coleman's study is his recognition
of the position of athletics in adolescent groups. Athletics were
found to enjoy a centrality and a position of status in adolescent
life which was unchallenged by any school ascribed status and certainly
not by a status attained through academic achievement.
Coleman re-evaluated some of his ideas in a later work and be
emphasized the freedom that should be afforded students rather than
the attempts to control them.8 However,umch of the literature
on adolescent groups and subcultures still regard them as a threat to
teacher autonomy and school authority.9
Waller, Parsons and Coleman regard the youth culture as
assaults on adult society and a repudiation of adult values but this is
not an unchallenged position. Eisenstadt, for example, views the

youth cultures found in industrial societies as a transitional life

stage. He believes that it is a halfway house between childhood and

 

7Ibid., p. 4.

8James S. Coleman, Adolescents and the Schools (New York:
Basic Books Incorporated, 1965).

9see for example, Mary A. Bany and Lois V. Johnson, Classroom
Group Behavior, Group Dynamics in Education (New York: The Mac Millan
Company, 1964), and Albert K. Cohen, "Social Control amdSubcultural
Change," Youth and Society, Vol. 3, (March, 1972), 259-276,

 

 

 

16

adulthood; it serves as a bridge between the time a youth is appreciated
for whg he is and the time he will be appreciated for gha£_he is.10
The Adolescent Society has become a standard reference in the
field but it has its share of critics. Canacian is representative of
a good number of researchers who have attacked Coleman's methodology.
She claims that his "survey methods [did] not produce a systematic
and adequate description of adolescent values."11 Epperson, among
others, believes Coleman.was wrong to conclude that formalized insti-
tutional schools set adolescents apart from the rest of society.12
He agrees with Coleman that today's adolescent is less involved with
family life than adolescents in the past, but Epperson believes the
adolescent is still too closely attached to his family to be considered
a member of a distinct subcultural society. The adolescent still
retains many ties, loyalties and aspirations that link him to his
family. According to Epperson, we still do not have a perception of
the adolescent that accounts for his multiple loyalties and the relation
of these loyalties to specific situations. He believes that we need

to develop a conceptual scheme that accounts for adolescent behavior

without explaining it away as a subcultural phenomenon.

 

108. N. Eisenstadt, From Generation to Generation (Glencoe,
Illinois: The Free Press, 1956).

 

11Francesca‘M. Canacian, "New Methods for Describing What
Peeple Thinkfl' Sociological Inquiry, 41 (Winter, 1971) 85293.

 

12David C. Epperson, "A Re-Assessment of Indices of Parental
Influences in the Adolescent Societyfl' American Sociological Review,
Vol. 29 (February, 1964), 93-96.

17

The data presented in a study by Elkin and Westley indicate

that the sociological characterization of adolescents living in a

separate subcultural society "has a someWhat mythical character."13

Their analysis of student values and attitudes indicate that there
was more "continuity than discontinuity in socialization." They
found few sharp conflicts between parents and their children which
would represent cultural differences. They claim,

the empirical data do not deny that there are
psychological tensions and distinctive interests
among adolescents; however the data do suggest--
at least among those middle class groups studied--
that the current model of adolescent culture
represents an erroneous conception.

Jahoda and Warren argue that the existence of an adolescent
subculture is a "pseudo problem" rather than a real issue. They
contend that much of the problem is semantic and the existence of

an adolescent subculture depends largeLy<m1the researcher's needs and

subsequent definition of the term "subculture."15

Now what does one mean by a subculture? Whichever

of the many definitions of culture serves as a model,

the fact that youth is assigned a special status in
society is not good enough reason to speak of a

separate culture. All known societies include some status
differentiations among their constituent groups, not

only according to age but also sex, occupation and

other factors.

 

13Frederick Elkin and William.West1ey, "The Myth of Adolescent
Culture." American Sociological Review, Vol. 20 (December, 1955), 680-684.

141818., p. 683.

15Marie Jahoda and Neil Warren, "Myths of Youth," Sociology of
Education, Vol. 38 (Winter, 1965), 138-149.

16Ibid., p. 143.

18

If these writers haven't sufficiently muddied the waters of
adolescent life, the views of Elisabeth B. Hurlock should be considered.
She claims that today's adolescents are a "new species." She believes
that they are different than preceding generations of adolescents
being characterized by: peer conformity, preoccupations with status
symbols, irresponsibility, anti-work attitudes, anti-intellectualism,
criticism for older generations, a disregard for rules and law and
an unrealistic level of aspiration.17

Schwartz and Merton (1967) approach the study of adolescents
from still another direction. They argue that the existence of a
subculture does not rest upon its power to repudiate basic adult
values. They claim that much of the significance of adolescent life'
is obscured from adults by linguistic masks; adults simply do not
know what adolescents are talking about because of the ways in which
adolescents use language. They further argue that adolescents are
set off from the rest of the adult community because the expectations
which guide their behavior are not always community expectations.18

Hollingshead (1949) found that the behavior and expectations

of adolescents were not disshmilar to members of the adult community.

 

17Elisabeth B. Hurlock, "American.Adolescents Today--A New
Species," in Human Dynamics in Psychology and Education, edited by
Don E. Hamachek (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1968), pp. 357-70.

18Gary Schwartz and Don Merton, "The Language of Adolescence:
An Anthropological Approach to the Youth Culture," American Journal
of Anthropology, Vol. 72 (March, 1967), 453-468.

 

 

19

He hypothesized that "the social behavior of adolescents appears to

be related functionally to the positions their families occupy in

the social structure of the community."19
Hollingshead's research involved extensive field work and he

was able to investigate the associational patterns of 259 groups

in both school and non-school settings. He concluded that these

associations are the most obvious factors of adolescent behavior

and these voluntary and informal groups consumed most of their

interest and time. He referred to these groups as "cliques" and

claimed that, "a clique comes into existence when two or more persons

are related to one another in an intimate fellowship that involves

'going places and doing things' together, a mutual exchange of ideas,

and the acceptance of each personality by the others."20
The cliques he studied were small, involving no more than

three to five members, and they were limited by neighborhood associations

and subject to dissolution by dating patterns but while they existed,

the groups colored much of adolescent life. He noted that, "once

an adolescent is identified as a member of a particular clique, the

reputation of the cliques tends to be attached to him by adolescents

outside the clique, by teachers, and by other adults . . . ."21

 

19August B. Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth, The Impact of Social

Class on Adolescents (New York: John Wiley and Sons Incorporated,
1949).

 

 

20Ibid., p. 205.

211b1d., p. 217.

20

Many of the studies of the adolescent in school explore the
problem of pupil control and discipline largely in terms of school
related problems. Stinchcombe addresses the problem of discipline
not as a school problem but as a problem created by the larger society
and inherited by the schools as the major socializing institution of
that society. He began his study by asking why the student-teacher
relation in high school is one of the very few "authority relations
in modern society whose maintenance is constantly problematic."22
Basing much of his work in sociology, Stinchcombe weaves his argument
out of the social theories of Robert K. Merton (anomie) and Max Weber
(doctrine of legitimacy and expressive alienation.) His study was
largely qualitative; instead of doing extensive surveys of a cross
section of schools in the style of Coleman, he focused on only one
high school in California. '

Stinchcombe concluded that the problem of school discipline
is based on the inability of the school "to offer any desirable status
beyond high school to some of its students." He referred specifically
to the lesser talented student who is forced to accept the school's
definition of success and failure.

The school puts all those who can do algebra into a

class in algebra, but those who can do automobile

mechanics are put into that class only if they

cannot do algebra. Thus the school defines talent

in algebra as success, talent at automobile mechanics
as failure.23

 

22Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Rebellion in High School (Chicago:
Quadrangle Books, 1964), p. l.

 

23Ibid., p. 8. A similar view is expressed by Paul Goodman,
Compulsory His-Education (New York: Horizon Press, 1964), and Growing
Up Absurd (New York: Random House, 1960).

21

He did not indict the schools. He felt the inability of the
schools to define success and failure in other termS'waernza.failing

of the school but of the society.

For the reason that the school cannot promise much is
that the society cannot promise much. Tinkering a bit
with the curriculum 'to make it more meapingful' for
duller children will have little effect.

Stinchcombe is also critical of the "Puritanism" the society
forces on the school. These attitudes do not permit discussion of
the "adult pleasures" of sex, alcohol and tobacco and makes it

difficult to develop a rational introduction or discussion of important

issues.

Although most adults treat these things as the
good life, they do not allow the official
representatives of the culture to say that these
are the good things. It is the official hypocrisy
that is behind the famous definition of a teacher
as a man hired to tell lies to little boys . . .-
Somehow children must avoid becoming like they are
told to become in school, in order to become like
adults. Rebellion . . . is a nearly inevitable
result of the two-faced character of the ideals

of adulthood.25

Claude Buxton's recently published book reports the findings
of research that surveyed 6,500 high school students. His study
indicates that students on the whole, are indifferent to school although

most of the students are reluctant to admit that they dislike it.

 

24Ibid., p. 179. Also see, Edgar Z. Friedenberg, Coming of
Age in America (New York: Random House, 1963) and The Vanishing
Adolescent (Boston: Beacon Press, 1959). Friedenberg claims that
education cannot be improved except in a society that respects the
young; and American society respects no social groups which are
powerless.

 

 

25Ibid., p. 182.

22

Students also claimed that they like their teachers but that they
feel guilt and have feelings of anxiety about their work in school
and the relation of schooling to their future. The responses
students gave to questionnaires also implied students considered
interaction among their peers to be a distraction from studies.
Buxton, like many other critics of the public schools, does
not see curriculum innovation or the proliferation of federal funds
as an answer to the schools' problems. He is not prescriptive but
notes that a "massive change in attitudes" of all persons concerned
‘with the schools is necessary for a remediation of school problems.26
The literature includes several works which provide an

effective introduction to the study of adolescents in school. The

three most helpful volumes are Harry Silverstein's book, The Sociology

 

of Youth;27 Richard F. Purnell, Adolescents and the American High

School;28 and the Review of Educational Research, 1966.29

 

 

26Claude Buxton, Adolescent in School (New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 1973).

27Harry Silverstein, editor, The Sociology of Youth, Evolution
and Revolution (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1973).

 

 

28Richard F. Purnell, editor, Adolescents and the American High
School (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971).

29Educational Programs: Adolescence, Review of Educational
Research, 1966, Vol. 36.

23

"The Sociology of Adolescence: A Review of Major Studies"30 by
Howard W. Polsky and the "Concept of an Adolescent Subculture"31
by Kandel, Lesser and Roberts are selections found in the Purnel]
volume and are of particular interest. "The Adolescent and His

"32

Society by Smith and Kleine is from the Review of Educational

 

Research and it also provided direction in a complex and extensive
field.

The studies of adolescents in school have been conducted
with somewhat of an eclectic spirit but five points of general
agreement can be distilled from the literature.

1. There is general agreement that adolescents in school
form voluntary associations with their fellow students which are
referred to as cliques or gruops.

2. These groups form the dominant pattern of student
associations and they occupy most of the students' time both in
school and out of school.

3. Depending on the researchers' definitions, these groups may
or may not constitute a subculture which rejects adult standards and
authority. They do, however, exert a powerful influence on students and

serve as one reference group for adolescent behavior.

 

 

30Howard W. Polsky, "The Sociology of Adolescence," in Adolescents

 

and the American High School, edited by Richard F. Purnell.

 

31D. B. Kandel, G. S. Lesser, G. C. Roberts, "The Concept of
Adolescent Subculture," in Adolescents and the American High School,
edited by Richard F. Purnell.

 

32Louis M. Smith and Paul F. Kleine, "The Adolescent and
His Society," in Review of Educational Research, 1966.

24

4. A predominant characteristic of the research on adolescents
has been its desire to find ways to control the students and the student
subculture.

5. There is little support for the notion that "tinkering
with the curriculum” will bring about desired change within the
school. School problems are the result of the problems of the larger
society and they cannot be remedied only by altering the in-school

environment.

Participant Observer Studies

 

My study was designed to explore the student perspective
and to provide a first-hand look at student life. It was therefore
decided to employ the field research methodology of participant
observation. The methodology allows the researcher to get closer
to the realities of social interaction than traditional quantified
research.

The participant observer methodology was developed by
nineteenth century anthropologists who wanted to leave their arm-
chair speculations and do research in the field. In this vein,
Bronislaw Malinowski has been referred to as the first anthropologist
to "pitch his tent" in a native village observing and recording
what went on in the manner of a participant in the social setting and

a scientific observer.33 Twentieth century sociologists have adapted

 

33Rosalie Wax, Doipg Fieldwork, Warnings and Advice (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 35.

25

and revised the methodology and have pitched their tents in Italian
slums,34 "Negro Street Corner Societies,"35 and among mental
patients.36

Streetcorner Society, originally published in 1943, reports
Whyte's study of an Italian neighborhood in Boston. The book focuses
on the people in general, and on their political and social
structures in particular. Whyte posed several questions which guided
his research and reporting.

What makes a man a big shot and by what means is he

able to dominate the little guys? To answer that

question, let us watch Tony Cataldo. He is a

prominent racketeer, and he is concerned, among other

things, with controlling the corner boys. How does

he go about it? And let us watch George Ravello,

Cornerville's state senator, as he organizes his

political campaign. He needs the support of the

corner boys. How does he get it? We know in general

that the heads of political and racket organizations

in Cornerville cooperate with one another. But what

is the nature of that c00peration37upon what is it
based, and how is it established?

To answer these questions, Whyte used the participant observer
methodology to investigate the social interactions of individuals and
he then developed a mosaic of the social organizations of the community.
He lived in the community and took part in the social activities of the

individuals and groups that he studied but he was careful to divorce

 

34William Foote Whyte, Streetcorner Society (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, (1943) 1970), and Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers,
Groups and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: The Free
Press of Glencoe, 1962).

35Elliot Liewhow, Tally's Corner (Boston: Little, Brown and
Company, 1967).

36Erving Goffman, Asylums (Garden City, New York: Doubleday
and Company, 1961).

37Whyte, Streetcorner Society, pp. xix-xx.

 

26

any moral judgments from his reporting of their behavior. The
participant observer, he noted, is interested in observing people
acting out their lives, not in determining the morality of that
existence.

Herbert Gans also studied an Italian section of Boston but
the research questions that he posed were different than the questions
asked by Whyte. According to Gans,

My main research interests were two: to study a slum

and to study the way of life of a low income population.

I wanted to know what a slum was like and how it felt

to live in one.

Gans research spanned the period from October 1957 to May 1958
during which time he lived in the neighborhood he was studying. He
concluded that the residents were not frustrated seekers of middle
class status but rather they constituted a subculture with aspirations
which bore little resemblance to middle class values or'goals. It
'was a slum only by definition of the outsiders (e.g. social workers,
educators, public health officials) and its existence as a subculture
was only understood by the insiders. The participant observer method,
according to Gans, enabled him to become an insider and allowed him to
get close to the "realities" of the peOple and the community by reducing
the distance between the researcher and his subject of study.

Tally's Corner was originally written as a dissertation for a

doctorate in anthropology. The book details a seven month field research

study of "Negro streetcorner men," and their world of "daily face-to-face

 

38Gans, The Urban Villagers, pp. ix-x.

27

relationships with wives, children, friends, lovers and neighbors."
The study is an attempt to record and interpret the life of ordinary
”lower-class" peOple "on their own grounds and on their own terms."
Liewbow describes the exploratory nature of some participant observer
studies. He explains that the data were collected with the aim of
gaining a clear, first-hand picture of lower-class Negro men rather
than of testing specific hypotheses.

The focus was on the man as father, husband or other

family member, but there were, by design, no firm

presumptions of what was or was not relevant. In

this sense, there was no detailed research design;

the intention was frankly exploratory.39

Liewbow considered human cultural behavior as a predictable
response to societal conditions and he believed that an examination of
those conditions was necessary to understand the behavior. Referring
to this aspect of his study, he wrote,

An attempt was made to see the man as he sees himself,

to compare what he says with what he does, and to

explain his behavior as a direct response to the

conditions of lower-class Negro life rather than a

mute compliance with historical or cultural

imperatives.

Although a white researcher investigating a black subculture,
Liewbow mentions no special problems in being accepted. He notes
that the "degree to which one becomes a participant is as much a matter
of perceiving oneself as a participant as it is being accepted as a

participant by others."41

 

39Liewbow, Tally's Corner, p. 10.

 

40161d., p. 208.

41Ibid., p. 256.

28

Asylums is a study of the "social situation of mental patients
and other inmates!’ The thesis of the book is that the most signifi-
cant factor in the codifying of behavior for inmates of a mental
institution is the nature of that institution, not the illness of the
patient. Goffman tested this hypothesis by assuming a participant
observer role in order to learn about the social world of the
hospital inmate. His study differs from the previously cited investi-
gations because he had a specific hypothesis to test rather than
exploratory questions to answer. Goffman, unlike Whyte and Liewbow,
did not assume the role of his subject--the hospital inmate. He took
on a series of "safer roles"; he worked, for example, as an assistant
to the athletic director.

Goffman was still able to explain the reality of inmate life
from the perspective of the inmate. Referring to his study and the
underlying rationale of the participant observer methodology, Goffman
writes,

It was then and still is my belief that any group of

persons--prisoners, primatives, pilots, or patients--

develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful,

reasonable and normal once you get close to it, and

that a good way to learn about any of these worlds is

to submit oneself in the company of the members to the

daily round of petty contingencies to which they are

subjected.

There have been very few studies that have employed the

participant observer format to investigate public education. Two of

the best and most recent studies are: Small Town Teacher written by

 

 

42Goffman, Asylums, pp. ix-x.

29

Gertrude McPherson and Inside High School44 by Philip Cusick. These
studies explore the school from the perspective of the actors in the
social setting; McPherson conducted an investigation of the teachers
in an elementary school and Cusick investigated the social world of
students in a high school.

McPherson, a Ph. D. sociologist, conducted a concealed
participant observer study in a New England school where she was
teaching. The research was designed to investigate the role of the
teacher, their in-school social interactions and their problems of
status and role identification. Describing the purpose of her study,
McPherson wrote,

I am looking at the teacher from her own point of view.

I am concerned with the teacher's expectations for

herself, for pupils, for parents, for the administration,

and with her responses to the ways in Zgich she defines

the expectations of others toward her.

Elsewhere she explained how the nature of the research
question guided her selection of methodological approach and required
that a participant observer study be conducted so that she could be
an insider. "This kind of research," she wrote, "requires an inside
observer, one who experiences the same demands, expectations and
pressures as the respondents and can make sense out of behavior and

comment from.within."l'6

 

44Philip A. Cusick, Inside High School (New York: Holt,
Rinehart, and Winston, 1973).

 

45Gertrude McPherson, Small Town Teacher (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 7.

 

46Ibid., p. 12.

30

McPherson's perspective as an "insider" led her to several
conclusions concerning the teachers and their roles and expectations.
She found only limited degree of job satisfaction in the school; morale
was low and cynicism.was prevalent. The enthusiasm of new teachers
was greeted with a teasing indifference or Open sarcasm. New teachers
were told that their "innovative ideas” would not work and that they
would be better off sticking to the "old methods." Teachers were not
expected to boast about their success in the classroom because this
implied that other teachers were not successful. Teachers were not
expected to complain of classroom problems because this was considered
a sign of vulnerability and insecurity. The teachers created and
maintained a group reality which encouraged cynicism toward their
profession and insured that cynicism would be shared by the new
teachers who entered the building.

The methodology for my study draws heavily from Inside High
School. Cusick spentsix months in a rural high school during which
time he attended classes and took part in the informal out of class
activities of various students and student groups. His book describes
student behavior and the ways in which that behavior effects the
students, the teachers, the administrators and the school organization.
The purpose of his study was to gain a better understanding of the
student perspective and to understand why students behave in the
ways they do.

He decided on the participant observer methodology because

it afforded him the ability to investigate student behavior and the

31

impact of the school on the student from the perspective of the

student. He wrote,

The information gathering procedure was based on the

assumption that any group of individuals will develop

a reasonable way of behaving in their environment and if

one wishes to understand that behavior, he can do so by

joining, submitting himself to the routine, rules and
regulations that structure their world, and recording
everything that goes on.

Cusick claims that the sociocultural characteristics of the
school's organizational structure provide the students with a great
deal of time in which they "literally had nothing to do but stay in
some state of spectatorship--waiting, watching or listening." The
school's organization was characterized by teacher and subject
specialization, downward communication flow, batch processing of
students and emphasis on maintenance procedures. Since students
were constantly in each others company, they used their time to
engage in small group activities and these group activities became an
important social referent.

Cusick claims that the school did not begin to touch the
students needs or tap into their energies or creativity but it did
prepare individuals to "live out their lives in the American
mainstream."

Those students who adjusted so well and with so much

sophistication to [the high school] will have little

difficulty adjusting equally well and with an equal

degree of compliance to their jobs with . . . any

large, impersonal, bureaucratic, future-reward-oriented

organization thafi make up the bulk of American economic
and social life. 8

 

47Cusick, Inside High School, p. v.

 

48Ibid., p. 220.

32

The school may not have direct impact on the lives of
students but, through its role as a socializing agency, it indirectly
effects their lives by inducting them into the society and teaching
and enforcing society's reward structure.

The school Cusick studied was a rural-suburban school which
had a traditional curriculum and neither drug use nor racial distur-
bance was a significant factor in his reporting. The school I
investigated is an urban school which offers an innovative curriculum
and a scheduling system that allows for considerable student freedom.
The school I investigated also has a history of racial problems and
drug use. My investigation considers the urban high school students

given those conditions: innovation, integration, and drugs.

Summary

Participant observer studies have been conducted in a wide
variety of social setting but several aspects of the methodology and
its underlying rationale permeates the literature. A review of the
literature of participant observer studies in both school and non-
school settings indicates agreement on the following points:

1. People develop reasonable ways of behaving in their
environment and this behavior is a direct response to both the
exigencies and mundane routines of day-to-day living.

2. The participant observer can examine and explain individual
and group behavior by subjecting himself to the same routines and
rituals experienced by those he is studying.

3. The methodology of participant observation allows the

researcher to become part of the social interactions of individuals

33

and groups by defining the researcher's role as closely resembling
the roles of the actors in the social environment.

4. Acceptance of the researcher by the groups and individuals
he studies depends more on the personal relationships which are
developed rather than upon any formal explanations given by the
researcher.

5. It is possible to carry out this type of research even
when the groups studied differ significantly from the researcher in
age, social class, race or cultural orientation.

6. The participant observer is able to become an actor in
the social environment and an insider who can develop a first-hand
perspective of group behavior and the social forces which help create

that behavior.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

Conceptual Framework

 

The participant observer (P.O.) methodology is more
qualitative than quantitative research.. Instead of studying some social
phenomenon as an outsider replete with statistical models and testing
instruments, the P.O. attempts to approach knowledge by becoming an
"insider" and by being a part of the social reality of the individuals
and groups he is studying. He attempts to discover and explain some
particular group perspective by assuming the role of a group member
and by taking part in the construction of that perspective.

The purpose of the P.O. study, then, is to develop under-
standings of group perspectives and individual relationships in
complex social settings. The P.0. methodology reduces the gap between
researcher and subject; the researcher's role is defined as less
unlike his subject than in ordinary quantified research. He is not
limited to looking only at the covariance of isolated factors. He
becomes part of the ongoing group dynamics and he studies the process
as well as the product of the group interaction. According to Bogd‘n,
this methodological approach directs itself at human settings and
the individuals in them "holistically." He claims that the subject

of the study, "be it an organization or individuals, is not reduced

34

35

to isolated variables or hypotheses, but rather an attempt is made
to look at it in context, from a comprehensive perspective."1

The initial task of the P.O. is to establish himself as an
"insider" so he may participate in the activity of his subjects and
understand the reality they create through their shared activities.
According to Cusick, the researcher assumes that his fellow
participants in the social setting actually form their own social
reality, and that in order to understand it, he should take part in
the creation.

The information gathering procedure [is] based on the

assumption that any group of individuals will develop

a reasonable way of behaving in their environment,

and if one wishes to understand that behavior, he can

do so by joining them, submitting himself to the

routine, rules, and regulations that structure their

world, and recording everything that goes on.

Implicit in the P.O. methodology is the concept that individuals
interact and create a social concensus which they define as reality--
something which they believe to actually exist. Man is considered to
be a social creature who, as he interacts with others, acquires beliefs
and patterns of behavior that allow him to derive a measure of
satisfaction from his environment. These beliefs and behaviors are

not static but are redefined in a continual process of interaction among

individuals in an ever-changing social environment.

 

1Robert Bogdan, Participant Observation in Organizational
Settings (Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1972), p. 1.

2Philip A. Cusick, Inside High School (New York: Holt, Rinehart
and Winston, Incorporated, 1973), p. v.

36

These redefinitions of reality take place within the context
of the organizational setting. The organization establishes guide-
lines for group interaction and the norms and behaviors developed by
the informal group reflect the formal structure of the organization
in'which they exist. According to Perrow, the explanation for
organizational behavior is not primarily in the formal structure of
the organization but lies in the "myriad of subterranean processes of
informal groups."3 A study of student groups and group interactions,
therefore, not only produces information about the informal network
of the student subculture, but also indicates how these groups influence
the formal structure of the school, the curriculum, and the staff.

By their actions and interactions, men create a subsociety
with its own goals, norms, and standards of behavior. In order to
understand the reality generated by the group, it is necessary to
understand the interactions of its members. This may be more complex
than it first appears. Some sociologists contend that human beings do
not directly respond to each other's actions. But first interpret the
actions and then respond on the basis of that interpretation.4 This
ongoing process of definition and interpretation is referred to as
"symbolic interaction."

‘ The term 'symbolic interaction' refers . . . to the
particular and distinctive character of interaction

 

3Charles Perrow, Complex Organizations (Glenview, Illinois:
Scott, Foresman and Company, 1972), p. 180.

 

4Herbert Blumer, "Sociological Implications of the Thought of
George Herbert Mead," American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LXXI (March,
1966), 537.

 

37

as it takes place between human beings. The

peculiarity consists in the fact that human beings

interpret or 'define' each other's actions. Their

response is not made directly to the actions of

one another, but instead is based on the meaning

which they attach to such actions. Thus human

interaction is mediated by the use of symbols,

by interpretation or by a§certaining the meaning

of one another's actions.

Symbolic interactionists consider the human group to be a
developing social element. As the members interpret and respond to
the actions of others, they establish patterns of joint actionsland
norms. They also allow for the transformation of the actions and
norms by their continued interaction. In order to understand this

dynamic group process, it must be perceived through the eyes of an

insider. According to Blumer,

The study of action would have to be made from the

position of the actor. Such action is forged by

the actor out of what he perceives, interprets and

judges; one would have to see the operaging

situation as the actor interprets them.

The participant observer methodology enables the researcher
to perceive the social situation as the actors perceive it but he is
not only a participant in the group; in his role as scientific

observer, he must also account for and explain the actions of his

fellow participants. According to Geer,

 

SHerbert Blumer, "Society as Symbolic Interaction," in Human
Behavior and Social Process, edited by Arnold Rose (Boston: Houghton-
Mifflin Company, 1962), p. 180.

6Blumer, "Sociological Implications of the Thought of George
Herbert Mead," p. 542.

38

A participant observer in the field is at once
reporter, interviewer, and scientist. On the

scene he gets the story of an event by questioning
participants about what is happening and why. He
fills out the story by asking people about their
relation to the event, their reactions, opinions, and
evaluation of its significance. As an interviewer,
he encourages an informant to tell his story, or
supply an expert account of an organization or group.
As a scientist he seeks answers to questions, seeking
hypotheses and collecting data with which to test
them.

Participant observation is a research procedure which (1)
describes the group process from the vantage point of a participant
who takes part in the group activities and the ongoing process of
constructing a social reality and, (2) explains that reality as a
scientific observer in the social situation.

There is an ontological dimension to social research. The
social science researcher attempts to gather organized knowledge
about the social reality of individuals and societies. Alfred
Schutz claims that this is the "primary goal" of the social sciences.
Explaining his concept of social reality, he wrote,

By the term 'social reality' I wish to be understood

the sum total of objects and occurrences within the

social cultural world as experienced by the common-

sense thinking of men living their daily lives among

their fellowmen, connected with them in manifold

relations of interaction. It is the world of cultural

objects and social institutions into which we are

born, 'within which we have to find our bearings,

and with which we have to come to terms. From the

outset, we, the actors in the social scene, experience
the world we live in as both of nature and of culture,

 

7Blanche Geer, ”First Days in the Field," Philip E. Hammond,
editor, Sociologists at Work (New York: Doubleday and Company,
1964). p. 383.

39

not as a private but as an intersubjective one,
that is, as potentially accessible to everyone;

. 8
and this involves intercommunication and language.

The participant observer engages in a form of social science
research which seeks to understand the social reality of the human world
of intersubjective meanings. Maurice Nathanson gives the following
example of what is meant by social reality in his examination of the
"handshake" as a symbolic act.

The handshake that consumates the business deal is in
purely physical terms no more than an exercise in the
mechanics of muscles, tendons, bone, cartilage, etc.
From the standpoint of the social order, and the
business world in particular, the handshake 13
significant: it means that something has been agreed
upon by the partners to the transaction and that the
agreement has been concluded, fixed or redeemed in some
form. . . . Throughout our life with others in a shared
‘world the what of social reality is the meaning grasped
by each of what is signified by external events.

 

. . In purely anatomical terms, the handshake of the
business deal may be indistinguishable from that of the
acknowledgment of an introduction, the ritual of
receiving a diploma or the rules of courtesy governing
‘wrestlers about to meet in a ring. Whag is meant by
each of these cases is quite different.

Participant Observer in the Field

 

In order to describe the group processes, the researcher must
become an actor in the social setting. He must experience the

same mundane pressures and the periodic exigencies as the individuals

 

8Severyn Bruhn, The Human Perspective in Sociolggy, The Method-
ology of Participant Observation (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 164. See also: Alfred Schutz, The Phenomeno-
logy of the Social World. Translated by George walsh and Frederick
Lehnhart (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1967).

9Maurice Nathanson, editor, Philosophy of the Social Sciences
(New York: Random House, 1963), pp. 8-9.

 

 

40

and groups he is studying. According to Whyte, Cusick and Burnett,10 the
explanation for the researchers presence depends more on the role he
assumes in the field than any formal explanation he gives for his
presence. The individuals and groups the researcher is studying will
develop an explanation for his presence and his actions as he is trying
to develop explanations for their actions. The researcher must assume
a role that will explain his presence in the field but this role must
also suit his personality well enough so that he can be comfortable.
According to Gold, there are four basic roles that the P. 0. may assume
while doing field research:

Complete Participation--The true identity of the complete

participant in field research is not known to those whom

he observes. [The complete participant engages in role
pretense.]

 

Observer as Participant-~[This role] is used in studies
involving one-visit interviews. It calls for relatively
more formal observation than either informal observation
or participant of any kind. It also entails less risk
of 'going native.'

 

Participant as Observer--Both field worker and informant
are aware that there is a field relationship. [The field
worker's presence is known but he attempts to be a 'normal'
and 'acceptable' member of the group and their activities.]

 

Complete Observer--The complete observer role entirely
removes the field worker from social interaction‘with
informants. Here a field worker attempts to observe people
in ways which make it unnecessary for them to take him

into account.

 

10WilliamFoote Whyte, Street Corner Society (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, (1943) 1970), p. 300. Cusick, Inside High School, p. 7.
Jacquetta Hill Burnett, "Ceremony, Rites and Economy in the Student
System in an.American High School," Human Organization, Vol. XXVIII
(Spring, 1969).

 

11Raymond Gold, "Roles in Field Observation," in Sociological
Methods,,A Sourcebook, edited by Norman K. Denzin (Chicago: Aldine
Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 373-378.

41

In a study of high school students, it was decided that a
modification of the "participant as observer" role would best serve my
research and personal needs. Identifying myself as a researcher,
granted me and my thirty-year-old body entree to essentially age-grade
peer groups as well as the ability to move from group to group--some-
thing the students themselves may not always do. It was also a role
in.which I could be comfortable. There were, of course, certain
limitations imposed on my participation: as an adult with a background
and a future in public education, it would certainly not have been
prudent to personally engage in the drug and sexual experience of my
subjects.

The P.O. methodology is in actuality a multi-methods research
design.12 Although most of the data was generated by the group inter-
action and recorded in the form of written notes at the end of each day
in the school, library research and formal interviews were also conducted.
Information for this study was collected from the following sources:

1. Library research. The literature on adolescents in school,

 

participant observation studies, and participant observation studies in
education were reviewed. This review was helpful in the formation of
exploratory questions and also served as an aid in the validation of
the research findings.

2. Formal interviews. Toward the end of the study, formal
taped interviews were conducted with the three building principals

and several other members of the administrative staff. These interviews

 

12Severyn Bruyn, The Human Perspective in Sociolggy, The
‘Methodolggy of Participant Observation (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Incorporated, 1966), p. 161.

 

42

provided information about official school policy and the perceptions
held by these individuals.

3. School supplied data. The school was very cooperative and
placed all of their quantitative data at my disposal. The statistics
quoted in this research (e.g. cut rate, failure rate, truancy rate, etc.)
were supplied by the school and were compiled by either the school or
the district's research office unless other citations are used.

4. Background information. Dr. Fred Ignatovich of the

 

Department of Higher Education and Administration of Michigan State
University, served as a consultant to the school during its first year
of operation. The collected results of his efforts provided important
background material for this study.

5. Participation. The main source of data was the notes that

 

were compiled after every day of classes, every ball game, and every
dance. In typewritten form, my notes totaled more than 300 pages.
Periodically, Mr. Butler and I would exchange notes and discuss the
discrepancies and similarities in our findings as well as the direction

our research should go.

Methodological Problems

 

Participant observation research is often criticized because
it lacks the standard tests of reliability and validity. It is also
impossible to reduce the data to neat statistical models with means,
modes, standard deviations and confidence intervals.

But although the researcher is dealing to a large extent‘with
subjective data, he is able to make an adequate analysis. Homan

describes "six indexes of subjective adequacy" which help to validate

the study .

43

These indexes are actually conditions to determine if

the researcher has adequately experienced the culture he is studying.

The conditions to be met are as follows:

1.

Time--The more time an individual spends with a group,
the more likely it is that he will obtain an accurate
interpretation of the social meaning its members live
by.

Place--The closer the observer works geographically
to the people he studies, the more accurate should be
his interpretations.

Social Circumstance-~The more varied the status oppor-
tunities within which the observer can relate to his
subjects, and the more varied the activities he witnesses,
the more likely the observer's interpretation will be true.

 

Langgage--The more familiar the observer is with the
language of his subjects, the more accurate should be
his interpretations.

Intimacy-~The greater the degree of intimacy the
observer achieves with his subjects, the more accurate
his interpretations.

Concensus--The more the observer confirms the expressive
meanings of the community, either directly or indirectly,
the more accurate will be his interpretations of them.

Homan's "indexes" guided the research during the four months of

the field study. I was involved in a wide range of student activities

both inside and outside of the classroom. I became familiar with the

language of adolescents and "confirmed" the "expressive meaning of the

community" through extensive personal contact with members of the

various groups under study as well as with Mr. Butler, my fellow

researcher.

As was stated in Chapter I, John Butler and I conducted this

field research project independently and at different times but we

 

13Bruyn, The Human Perspective in Sociology, pp. 181-183.

44

shared data and perceptions. This added to the longitudinal dimension
of the study--providing us with a combined eight months in the
school--as well as adding to the validity of the study.

One of the exploratory questions which guided this research
deals with the problem of bi-racial interaction among the students
in an integrated high school. We wanted to know when, how and
‘where blacks and whites interacted in the school and what the school
'was doing to encourage or discourage this interaction. The nature of
this question required that both white and black groups be
investigated. There are limits to the acceptance of a white
researcher's probes into black groups--especially when he is
attempting to move back and forth between white and black groups many
times in the course of a study. Mr. Butler is black, a former school
administrator and a former professional athlete. His acceptance by
the black groups was more complete than any acceptance that would
likely be afforded a white researcher. He investigated three groups
which I studied and one group of olacks which I did not study. I
investigated two additional white groups which Mr. Butler did not study
but the focus of our study was on the white and black groups which we
both examined. We were able to compare statements white and black
groups said to each of us individually. We were surprised by the
candor exhibited by most of the students. Honest questions asked
‘with sincere curiosity produced answers that rarely saw race as a
hindrance to dialogue.

Mr. Butler's perceptions did not always coincide with
‘my perceptions, but in the main, we were able to re-investigate the

disparities in our views and we have been able to arrive at a

45

concensus. We believe if two researchers, one white and one black,
arrive at similar conclusions, a degree of validity can be produced
that no single researcher could approximate.

In participant observation research, the researcher must
depend to a great extent on his perceptions. Hopefully, he does not
selectively expose himself to the data or selectively perceive it.

His observations and perceptions guide his inquiry and force him.to
seek explanations for the human activity he studies. He must explain
the interactions and perspectives of the group from the vantage

point of a group member. According to McPherson, the usefulness of
P.O. studies "must rest (as ultimately all sociological research

must) on the perceptiveness, sensitivity, and honesty of the
investigator. All of the tools for increasing accuracy, for extending
observation, for reducing investigator bias cannot make up for blunted
perception or ensure that the observations are accurate, reported
fairly, assessed and weighed scientifically."14

One device we employed to see if our perceptions were "blunted"
was to check with members of the faculty and the administration of
South High School at the conclusion of the field research. Shortly after
the completion of the field research, I presented them with several copies

of a short paper which described the research and discussed some of its

 

14Gertrude H. McPherson, Small Town Teacher (Cambridge,
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1972), p. 11.

 

46

conclusions.-15 "You were there" and "you really understood" were
comments which the faculty offered as indications that my perceptions
were accurate. In addition to these comments, the building principal
informed me that he plans to use P. O. investigations as an ongoing
part of his internal assessment of the school's impact on the
students. While this is not the main purpose of P. 0. studies, it

seems to indicate a level of satisfaction.with our findings.

Entering the Building

 

A common feature of P. 0. studies is a section which includes
the methods employed to gain access to the field situation. These
sections not only couch the methodology in terms of its investigative
limits but they are also helpful for future researchers who care to
replicate the study or use the methodology in other social settings.

Our research and our plan to gain access to the field were
guided by two ethical considerations: (1) all of the significant
actors subject to the investigation, must consent to participate in the
study, and (2) the information generated by those individuals would
be considered confidential and efforts would be made to preserve their

anonymity.16

 

15Stuart B. Palonsky, "Hempies and Squeaks, Truckers and
Cruisers--A Participant Observer Study in a City High School," paper
presented at The Faculty-Graduate Student Colloquium on Social
Science and Education at Michigan State University, East Lansing,
Michigan, April 19, 1974.

1‘.Executive Office of the President, Office of Science and
Technology, Privacy_and Behavioral Research (Washington, D. C.:
Government Printing Office, 1967), p. 18.

 

47

Confidentiality and consent were the mechanisms we decided
would best protect the rights of privacy of our subjects. There were
three categories of subjects which needed to grant consent: admin-
istrators, teachers and of course, the students.

In October 1973, we approached the building principal with
our proposal to do the research. We knew that he had recently received
his doctorate and would possibly be sympathetic to doctoral research.
We had also heard reports that he would be receptive to a study in the
high school. The school was in the process of being accredited and our
research could provide additional data for the evaluators. This was a
key aspect for his approval. South High School lies in close proximity
to a major university and the school is inundated with requests for
studies of various designs. The principal informed us that the policy
of the school is to refuse all research requests unless the research
itself could directly benefit the school. He told us that he had
refused a request from the Department of Sociology to study the use of
the lavatories in the school; he didn't believe this study would
benefit the school. We were able to convince him that a P.0. study
of South High School would provide him with data which they would not
be able to collect by other means.

Because P.0. studies are rarely used in educational settings,

we left a copy of Philip Cusick's book Inside High School with the

 

principal for his consideration of the methodology. This too proved
to be an important factor as it provided the principal with an example
of this type of published research and rendered the methodology more

understandable and less threatening.

48

A few weeks after our first meeting with the principal, he
contacted me and asked if Mr. Butler and I would meet with the heads
of the various academic departments in the school. He also suggested
that it would be advantageous if Dr. Cusick accompanied us so that he
might respond to questions concerning any methodological or procedural
problems that he had encountered while doing his study.

Dr. Cusick agreed to the request and his presence was a
definite advantage for us because of the assurance he could give that
P.0. field work creates no interruption of the process of education.
The school always reserves the right to terminate the research if the
researcher becomes a distraction to students and teachers or a threat
to the orderly process of education. Mr. Butler and I explained that
we had been public school teachers and knew the limits and the problems
of the teaching profession and we were not polemicists looking for
sensationalism or an expose.

Approximately one week after our second meeting, we were
notified that the administrators and the heads of departments had
approved our request and if the teachers accepted our proposal we could
begin. It is perhaps significant to note that no one in the school
suggested that we secure permission from the students. We addressed
the faculty at a Monday faculty meeting. We made three separate
presentations to each of the three curricular divisions of the staff:
Exact Sciences, Careers, Humanities. We explained the nature of
our study and assured them.that we were not there to evaluate the
faculty or their teaching methodology. This may have been important
as I later learned that more than 50 percent of the faculty is non-
tenured, and job security and classroom evaluation are often tender

issues to non-tenured staff.

49

Many of the faculty members welcomed our presence and asked
if we would participate in class discussions and some made specific
invitations to visit their classes. We assured them that we would
always secure their permission before entering a class and that we
would try to become normal and acceptable students in every class.
If this entailed taking tests of answering questions, we would be more
than willing to comply.

More than a month passed from the time of our first meeting
'with the principal until the day we began our research. Although Mr.
Butler would not begin his field work for several months, we decided
that it would be better if we met the students together. On the
first day of our regular attendance in the school, we were issued a
locker, identification cards, and we were introduced to the hall
guards. The principal toured the building with us looking for "some
good students" for us to meet. Although he greeted many students by
name, he didn't introduce us to anyone. He told us that it might be
better if we went out on our own to meet students rather than use him
as an "inside man."

Mr. Butler and I walked around the halls, sat in on a few
classes and talked to as many students as we could. We told them
that we wanted to see what the school looked like from the students'
perspective and if they would not mind, we would like to go to
classes with them at some later date. The students were very curious
about us. They wanted to know if we had graduated from high school and
after we explained that we had, they could not understand why we wanted
to come back. They told us, however, that if we wanted to, they would

be glad to take us around and explain the school to us.

50

Some of the divisions in the student body were apparent on
that first day. When we explained to one girl that we wanted to see
‘what was going on in the school, she told us that "there ain't shit
goin' on here"! but several males nearby enumerated a considerable list
Of "good teachers" and "good courses” that we might be interested in
attending.

There was some suspicion that we were narcs (narcotics agents).
As one of the black students told me: "You'll be o.k. as long as nobody
gets cracked (arrested) but if they do you better not even come back
. . ." The students' suspicions that there had been undercover narcotics
agents in the school was later confirmed by one of the staff. He told
me that "two years ago, when the school first Opened, we played cops
and robbers. We had plain clothesmen come in here and there were busts
and that sort of thing. The kids really enjoyed that. They made a
game out of it. The guys who got busted in the halls became instant
folk heroes and the other kids would go out and beat on the cop cars
and try to turn them over."

Mr. Butler and I became a new game for the students to explore.
They approached us on the first day and told us that they heard that
"there were two new people in the school--a black dude and a white
dude--and that they may be narcs." They spent the first days in
exploration and testing and during the first several weeks the students
arrived at explanations for our presence. It took perhaps three to
four weeks before we were accepted into the various group structures.
It took that long to determine that we were not narcs and our regular
attendance required the groups to come up with another explanation for

our being there.

51

During the times we were in the school, we did not take notes
or use recording devices except for several interviews toward the end
of the study. In the evenings, we recorded our notes and compiled them
in loose-leaf note books. My notes filled more than 300 typed pages
and on periodic intervals Mr. Butler and I exchanged notes and discussed

similarities and discrepancies in our findings.

Limitations

 

South High School has an enrollment of 1200 students. It was
impossible to interact with all or even most of them. In a sense, we.
were forced to sample from the population of students and student
groups, but we did not attempt to make any sort of random sample. It
became apparent that some groups were better served than others by the
design and implementation of the curriculum, the course offerings and
the methods and personalities of the teachers. We investigated some
groups who were college bound and successful in high school but most
of our time was spent with groups who cut classes, failed courses and
‘were largely disaffected from the school and the school's goals. We
explain this aspect of the study by indicating that those students who
have internalized the systems' goals and reward structure and those
students who are willing at least to play the game, are less of a
problem for educators than those who reject the goals of the school
in favor of the subcultural goals generated by their peer groups. The
emphasis of our study is on the disaffected and the dissatisfied
groups within the school. We wanted to discover their problems,
concerns and aspirations and determine if the causes of their

disaffection are school treatable.

52

During the time of the field research, the school changed its
systemof scheduling from flexible modular to a more traditional system
of five classes a day, five days a week. This proved to be a
pervasive change that affected nearly every student and every student
group. The descriptions of the students and the student groups found
in Chapter IV is set against the backdrop of the schedule change. The
'way in.which the various student groups reacted 1x) the above change
reflect their attitudes toward the school and is a product of the

changed group reality.

Summagy

Participant observation is a scientific research methodology
which is designed to (1) describe the perspective of various groups
from the vantage point of one who interacts with the members of the
group in a variety of social circumstances, and (2) explains that
perspective in terms of current social science knowledge. The
*methodology is qualitative by design and exploratory in nature. It is
not designed to test hypotheses but rather to generate theory and the
possibility of future research in areas that have not been extensively
explored and in areas that knowledge cannot be approximated except by

becoming an insider to the social situation.

CHAPTER IV
PRESENTATION OF THE DATA

Introduction

The unit of analysis in this study is the adolescent group
in the school setting. The study identifies several groups and
reports their interactions and daily routines in a public high
school which is innovative, integrated and where the students have
ready access to drugs.1 Because the interactions of any human group
do not take place in a vacuum, a description of the social and
physical environment of the school is included to provide an under-
standing of the setting in which high school groups create their
social reality.

This reporting begins with brief descriptions of the city, the
school, the administrators and the faculty and then procedes to describe
the various groups and their daily routines. The focal point of the
study is the students' reaction to a change in the schedule from a
'modified system of flexible modular scheduling to a system of five

classes a day, five days a week.

 

1The term "drug" is used rather loosely in this reporting to
refer to all of the illegal substances consumed in the school.
Marijuana was the most widespread of these substances in the school
followed closely by alcohol. There was no evidence of hard drugs such
as heroin or cocaine but there was considerable use of barbituates,

amphetamines and hallucinogens.

53

54

The City

South High School is located in a small industrial city in the
Midwest (SMSA 130,000). The city's employment picture is dominated
by the automobile industry and by state and government agencies. This
combination of a strong, unionized industry and Civil Service jobs
produces a median income of $11,0002 per family. It is not a part-
icularly exciting city; there are no threatrical companies or art museums
and many Of those who work in the city reside in the wealthy suburbs.
The residents of the city were characterized by one of South's staff
as being "hard working and church-going peOple who are Often forced
to hold down two or more jobs just to make ends meet."

The overwhelming majority of the residents of the city--close
to 90 percent--are native born Americans of native born parents. Only
about 10 percent Of the city's population is black or Chicano and
although the schools are officially classified as "integrated," few
of the neighborhoods in the city are. Small enclaves of blacks live
among the predominantly white populationnwith only the West side--which
bears the reputation for being the tough side of town-~housing a large
black population.

The city is dominated by small one-family homes with tiny

buffers of neatly kept lawn between them. The lawns are dotted with

 

2U. S. Bureau of the Census, Census of the Population and
Housing: 1970. . . (Washington, D. C.: United States Government
Printing Office, 1972).

 

All of the statistics quoted in this section are taken from
the 1970 Census. The citation above purposely excludes the inform-
ation.which would identify the city. ‘

55

snowmobiles, motor boats and other gadgets designed to free their
owners Of the factories and offices and provide weekends of pleasure.

South is located in the most recently developed section Of the
city. ‘Many of the homes, apartments and public housing projects are
less than five years old and the students often indicate that subdivi-
sions are located where they say, only a year or two ago were trees
and fields. The newness of the area tends to minimize the sense of
neighborhood which characterizes many of the Older sections of the
city. There are few long-standing neighborhood stores. The local
grocery is likely to be a small convenience franchise with the same
design, architecture and high prices as thousands of Others across the
country. One of these stores, located close to the school, has a sign
in the window which reads: "No More Than Three Students Permitted in
The Store at a Time-~This Means You!!"

The 1970 Census indicated the lack of holding power of the
city's schools. Of those city residents twenty-five years old and
older, less than 60 percent are high school graduates. The figure is
considerably lower for the black and "Spanish language" populations.
Less than 40 percent of the blacks over the age of twenty-five are
high school graduates and just slightly over 30 percent of the "Spanish
language" population graduate from high school. Of those members of
the general population who are between the ages of sixteen and twenty-
one, 16 percent are not high school graduates and are not enrolled in
school. Again, the figures are higher for the minorities. Almost
24 percent of the blacks and over 26 percent of the "Spanish language"
populations between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one do not have

high school diplomas and are not enrolled in school.

56

The School

 

South is the newest of the city's high schools and has been
open only three years. When changing housing patterns and population
shifts within the city mandated the construction of a new high school,
the central administration decided to develop a program of instruction
built around the innovations then recommended by professional
educators. They adopted a flexible modular schedule, team teaching,

a differentiated staffing model and three-hour vocational blocks.
From the standpoint of the student, the flexible modular schedule had
the most pervasive impact on their lives.

The school day--as in the city's three other high schools--
extends from 8 a.m. to 2:10 p.m. but the modular system made the school
day at South unique in the city. Instead of a series of classes
punctuated by bells and study halls, South used a system of nineteen,
twenty minute modules (mods) which interspersed periods of class time
with unstructured or free time. Typically the students at South had
no more than 8 to 10 mods of classes a day. The rest of the time
could be spent in the various resource centers or in the library
doing homework or getting help from their teachers. Leisure time was
considered a significant part of the students' day and they were
allowed to set aside up to two mods a day for relaxing and "socializing"
in the commons area (the cafeteria).

The mods were quite an innovation for an otherwise cautious
and conservative school district. All of South's students had
attended highly structured and control-oriented junior high schools
and the adjustment to the freedom afforded by the modular system did

not come easily to many of them.

57

During the 1971-1972 school year, the district retained a
consulting firm to help them with the problems of the new scheduling
system. These consultants advised the district that there were very
few models to follow and the school should just "jump in and see what
happens" with the flexible modular scheduling and the other innovations.
Originally, 80 percent of the students' day was unstructured and 20
percent was given to structured class time. The faculty and the
administration report that this was a disaster. They claim that the
students weren't "ready" to handle that much non-structure and South's
rates of class absenteeism and failure were the highest in the city.
Consulting teams from a nearby university later recommended that the
ratio should have been reversed; a school should begin with 80 percent
structured class time and 20 percent unstructured time and eventually
move toward a division Of the school day of 50 percent unstructured
time and 50 percent structured time.

Every year brought new changes to the scheduling system and
each change saw the imposition of more structure. The school was
caught in a classical education dilemma: they had granted freedom
and found poor pupil response and they had to go through the agonizing
procedures for "tightening up."

By the 1973-1974 school year, the school had instituted a
system of alternating days of traditional classes with days of modular
scheduling. During the days Of traditional class scheduling, South
looked like many other high schools; students went to five classes
during the day, they had fifty minutes to eat lunch and they had no
free time. During the alternate days, South was a school on a modular

schedule with mods of instruction and mods of unstructured time.

58

The system was changing every year. The school was becoming
unpredictable and many students claimed that they felt like "guinea
pigs." Faced with an inconsistent environment, the students came to
interpret the school's schedule for themselves. The sophomores in
particular had trouble with the system. They did not understand why
the juniors and the seniors could not explain the schedule to them.
The sophomores had not been involved with the schedule's evolution and
had a particularly difficult time dealing with the alternating days
of structure and non-structure. One of the black sophomore boys
explained it this way:

As I see it, the structured days are the school's time

and the modular days are my time. I'm hip to that. I

go to class on structured days but on my time I do as I

please. I never get high on the school's time but today's

my time and I'm ripped.

Even though South was experiencing a gradual tightening of the
schedule, it retained its humanistic orientation and did not adopt
rigid policies for student control. There were no hall passes, bells
or those little slips of paper bearing the teacher's signature which
sanction various excretory functions--students would go to the lavs on
their own. Students at South were afforded a certain degree of freedom.
There was even an area in the back of school where, during lunch and
before classes began, the students were allowed to smoke. Despite
the presence of two hall guards, South remains an open school; it is
easy to leave and easy to enter and the general atmosphere of informality
encourages interaction between students and teachers.

The building itself is different than the other schools in the

city. It is a modern structure built on a manageable scale; there

59

are none of the seemingly "mile-long" corridors which Often characterize
newer schools or the imposing stairways which herald the entrances to
many city schools. The lockers are painted blue, yellow, green or

red. Many of the classrooms are carpeted and several areas of the

school have modular classrooms with sliding partitions which invite
team teaching in a variety of classroom shapes and sizes.

The floor plans shown on pages 60 and 61 indicate that over two-
thirds of the instructional classrooms in the building have no windows.
These classes are generally comfortable and the students rarely
complained about the lack of windows.

In general, they are proud of the school and many of the
students consider it the ”best looking" in the city. They point with
considerable pride to the large student parking lot and an elaborate

and very attractive auditorium.

Administrators

 

There are three building administrators at South who
supervise the Operation of the school: Paul Gordon is the building
principal, Peter Wade is the Assistant Principal for Student Services,
and Mary Phillips is the Assistant Principal for Staff Services.
Please note that the Organizational Chart for South High School on
page 63 also indicates that there is an Assistant Principal for
Community Services. This principalship is held by Lyle Benson who
is the school's only black administrator and his primary responsi-
bility is the supervision of the night school.

Paul Gordon is the only administrator who was recruited from

outside the district. He holds a doctorate from a major university

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62

and the superintendent of the city's school system served on his
doctoral committee. Dr. Gordon was not the building principal when
the school opened in 1971; he was a replacement for the principal
who had designed and inaugurated most of the school's innovations.
Dr. Gordon was brought to the school at the beginning of its second
year Of operation when the original principal had to resign because
of illness. Dr. Gordon had no previous experience with modular
scheduling and his primary responsibility was not with scheduling
but with what he referred to as the "people problem." His role was
to encourage understanding between the races. On a wall in his
office there are three attractively framed prints of John F. Kennedy,
Cesar Chavez, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. Gordon enjoys a good reputation among the students. He
is young--in his mid-thirties--soft-spoken, intelligent and he knows
most of the students by name. Students feel free to walk into his
Office at any time and they refer to him as "Dr. G." or the "good
doctor." A Ph. D. degree is an unusual phenomenon in a working class
school. Many of the students come into contact with an individual
they call "doctor" only when they visit their family physician and a
non-medical doctorate often confuses them. I overheard two sophomore
girls discussing it one day in the lunch line.

"Is Dr. Gordon really a 'doctor'"?

"Yeah, I saw it in the school paper. There's his picture and
right underneath it it says, 'Dr. Paul Gordon.'"

"Well I don't care what it says," came the reply only half in

jest, "I wouldn't let him examine me--he's only a principal"!

63

 

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64

Ms. Phillips is in charge of scheduling and staff services.

She does not have as much contact with the students as the other
principals and many of the students had trouble telling me who she

was and what she did when I would ask them. Ms. Phillips holds a
masters degree in curriculum and she had taught English for ten years
in another school in district. She volunteered to work in South
because of its innovations but she had little voice in the planning

of the original system. In fact none of the three building admini-
strators had a significant role in determining the direction of South's
innovations until after the first year of the school's Operation.

Of the three building principals, Mr. Wade has the most
contact with students. Among his other duties, he is the administrator
who is primarily in charge of discipline. He is a former junior high
school science teacher who has a commanding presence, a loud voice
and as the students point out, a penchant for wearing his pants two
inches too short.

The nature of his job renders him the least admired figure in
the school. He is charged with the responsibility for enforcing the
schools' rules and he must confront students who cut classes, smoke
in the school and break other regulations. Mr. Wade doesn't believe
that South presents a severe discipline problem for the administrators.
He claims that apathy and drug use are the two most serious problems
he has to deal with and he views the drug problem in terms of its
effect on learning.

I've been around education lots of years and I'm going

to use a phrase that I use to say when I was a coach

and when I used to go to meetings and conventions.
. . . If I go to a convention and it costs me $200

65

and I've gone two days and most of the stuff is

dry but I find one thing--one thing that is new

education to me--it's worth it. I believe educa-

tion is the same for kids. I don't believe that

you go into a 50 minute class and you learn, learn,

learn, learn. I think that's ridiculous. If you

can learn one thing in there--just one--I think

[its a good day]. . . . Let me put it positively:

under the influence of drugs you have a chance of

missing that one thing that you might have learned

today.

Staff

South's staff numbers about 60 teachers--not including the
paraprofessionals who assist the teachers and supervise some of the
resource centers. Almost 50 percent of the teaching faculty is not
tenured.

The instructional staff is not divided into departments such
as science, physical education, social studies and English as is done
in the universities and emulated by many high schools. In an attempt
to avoid the fragmentation which often accompanies this type of
departmentalization and also in an attempt to encourage interdis-
ciplinary approaches to learning and teaching, the faculty is grouped
in three general areas: careers, exact sciences, and humanities. All
of the courses are offered under these three areas and it sometimes
creates strange groupings; physics and driver education, for example,
are both part of the exact sciences area while reading improvement and
philosOphy are both in the humanities area. Each of these instructional
areas is supervised by a "lead teacher." These individuals have their
own Offices and teach only one course a day. They are charged with the

responsibility of supervising all of the teachers in their area and

coordinating the curriculum. There is also one individual who is

66

unofficially designated the "lead teacher" of the guidance staff.

He is involved in the school's decision making but he does not enjoy
the same hierarchical status as the other lead teachers and his position
is not indicated on the school's organization chart. As he puts it,
"They call me the head of guidance, but all I am is the guy who opens
the mail."

Almost 50 percent of the staff was recruited on the basis of
their desire to work in a less structured, less control-oriented
setting. Many of the younger and creative teachers throughout the
district came to South specifically to try some innovations and
attempt to implement some ideas that the traditional schools in the
district could not accommodate. But not all of the staff volunteered
to come. With the opening of South, enrollment at the other three
high schools dropped and there had to be a proportional drop in the
faculty. The other 50 percent of South's staff was composed of
teachers who had been given intra-district transfers that they may
not have wanted. Generally, the staff was young, energetic and
creative but it must be pointed out that I did not interact with
staff. I am largely ignorant of the divisions of the staff and I
have no way of knowing which members enjoy positions of status and
influence and which do not, or which staff members are loners and
which are part of groups. My perceptions of the staff are largely
student perceptions tempered by my eight years of teaching experience.

The faculty had several lounges where the students were not
allowed to go and they ate in a dining room that the students did
not frequent. There was no designated faculty dining area but the

faculty generally ate in one room where the food was prepared and

67

served by members of the Quantity Cooking Class. The average cost of
a meal was slightly over a dollar which made it beyond the budget

of most students. The students with whom I associated never ate in
this dining room. When they did eat in school, they would use one

of the main cafeterias where the cost of a meal was fifty cents. The
food here was generally well served but typically starchy and bland
and it was served on paper plates and consumed with plastic utensils

that always seemed to snap in two in the middle of my mashed potatoes.

The Student P0pulation

 

South High School is an integrated school with a population
of 1200 students in three grades. The student body is 77 percent
white, 20 percent black, 2 percent Chicano and 1 percent officially
classified as "other."

Some of the students spend considerable time and money in
their selection of clothing and give a good deal of attention to their
appearance. Others dressed in a studied casualness with high styled
jeans and fifteen dollar "work shirts." The school dress code is
considered reasonable by the students. While the principals would
caution a male student, for example, if he wore bib overalls and no
shirt, conflict over dress or hair length was rare. The students
took these relaxed grooming codes for granted although the issues of
dress and hair length are far from settled in other areas of the
country and have only been relaxed in this city during the last five
years. A large number of students dress in what they refer to as
"basic blue"--blue denim jeans, a blue shirt and a blue denim jacket,

Watching the students flow toward the school at the beginning of the

68

day gives the impression that there is a good deal of uniformity in
the unconventional dress of adolescents.

South is a neighborhood school with only a small group of
students--mainly black-~bused in from the west side Of town. Most of
the students either drive or walk to school but car pools of parents
driving students to school are not uncommon. The student parking
lot was crowded by eight o'clock with cars that paid little attention ‘
to the white parking lines. Most of the vehicles appeared to be
family cars rather than student owned. Bumper stickers which urge
their readers to join the "United Auto Workers," "Visit Parrot Jungle"
or "Re-Elect the Mayor" indicate the concerns of an older generation
and are not generally found on a student owned "set of wheels."
Despite the presence of large refuse containers bearing signs which
read "Bash Trash," the parking lot is often littered with empty
bottles and beer cans. Periodic clean-ups by the school or some
club or ecology organization kept the lot reasonably clean. Most of
the students kept their cars locked but despite South's "reputation"
for vandalism my unlocked car remained untouched for four months.

In our study of student groups, I make no claim to have
identified "average" or "typical" students; if they exist at all, it
is solely by definition. The groups selected for study were chosen
because of their diversity and also because I felt comfortable with

them and they seemed comfortable with me.

"The Grand and Glorious Hempy Underground"

 

As I walked the halls during my first day at South, I was
greeted by a lanky, dark-complected student who introduced himself

as "J .H

69

"My real name is Javiar," he said, "but people can't pronounce
it so just call me "J"--everyone does."

I explained the nature Of my research and "J" volunteered to
serve as my "guide."

"I'll show you around this school, man. Nobody knows this
school better than I do. . . . This is a very complex place," he said.
"It's not as easy as those who smoke dope and those who don't. It's
a lot more complicated than that--the cliques and stuff."

"J" is one of the central members of a small group who call
themselves the Hempies--a name taken from the rope-like substance
they smoke to get "high." The Hempies are one of the many and diverse
groups in the school's drug subculture. They are soft-drug peOple
‘who limit their chemical adventures to marijuana, amphetamines,
hallucinogens and alcohol. With the exception of "J," all of the

Hempies are "Anglos"--white, North Americans.

Javiar. "J" was born in this city but his parents are of
Spanish descent. He told me that his father had divorced his mother
and was remarried to a "white woman." His stepmother refers to "J"
as a "spic" when she gets angry at him.

"I get on her ass and then [my father], gets on mine. My
father and I don't get along but you can't expect us to--he's a prick
and I'm a bullshitter."

"J" dresses very informally. He usually wears jeans and a

t-shirt and during the colder days of winter, he wore a floppy

70

engineer's hat and a black leather jacket that was several sizes too
large. He has a brother and a stepsister in the school and an older
brother who is serving time in a state prison down south. "J" is
intelligent and well-spoken and he is able to make it through school
'with a minimum of effort. The work and study involved in going through
school exact very little of his time and energies.

He is into the "people aspect" of school, as he puts it. Most
of his time in school is spent "rapping" with his friends, getting
high, and flirting with the "foxy ladies." He is gregarious and would
often walk up to girls in the hall and greet them with a hug and a
kiss. One day he wrote "Black is" on his right arm and "Beautiful"
on his left arm. He stopped a number of attractive black girls in
the hall to put his arms around them and give them a "Black is
Beautiful hug." Almost all of the girls he stopped giggled and screamed
but returned his hug.

The school doesn't interfere very much with "J's" social life.
Its academic demands require only minimal compliance and attention.

He rarely gets in trouble with the administration but rarely is he
involved with what's going on in his courses. Everyone knows who he
is. He is active in the school plays, he goes out for one sport a
year and he is a vocal supporter of the school's athletic teams but
he can be intimidating to teachers and students who don't know him.

Because "J" is often outspoken, some of his teachers accuse
him.of disrupting the class atmosphere and making the students afraid
to speak in class. One of the student teachers asked me to talk with
"J" to get him to be less insulting and aggressive in class. Although

I could agree that he should be confronted, it was not a function of

71

the group to promote an educational climate in the class. The group
function was to support the individual member, not the school. If
there was a conflict between individual behavior and school norms,
the school norm would not be supported.

In his group structure, surrounded by his fellow Hempies,
"J" is not insulting or aggressive. He listens to his friends'
problems and is very willing to help them in any way he can. He
talks freely about his own problems and concerns and he expresses
attitudes that he rarely exposes in class.

We walked to class one day when "J" was "off on a little
chemical excursion" and he talked about his home life. "J" lives in
one of the newer subdivisions near the school and his father works
in the local auto plant. Although his father makes a decent income,
"J" held down a series of part time jobs to support his car and to
assert his independence. As we walked, "J" cursed his father and
indicating the height of his father's head, took karate kicks at the
spot. He also wheeled around and from a slight crouch, slashed at
invisible attackers with the large can Opener he was carrying.

"J" hangs around with the white Hempies and some of the Chicanos
gave him.a hard time because of it. One attractive Chicano girl who
speaks unaccented English referred to him as a "tio Tomas" (Uncle
Tom) while he was standing with his friends. It hurt him. ”J" doesn't
speak fluent Spanish and he feels because he has a Spanish surname,
everyone expects him to.

"Hell . . . all those guys with Polish names, they

can't speak a word of Pollack but they want every
spic to talk Spanish.

72

"J" does speak enough Spanish to help him out when he needs
it. One day we sat in the cafeteria waiting for a student to present
a slide-tape show on Jimi Hendrix and his music. The presentation
was part of a class and although "J" and I were in there illegally,
the teacher did not notice and ran around kicking out other students
who did not belong there. One of these students was "J's" brother.
As the teacher asked him to leave, "J" yelled in Spanish, el otro
lado, chico" indicating that his brother should come in through "the
other side." His brother understood and walked around the cafeteria

and re-entered unnoticed.

2231. Tony is the most academically successful member of the
Hempie group. He is a bright, sensitive, nice looking sixteen-year-
Old, who maintains a B plus average. The Hempies do not take classes
together as a rule and it would be difficult to infer from Tony's
classroom behavior that he is a member of a subculture that regularly
engages in a felonious activity--smoking dOpe. One of his teachers,
who noticed that I spent a good deal of time with Tony, cautioned me
about devoting too much of my study to the "good kids." "You should
hang around with the pot smokers," she advised, "they're the ones
causing all of the trouble around here." She didn't realize, and in
fact there was no way for her to know, that Tony was stoned and at
least one other student was "blown away" by some purple mescaline
that was for sale in the school that day.

Tony often complained of boredom but he appreciated the social

aspects of school and he was anxious to return after the Christmas

73

vacation. His class assignments were often dull and routine but

he did them and complied with the school's rules in order to "preserve
peace at home" and because he did not like to "hurt his teachers'
feelings."

Tony is a serious student and like the other Hempies, he
does not plan to go to college and is very concerned about his future.
He hopes to take the school's Television Production block next year
so that he can get a job in the television industry. The lead
teacher in the Careers area told me that the students who do take
this three hour vocational block have an excellent chance of
working in the field. Television production is a rigorous course and
the students must take basic electricity as a pre-requisite. Tony
knows several of the students who are taking the television block
now--they are members of other groups in the drug subculture. He
asked them if it was a "tough course." They told him that it is a lot
of work but "it isn't tough if you like it and the teacher;' a former
employee of a major television network, "knows his shit." Tony is
looking forward to getting into this course and he has promised
himself to "work his ass off to stay in it."

Tony, like all of the Hempies, feels free to speak about his
personal problems within the group structure. Tony dresses in "basic
blues" but his father keeps a fairly rigid hold on his appearance and
behavior. Tony rarely can go out on weekends and when he does, he
has a curfew. He is required to have his hair cut once a month and
although he has saved several hundred dollars from a part-time job,

his father will not let him.spend it on a stereo that he wants to buy.

74

Several times, when I was speaking to him on the phone, Tony would
indicate that he was having trouble at home in a not very cryptic
way by saying: ”Remember that problem I spoke to you about? Well
it's surfaced again, I'll call you back."

Tony complains that his father beats him up now and then and
Tony looks forward to the day that he will turn eighteen and can move
out of the house. He participated in an empathy training program
conducted in the school by the local Drug Education Center and he
feels that this has helped him to understand his father but he says
that because his father is in his forties, "he is too old to change.”

My father was almost thirty when he graduated from

college. He had to work part time and he couldn't

go straight through. My grandfather gave him twenty

dollars to go to school and I think my father gave

it back to him when he graduated. Most of the

problem between my father and me is because of my

grandfather--if you know what I mean.

The school did not have the funds to continue the Drug Education
Program this year although they acknowledge the success it had. It
was designed to provide straight talk about drugs and instruct students
how to administer overdose aid. Tony only mentions the empathy
training aspects of the program but he proudly displays a patch on
his jacket that indicates he has gone through the entire program.
Although he regularly smokes marijuana, he is certain that his parents

do not suspect it. Tony is not allowed to smoke cigarettes in the

house but his parents are suspicious of that habit.

Jeff, Kim and other Hempies. Jeff is the Hempies' leading
"party person." He is always ready to play, party and as he says,

"get down and boogey." Along with Ray, he is a regular visitor to

75

many bars in and around the city. He has a ready smile, a charming
wit and a host of identification cards that indicate he is two years
older than he really is. Jeff's family income is the highest in the
group but the six children in his family reduce it to the extent that
Jeff is not considered one of the rich kids in the school. He dresses
well and he is the only Hempie to refer to the clothes he wears to
school as his "school clothes." Jeff has his own car--a two-seat,
well tuned foreign sports model--that affords him a good deal of
status and freedom.

Kim.is Jeff's girlfriend. She is a delightful pixie of a
girl who dresses well and always looks neat. Both Kim and Jeff work
in the afternoons as part of their school program. Jeff works in a
local gas station and Kim works in a State Office building as a
secretary. Approximately 40 percent of the students at South are
released in the afternoons for work. This is one of the designs of
flexible modular scheduling but it divides the student body into
half-day students and full-day students. It also is one of the
reasons that the Hempies are somewhat invisible to the school: they
do not go to class as a group.

Kim has only three hours of class in school per day. She takes
a two hour secretarial block and one academic class. The school has
twelve of these vocational blocks. Some of them are general courses,
such as the secretarial block and are offered in every high school.
Others such as Television Production and Residential Construction
are taught only at South and students from the city's other three
high schools are bused to south specifically for these blocks. The

secretarial block is two hours long but most of the other vocational

76

blocks last for three hours. The blocks of time were instituted in
order to comply with guidelines to receive the maximum federal aid.

Jeff is not enrolled in one of the vocational blocks but he
is in a specific released-time-for-work program. This program reflects
the seminal stages of career education at South. Jeff takes one
course called I.W.E. (Individual Work Experience) and two academic
courses. I.W.E. is designed to prepare him for "the world of work."
He is taught how to write resumes and he listens as the teacher
stresses the importance of punctuality, cleanliness, and respect in
securing and maintaining a job. This class meets the first hour of
the day and very often Jeff is high on drugs when he arrives at class.

Jeff is the only Hempie who openly discusses drugs with his
family. Jeff attempts a line of reasoning which equates his own dope
smoking with his father's consumption of alcohol but this has not
won his father over. His father still can argue the legality of
his own habits and the illegality of his son's but this has not won
Jeff over. Jeff and the other Hempies have been smoking since the
eighth grade but they claim that their use of marijuana leveled off
about a year ago and is now on the decline.

Kim's membership in the group is determined by her relation-
ship with Jeff. I found most of the groups at South to be voluntary
peer associations that were dominated by males. The presence of
females was almost certainly linked to a male in the group and the
females occupied satellite roles in the group structures.

Kim is well liked and respected by the Hempies. Her home was
considered one of the better "party houses" in the school and she

has a good relationship with her parents although they do not know

77

that she smokes dope. During one of my first days with the Hempies,
several of us drove out to Kim's home for lunch. Although she had
not met me at the time, she did not hesitate to pass a pipe full of

dope my way. "If you're with these guys, she said indicating the
van load of Hempies, "then you must be o.k."

Kim.is not the only female member of the Hempies. Cathy dates
a graduate of South who hangs around with several of the Hempies after
school hours. Cathy's time is divided between the Hempies and a group
of female dope smokers in the "grand and glorious Hempie under-
ground," to use the rubric "J" attaches to the drug subculture. The
Hempies would often flirt and get high with Cathy and the female
dopers but the male dominance of the group could rarely accommodate
women as co-equals. There were several all female groups in both the
drug subculture and the non-drug world and although I interacted with

several of them over extended periods of time, I could not help but

remain an outsider who was not privy to their secrets and organization.

Ray. Ray is a tall, slim, nineteen year old Hempie. He doesn't
live at home because he claims that it is "easier not to." "Our house
is small and we get on each others' nerves." Ray has lived in a
variety of places and has held down an assortment of part-time jobs
during the course of this study.

Unlike the other members of his group, Ray has trouble passing
his courses. His transcript contains mostly D's and E's with a few
C's and an occasional B. It was not probable that Ray would graduate
this year; although this caused him.some anxiety, he continued a low

level of productivity and was collecting still more low grades. Instead

78

Of staying in school, Ray decided to take the GED Exam (General
Educational Development) and earn a high school equivalency diploma.
The exam is administered in several segments. An individual is not
permitted to take the next exam in the series unless he has passed all
of the preceding exams. Ray exhibited no small about of pride as he
successfully progressed through the series toward his equivalency
diploma.

Ray has been in the school for three years and has mastered
its bureaucratic intricacies. He knows every secret area to smoke
where hall guards never check and he is expert at cutting into the
lunch line. He also collected three lockers at South. He told me
that "every year the school assigns you a new locker and I remembered
the combination of the old ones. I found out that they gave my Old
lockers to squeaks [sophomores] so I just kicked their asses out."

Ray claims that he is not competitive and will not participate
in the physical education program. "They're always pitting one student
against another and I don't like that." The other Hempies did not find
the physical education classes to be overly competitive--very few of
the activities involved winning as a criterion--and despite Ray's
claim that he did not like to compete, he tried constantly to win at
ping pong and grew very angry when he lost. The group never mentioned
these inconsistencies in his behavior. If he did not want to go to
physical education, that was his business.

Ties within the Hempies varied through the course of study.
When I first met the group, Ray and "J" were very close and formed
the strongest friendship bond in the group. By the end of the study

Ray and Jeff were the strongest bond with Ray spending many nights at

79

Jeff's home when he had no place to live. Ray eventually quit school
and the group was forced to regroup around the triad of Jeff, Tony and
"J," The relationship within the group always retained this degree of
fluidity which allowed for the formation and dissolution of various

dyads and triads without threatening the group cohesiveness.

Hempies in School

 

All of the groups had their own area of the school which they
claimed as their own by the right of regular occupancy. The Hempies
claimed the North entrance. They would meet there every morning before
school, shake hands, exchange a few pleasantries, smoke a cigarette
and make some of the important decisions 0f the day.

The first decision was based on a determination of what day
it was. If it was A, C, or E day that meant five hours of structured
class time that was not unlike the other high school in the city. If
it was B, D, or F day, the students had days of classes interspersed
with "unstructured time." D day meant large group instruction and the
mornings were generally filled with large lecture sessions. The
Hempies disliked D days and they rarely attended D day classes. This
proved unfortunate for the Hempies because many classes used the large
group format to present new information. B and F days were filled
with small discussion sessions and the Hempies would decide to go to
these classes on the merits of the various teachers or the individual
class. Because the school used a six day cycle of classes, the students
had to determine the day in order to know what classes they bad. If
Menday was an.A day one week, it would be F the following week and E

day the week after.

80

Armed with the data concerning the day and a knowledge of their
own schedules, the Hempies would make their first major decision of
the day: whether or not to get high before going to class. The
Hempies do not use coercion or group sanctions to encourage each other
or their friends to get high. Each individual decided on the basis of
his classes and personal predilections whether or not to "turn on."
Non-smokers were not encouraged to get high but if one wished to
associate with the Hempies, there was little recourse but to smoke.

So much of their day was spent in planning to get high, actually
getting high and, of course, enjoying the high, that students who did
not care to smoke dope would be excluded from one of the most signi-
ficant aspects of the Hempies' day. For a while, I would accompany
the group when they would smoke dope but when they realized that my
role precluded any drug use, they began to excuse themselves and slip
off'without me.

Every group that smoked dope had their own special area in and
around the school where they got high. Some SOphomore groups enjoyed
smoking in the building. For some male students, it was an achieve-
ment to smoke dope in the girls lav. There were two girls
who enjoyed smoking outside the principal's window while for another
group it was considered a good day if they could "cop a buzz" near the
gymnasium without getting caught by the ever-vigilant physical education
staff. The Hempies were more discreet. They.never smoked in the
building and they would usually go out to the parking lot and smoke
in someone's car.

The second major decision of the day was whether or not to show

up for "T.C.G." The decision had to be made quickly because at eight

81

O'clock the hall guards would be "sweeping the area" and chasing the
kids out of the halls.

"T.C.G." stands for Teacher-Counselor-Group and as Tony said
when I asked him what it was, "It's really just 'homeroom' but don't
let them hear you say that, they get pissed." It was designed to
make the homeroom into a unit that had some purpose beyond being an
administrative convenience. It was created by South's guidance
department and it was intended to cast the teacher into the role of a
counselor. The "lead teacher" of the Guidance Department explained
it this way:

What we planned to do was have the teachers work with

the students as students. What happened was that not

all of the people were comfortable with this role. Some

of the students didn't show up for T.C. Some of the

teachers were anxious to have a good relationship with

the students but when the kids didn't show up there
were some hurt feelings.

There was another thing. With the teacher's flexible
modular schedule, forty minutes of each day was set
aside to be spent with the kids. He could see all

of his students. He could arrange to see individual
students. . . well what happened is that the kids
didn't come to homeroom and the teachers were very
frustrated.

Some of the kids felt that some of the teachers were

[playing the role of counselor] because they were

assigned to pr.c,'s} If that was the case . . . the

kids would cut him off. They would say that they

had an assignment to work on and they would go out

to the parking lot.

During the time I was at South, the T.C.G. no longer had a
counseling function; its purpose was no different than the traditional
homeroom: it provided an arena where attendance was taken and the

morning announcements were read. After T.C.G., the Hempies went

their separate ways.

82

Under the flexible modular schedule not one of the Hempies
took classes together. Although they were all juniors and took many
of the same courses, they attended class and interacted with their
teachers apart from the reality they generated while in their group.
The group did not prescribe specific behavior to be followed when the
individual members went to class by themselves. Tony could be quiet,
deferential and serious; "J" could be loud, flirtatious, and a
"discipline problem"; and Kim could be the demure secretarial student.

Each of the Hempies had a favorite teacher in the school and
each of them had a course they enjoyed. They were quick to point out
their "good teachers" and they would advise me beforehand whether or
not. to expect a good class. All of the Hempies would go out of
their way to invite me to a class that was doing something "special."
If there was to be a skit, a guest speaker, or an interesting tOpic
to be discussed, the Hempies would search the school for me and invite
me to come along.

Tony was particularly impressed by his Humanities teacher Ms.
W. Her class is in one of the windowless rooms on the second floor
but a carpet and many wall decorations help to create a pleasant
environment. Tony likes the class because he claims that "you can
talk about anything you want to and nobody will laugh."

During one of the small group meetings on a B day, Ms. W.
told the students that they were going to write a poem. She played
some background music, lit candles, turned off the lights and asked
the students to sit on the floor. They'were to find a picture in a
magazine and write a poem to express the way they felt about the

picture. There were a variety of magazines and some students took

0”

WV“

83

pictures from "Sports Illustrated" while others used "Seventeen" or
"Life." Tony found a picture of a peaceful outdoors setting and we
shared a candle on the floor. Although one student protested that
"you can't write no poem about 'Mean Joe Green'"--the huge defensive'
lineman of the Pittsburg Steelers football team-~all of the other
students seemed to enjoy the writing exercise.

After about twenty minutes, Ms. W., who had also written a
poem, asked the class "to share their poems with everyone." The
class was a very diverse group. Although there were no blacks, there
was one Chicano girl, four cheerleaders, two wrestlers, several
dOpers and a dozen other students I did not know. Tony regularly
flirts with two of the cheerleaders but he does not interact with any
of the other students outside of this class and as he says, he "hardly
knows them." This did not stop him or anyone else in the class from
freely reading their poem.

The students--with the exception of the one male who wrote an
Ode to a lineman--seemed genuinely pleased with the opportunity to
share their ideas. Most of the poems were excellent. They showed a
sensitivity and a style that could not have been anticipated after
only twenty minutes of writing. The students gave each other a great
deal of support and verbal reinforcement.

"Hey, I really like that poem."

"Yeah, I see what you saw in the picture; that's neat."

The class even said nice things about my poem which, by any
objectives standard, was mediocre but their support did make me feel

good.

84

It was not uncommon for Ms. W.'s classes to deal with the
affective domain of education. She enjoyed open discussions of
feelings and problems and Tony considered himself "lucky" to have a
time during his day when he could relax and talk freely.

There were many teachers who encouraged student participation
and discussion of feelings and values but it was possible for a
student to have a schedule which did not include even one class that
invited him to speak or to take an active part. It was possible to
follow a student around who never had a chance to say a word in his
classes.

Kim.only attended school in the mornings and her classes did
not require her active involvement. She envied Tony and the other
Hempies-~all of whom had classes where they could take an active role--
because of this opportunity to express themselves. She told me:

I never get a chance to say anything and if I'm called

on I don't know what to say. I think my teachers want

me to say things they like to hear. Mr. V. yells at me

when I give him an answer he doesn't like but Tony and

those guys can say anything in class. I like to sit

in on their classes but I'm still afraid to say anything.

Kim had a running battle with her Government teacher Mr. V.
Government is the one State-required course for graduation. Every
student has to take one semester of Government and it was the rare
student who expressed any interest in it. Kim was asked to leave class
one day for "not being prepared" and she had to make up the work she
missed in the Humanities Resource Center. There were two other girls
in the Resource Center who also had work to make up for the class. They
were to read an article on the problems of cities and fill out a work

sheet. They were supposed to work separately but after a few minutes

they all got together at one table.

85

The first question on the work sheet asked whether or not the
student thought the cities could be "saved." The rest of the sheet
asked for specific examples of remediation for urban problems. None
of the girls thought the cities could be redeemed but as Kim said,
"that's not what [the teacher] wants to hear." So they all wrote it
was possible to save the cities and they searched the textbook for
passages about urban renewal, anti-poverty programs and the like.

I asked Kim what would happen if she wrote that the cities
could not be saved if this was the way she really felt.

"Oh he'd yell at me and I'd rather make up some shit than have
him yell. I don't know why, but I feel like crying every time he yells."

During lunch the Hempies would get together as a group. They
would talk about what had gone on during the morning or discuss some-
thing that they were planning to do after school. If a rock band was
scheduled to make an appearance in the city, plans for attending the
concert, buying tickets, and finding the money to pay for them would
occupy many weeks of conversation. The lunch period during structured
days was fifty minutes long and all of the students would eat at the
same time. The cafeteria systemrwas efficient enough to serve
everyone in.that period of time and still allow them about twenty
minutes of free time. A typical meal included pizza, french fries, a
roll and perhaps some cake for dessert. The Hempies, who usually ate

lunch in school, inhaled all this starch in less time than it takes to

86

describe and they would be free to cruise the halls or truck out to
the parking lot to get high.3

In the same way that the Hempies had their own area of the
cafeteria for eating and their own part of the building for meeting
before school, so too did they have their own area for cruising. The
Hempies would make endless circles around the main hallways, cruising
by the entrance, the administrative offices, the science labs and
the secretarial rooms many times, saying hello to the same people over
and over again as they circled. It was like grabbing brass rings on
a merry-go-round. The group seldom went up to the second floor and
rarely did they go down to the gym. If they stopped at all, it was
near the North entrance and they would sit and talk to other groups
and whatever girls were willing to listen.

Dope could be bought and sold during the lunch hour. While we
were sitting by the North entrance, a black girl came up to "J" and
asked who I was. He explained that I was an "honorary Hempie" and
that I was "O.K." She nodded and asked if anyone wanted to buy "some
pot or some pills-" No one wanted any and she moved on. Association
with the Hempies granted me a badge of legitimacy. It was commonly
known among the students that the Hempies were dOpers and if they
accepted my presence then most of the other dOpe smokers seemed to

feel that I could be trusted.

 

3Trucking and cruising, as used by South's students, have a
similar meaning. Cruising refers to aimless perambulation while
trucking usually implies walking with a predetermined destination.
A student would "cruise" the hall but "truck on out" to the parking
lot.

87

It was fairly common for blacks and whites to buy dope from
one another but rarely did they get high together and drugs were often
a source of racial conflict. Cathy bought a "hit of window-pane acid"
from one of the local dealers. Everyone crowded around her to take a
look at the hallucinogen and speculate about its potency and offer
recommendations concerning how much should be taken at one time. This
of course is a great problem with illegal drugs: the potency and
purity are unknowns. Students often would buy a "hit" of acid and
consider that to be an absolute quantity and quality when in fact
there is no standard qualitative or quantitative value implied by
the term. A hit refers only to the size which is marketed and it is
a term of convenience rather than a precise referent for a powerful
drug.

As the group stood around and discussed the drug, a black male
walked up to Cathy and asked to see it. She Opened her hand and he
grabbed it and popped it into his mouth. This was incredible to all
assembled not only that he had stolen it from her hand but that on
the spur of the moment, he would be willing to ingest an unknown
chemical of unknown strength. The group rapidly became less concerned
about his personal welfare and irate that they had been "ripped off."
It nearly triggered a serious incident. The Hempies and some of the
other white students were angry. Throughout the remainder of the
day, the Hempies talked about the "nigger who ripped them off" and
they recounted stories of the race fights in the school's history

and wondered aloud when the next one would be.

88

During the unstructured days, the Hempies were a more cohesive
group than they were during the structured days. They were in each
other's company for a greater portion of the day. There were fewer
scheduled classes which caused them to go their separate ways and
they were able to interact with each other over greater periods of
time. With less than half of the day occupied by classes, the Hempies
could generate any number of activities which held the group together.
Their most frequent activities during the unstructured days were
hanging around and getting high on marijuana and complaining that
"there was nothing to do."

Different groups engaged in a variety of activities. Many
groups studied and interacted with their teachers in formal or
informal activities. Other groups used the school facilities such
as the resource centers and the library to pursue individual interests
and the gymnasium‘was always filled with students playing basketball.
There was also a lot of card playing, gambling and chess playing
going on during the day. The administrators know about the gambling
but the games dissolve and set up again so quickly that it is impossible
to control. John Butler investigated a group of black males who
referred to themselves as "Pimps and Gamblers" and five dollar gambling
pots were not uncommon in that group. But they were an exception, most
of the gambling was for low stakes. Penny pitching'was the most
common game and it was unusual for anyone to lose more than twenty-five
or thirty cents. There were black gamblers and white gamblers and
although they played similar games of chance, there were no integrated

gambling groups.

89

The administrators liked to believe that the chess players

were engaged in a valuable leisure time activity. Oddly enough the
better chess players, and those who played on the school's chess team
rarely played during school hours. They generally waited until the
quiet of after school before they would play. Those who played during
the school day were either neophyte players who made unsophisticated
moves or those players who were high and played for amusement. I sat
at a board with one student who didn't make a move for ten minutes.
I had begun the game with a very basic opening move and I waited for
his first move. I began to worry that I was about to be checkmated
by some stroke of brilliance which I could not even imagine when he
finally looked up at me and apologized.

"Hey man I'm sorry. I'm tripping [on some hallucinogen] and
I just can't make any sense out of this game--maybe tomorrow.. . ."

The Hempies would usually get together after T.C.G. on
unstructured days and make their plans for the day. "J" and Ray
were in the same T.C.G. and they would walk over to meet Jeff after
his T.C.G. Kim.usually had a lot of work to do and she did not hang
around with the group. As was the case for all of the secretarial
students, Kim.had a lot of shorthand to transcribe and typing to do.
The secretarial students could be easily recognized by the ever present
shorthand books they carried around. They seemed to be constantly
working. They worked in the halls, in other classes and during lunch.
The work occupied a great deal of their time but apparently not their
concentration. Secretarial students seemed to be able to drop in and

out of class discussions and still do their homework and a few of

90

the girls were able to sit out in the parking lot and work as they got
high.

The unstructured days at South afforded the students a great
deal of time to engage in a variety of activities. The Hempies, like
most of the students carried out these activities within the social
context of the group and during the unstructured days, the group spent
a great deal of time together. The Hempies were not "joiners" or
regular participants in planned school activities. None of the
Hempies held political office in the school. With the exception of
"J." none of the group participated in athletics or the intramural
sports program which scheduled its activities during the school day.
They were not active in clubs and few of the Hempies were involved in
school plays, yearbook committees or any other school sponsored activity.

The Hempies spent their unstructured time in group activities
which supported the individual member. Several days were spent searching
for used parts for Ray's car or Jeff's car. One full day was consumed
pulling "J's" car out of the ditch he had driven into the night before
while returning from a party. Many days were spent just riding around
or visiting other schools in the city.

During the unstructured days, personal problems could be given
more attention. It was an ideal time to look for part-time jobs or
deal with problems at home. It was also a good time to appear in court.
Tony had to go to court once to answer charges that he had been driving
a friend's car without a license. Jeff made two or three appearances
in court because of a serious accident that he was involved in last

year. For the members of the "grand and glorious Hempie undergroun "

91

court appearances were not unusual. Several members of various

groups in the drug subculture had been arrested for possession of
alcoholic beverages, marijuana or violation of the city's curfew laws
during the course of the study. John Butler reports an armed robbery
which took place in the parking lot of the school and within certain
groups, it was not uncommon to periodically run into probation Officers
and welfare workers.

The Hempies and the other groups in the drug subculture would
offer support for the students who had to appear in court. They would
provide sympathy and recommend the courtroom demeanor and clothing
styles that they felt would play on the judge's sympathy. If any
member of the group was having problems, he could count on the group
to support him in any way it could.

MOst of the problems were not legal but personal. The Hempies
felt free to talk about their home lives and personal fears and concerns
'within the group structure. Each of the Hempies also had at least
one teacher or counselor who they felt they could go to with a personal
problem. "J" expressed the feelings of the group. He said that if
he had a problem he could not go to a "teacher" but he could go to see
certain teachers in the school because he considered them "friends,"
The Hempies felt that there were teachers in the school who cared
about them as individuals and would spend the time to help them with
problems.

During most of the unstructured days, the Hempies just hung
around. They "cruised" the halls, "trucked" out to the parking lot
to get high, they went to the few classes that interested them, and
they complained of being "bored." As Ray would say, "We don't

dO‘EMCh around here, we just go to school and rap with our friends."

92

Black Students

 

There are approximately 240 black students enrolled at South
and most of them live in the neighborhoods around the school. When
South opened, many black students were bused in from the West side
of town in accordance with a plan to achieve racial balance in the
city's schools. The members of the Board of Education who proposed
this plan were recalled in a special election and their successors
endorsed the neighborhood schools concept which eliminated busing
to achieve racial integration. The black students who had been
bused to South were given the option of attending a school in their
neighborhood or continuing their high school education at South.
Many of them chose to remain and though there is now no city-wide
busing plan, some students are still bused from the West side of
town to South High School.

Most of the black groups, regardless of their attitudes
toward school or their attitudes toward other black groups, tended
to congregate in the hallways adjacent to the West Cafeteria. Two
years ago, in these hallways, the black students linked arms and
refused to allow whites to pass and the area has become the central
hub of the school's black student population. The blacks sit on
the benches in the hallway and on the nearby stairway which leads
to the second floor. Although whites walk freely through the
hallway and have untroubled use of the stairway, it is clear that
this is the blacks' area. No white groups loiter in this hallway
or on the stairway.

There is also one section in the West Cafeteria that is

regularly occupied by the black students. This is the section

93

closest to the black hallway and it is really just a string of
tables where perhaps 50 or 60 students can sit at one time. Even
when the West Cafeteria is relatively empty, blacks would tend to
crowd around these tables. Very few whites ever sit here and more
blacks eat lunch in this area than anywhere else in the school.

The various black groups get together only for lunch and
after they eat, the groups go off in separate directions. Some would
study, some would go down to the gymnasium.to play ping pong or
basketball, some would go and get high, but wherever they went,
it would be in all black groups to engage in all black activities.
There were tables of black students in the library, groups of
blacks playing basketball and a special area for those who used
drugs. The white marijuana smokers used the parking lot and very
few black groups went there to get high. The black marijuana smokers
would either go out to the athletic field and smoke in the baseball
dugouts or they would go off to some remote area of the building to
get high.

When I spent time with black groups, the school looked
different and sounded different. The faces of the students changed
from all white to all black. The world was louder and more animated.
The music and clothing styles were different. I heard fewer complaints
of boredom and I became aware of activities that I did not know
‘were going on when I was with the white groups. There were days when
black performers entertained in the cafeteria and days when several
black student groups played music and danced in the enclosed area between
the two cafeterias. At these times, I was one of the few whites attending
the activities and some white students would approach me to ask if it

was "all right" if they hung around.

94

Black Jocks (BJ)

The groups identified as the Black Jocks are all football
players. Of the several black athletic groups, the football players
‘were the most academic. The BJ claim that they have consciously
tried to overcome the "dumb football jock" image but it is probably
happenstance as much as anything else. The black football players
just are more academically talented than, for example, the black
basketball players. Bob, Dwight and William are the central members
of this group. They have known each other since junior high school
and they all live on the West side of town and although they are
very different in dress, habits, and attitudes, football, neighborhood

and blackness unite them into a group.

Bob. Bob is the most outgoing member of the BJ. He dresses
very casually and often.wears a t-shirt and jeans covered by a long
cotton coat that looks like it should be worn by a factory foreman
or a gas station attendant on a television commercial. He wears
steel-rim glasses and tops off his outfit with a blue, inverted
sailor's cap. Bob is the loudest member of the group. He has a
booming voice and few inhibitions when it comes to yelling in the halls
or speaking out in class. He is often outrageously funny and with
little encouragement he would go into his imitations of Step 'n' Fetchit
or Humphrey Bogart. As we stood in the halls one day, two army
recruiters walked by us and Bob shouted "Heil Hitler" at the top of his
voice. The recruiters, in an outstanding display of military

discipline, didn't blink an eye but Bob's outburst snapped the

95

head of Mr. Wade, the assistant principal, who happened to be
‘walking by. Mr. Wade did not get a chance to speak as Bob spotted
him.and yelled,

"And this school would be a lot better off without you
here too"!

Mr. Wade smiled self-consciously and retreated. I later
asked Bob if he had been serious.

"No," he said, "but it will give him something to think about."

Bob could be very intimidating. He had a powerful build and
would often practice what he called his "menacing stare." He cut
into the lunch line one day and a white paraprofessional, assigned
to supervise the lunchroom, asked Bob to return to the end of the
line. Bob gave him his "stare" and protested that he had been there
all along and refused to move.

"Look you four-eyed freak," Bob bellowed at the aide, "they
call me 'Bad Bob' and I eat guys your size for breakfast"!

The aide left to get help.

Bob's outburst and anger had been pure show. He handed a girl
in line fifty cents, asked her to buy him lunch, and quietly sat down
by himself. The aide returned with two hall guards and Dr. Gordon,
the principal, but there was nothing to be done. Bob was peacefully
reading a book and as Dr. Gordon was asking him to relate the story
of his encounter with the aide, Bob's lunch tray was quietly put in
front of him. Bob then invited Dr. Gordon to join him for lunch but

the principal seemed to know he had been had and he left.

96

Among the members of BJ, Bob has the most contact with
white students. Although he rarely dates, he flirts constantly and
is well known and very popular with many white student groups. His
conversations with whites were either serious discussions of class
work or they were filled with a humor of an attacking nature that
precluded any real exchange or dialogue. He rarely discussed personal
issues with whites. He could be suggestive if not outrightly obscene.
Standing in the black corridor, he spoke to a white girl who was
dating a black student.

Bob: "How's M"?

Girl: "Oh, I don't know."

Bob: 'What do you mean you 'don't know'? Youre with him all
the time"!

Girl: (giggling) "I just don't think about it."

Bob: "Yeah, just like a bed bug; you sort of forget about
them and get used to living with them."

Girl: "A bed bug"? (laughter)

Bob: "Yeah M. told me all about you and him."

Girl: "What did he tell you"?

Bob: "He gives me a sweat-by-sweat description"!! He told
me you're a moaner. Is that true"?

The girl left flustered, angry and embarrased and Bob told me
that he had made up the whole thing on the spot and could not explain
why he had done it. He is extremely quick.witted and at times he
could be nasty and verbally assaultive to others. One morning, after

a week with no sunshine and constant rain and snow, a white girl

97

came up to Bob on the black stairway and asked rhetorically where
the sun had gone.
"Y'all know the answer to that one," Bob snapped at her. "The

niggers stole it. They steals everything else don't they"?!

Dwight. Dwight is the most steady individual in the BJ. He
is big, strong, good looking and the captain of the football team.
Dwight works hard in school, usually complies with his teachers',
expectations and rarely fools around in class unless Bob is there.

He takes mainly academic courses but because of a reading problem, he
spends one hour a day in the Reading Center. He is proud of the
fact that his reading has improved since he began working in the
Center and he now reads at 450 words per minute. Dwight rarely
dresses in jeans and he usually wears well tailored slacks and
expensive looking shirts. Most of Dwight's time is spent with his
girlfriend Tanya. He walks her to class, they regularly eat lunch
together, and they spend most of their unstructured time together.
When Tanya and Dwight are in the same class, Dwight sits with Bob
or other members of the BJ and Tanya sits alone or with several
black girls. Other than occasional glances at each other, they
rarely interact in class.

Dwight works as a teacherS' aide in a local elementary school
during the afternoons as part of his own school program. He considers
this the highlight of his school day and he likes working with "little
kids" and helping them solve their problems. Tanya takes the Dental
Hygiene Vocational Block which she claims she enjoys. Although she

is the only black in the course, she interacts with the white girls

98

when she is there. Outside of class, she interacts almost
exclusively with black students.

Dwight and the other BJ feel that the school is not interested
in the black students. The BJ claim that they are "getting a lot"
out of their programs, but they point to many blacks who are not.

In particular, Dwight thinks that the black athletes are being
slighted. He claims that,

During the season, the school sends around an academic

eligibility slip that the teachers have to sign. The

teachers help you with your work during the season so

you can play ball for the school but after the season's

over, they just don't seem to care.

Because of his participation in athletics, Dwight is well
known in the school. He is well respected by many white groups but
he rarely interacts with whites and has very little optimism for the
future of race relations. He told me a story about his younger
sister, who is in elementary school, and the man who drives her school
bus. The man is white and as Dwight relates it, "he likes black
kids." He takes groups of black elementary school students to the
zoo or to activities in and around the city on his own time and at
his own expense. Dwight said that the bus driver plans to be a
teacher and wants to teach in a black school in Detroit.

The guy is really a nice guy but I tell him.that there

are just certain things that you can't do. It's not

possible to be a white teacher and live in an all black
neighborhood and teach in an all black school. I know

it's sad but it's true.
William. William is the sharpest dresser of the BJ. He
always wears expensive, well-fitting clothes. He has an extensive

wardrobe and he rarely wears the same thing twice in a week. He has

99

a wide variety of slacks, shirts, sweaters and platform shoes. He is
rarely without a hat and he has an ample supply of knit caps in a
wide assortment of colors.

William is an all-city half-back in football and he has a fine
build and a good looking face. His girlfriend, Carla, is also very
attractive and well dressed and together they make a striking couple.
Most of their time in school is spent together. They do not take
the same courses and William is often late for his own classes because
he always escorts Carla to and from her classes. Carla rarely
interacts with whites when she is with William.but by herself, in an
all white class, she seems comfortable and she talks openly and
freely with the teachers and with her classmates.

Despite William's athletic prowess and striking physical
appearance, he is quiet and often very shy. One day I stood in a
line with William waiting for him to be measured for his graduation
cap and gown. He was wearing a hat as usual and he was worried that
he would have to take it off for the measurement.

"My hair is up in braids," he whispered to me, "and I'll feel
like a fool if I have to take it off."

He was measured for the graduation cap without his hat. The
man from the company renting the caps and gowns did not question his
braids and none of the white students in the line made any reference
to them.

One of the most widely admired classes in the school is the
Psychology class taught by a white teacher. 'Mr. R., the psychology

teacher, is a strong male figure who works hard to create an

100

atmosphere of informality and Openness. He encourages group
discussions and he tries to build a "climate of trust" that allows
students to speak freely about their concerns and problems. "J"
claims that "there is a lot of love in that class."'

During a unit on values, Mr. R. asked the class to divide
into groups of four or five students in order to play a values
clarification game known as the Fall-Out Shelter Problem.4 Mr. R.
then explained the situation to the groups.

Your group are members of a department in Washington,
D. C. that is in charge of experimental stations in the
far outposts of civilization. Suddenly the Third World
War breaks out and bombs begin dropping. Places all
across the globe are being destroyed. PeOple are
heading for whatever fallout shelters are available.
You receive a desperate call from one of your experi-
mental stations, asking for help.

It seems that there are tgg_people but there is only
enough space, air, food, and water in their fallout
shelter for gix_people for a period of three months--
which is how long they estimate. . . [they must stay
down there]. They realize that if they have to decide
amongst themselves which six should go into the shelter,
they are likely to become irrational and begin fighting.
So they have decided to call your department, their
superiors, and leave the decision to you. They will
abide by your decision.

But each of you has to quickly get ready to head down

to your own fallout shelter. So all you have time for
is to get superficial descriptions of the ten people.

You have half-an-hour to make your decision. Then you
have to go to your own shelter.

 

4For a complete description of the game, see, Simon, Sidney B.;
Howe, Leland W.; and Kirschenbaum, Howard. Values Clarificatiog,_A
Handbook of Practical Strategies (New York: Hart Publishing Co., 1972),
pp. 281-286. Mr. R. changed the game somewhat for his class and there
are many varieties of this game available.

 

5These were not‘Mr. R.'s exact words but are from the directions
given in Simon et al., Values Clarification, pp. 281-282.

101

Mr. R. had written the following list of the ten people and a
brief description of them on the chalkboard:

1. Bookkeeper; 31 years old

2. Teenage girl; six months pregnant

3. Black militant (male); second year medical student

4. Famous architect--author; 42 years old

5. Hollywood starlette; singer, dancer

6. Bio-chemist; homosexual

7. Rabbi; 54 years old

8. White female M.D.; a racist

9. Prostitute

10. Policeman.with gun (they cannot be separated).

I joined a group which included Carla, one Chicano girl, one
white girl, and "J" of the Hempie group. This happened to be the
same day that mesacaline was for sale in the school and "J" was
completely stoned and he was of very little help to the group.
Everyone knew he was stoned and they left him alone.

The group was unanimous in their selection of the pregnant
teenage girl for the shelter and their rejection of the bio-chemist
("We don't want no 'fag' in the shelter"). But they could agree on
little else. The white girl in our group, much to Carla's suprise,
asked someone to tell her what "black militant" means.

"You don't know what a black militant is"? Carla asked
making a face which showed her dismay. "He's a--well you know-~like
the Black Panthers--radicals, and groups like that. I can't believe

you don't know.. . ."

102

The white girl did not listen as Carla was explaining and
continued to try to get Mr. R's attention so she could ask him the
question. He was busy with another group of students and the
question was never answered. The majority of whites and Chicanos
in the classagreed.that the black radical and the white racists would
work out their differences in the shelter but the blacks in the
class were unanimous in their disagreement. Carla said that they
could never settle "those problems." Every once in a while "J"
would lift his head off the desk and yell, barely coherently, "Ya
gotta have someone from the black race in the shelter." But no one
wanted to take up his point and he would put his head back down on
the desk and rest.

William.takes a similar psychology course from another
teacher who also enjoys an excellent reputation among the students.
William.rarely gets involved in class discussions; he sits on the
outside perimeter of the class and his participation is usually
limited to perfunctory answers or an occasional joke. One day the
teacher asked the class if they would like to have some background
‘music as they worked on an assignment, William called out that he
‘would like to hear the "theme from'Deep Throa€"--a hard core porno-

graphic movie that was playing in the city.

BJ in School

Bob, Dwight and William plan to go to college next year.
They take academic courses and although they constantly complain to
their teachers about their work load being too heavy, they regularly

complete all of their assignments and they still have plenty of time

103

to enjoy the social aspect of school. They do not belong to the
school's social or political organizations but like the Hempies,
they depend on the group to generate social activities to occupy
their time. Unlike the Hempies, the BJ do not use drugs in school
and drugs constitute a very small part of their conversation or
leisure time activities. The group generally creates an atmosphere
that encourages light humorous conversation but at the same time
allows the individual members opportunity for doing the necessary
school work.

Bob, Dwight, and William all plan to attend the same state
supported college next year. Despite the fact that less than 2
percent of that college's students are black, none of the three
think they will have any trouble "fitting in." Dwight claims that
he is used to being outnumbered by whites and he claims that he can
create his own social life if the whites leave him alone. He
indicates that this is what he and the group have done in high
school. "The administration just kicks out all the 'radical
blacks' and they just leave the rest of us alone." Bob plans to
major in engineering and he loudly proclaims that "I'm going to go to
school to get an ed-u-cation"! "Those niggers," he says, "indicating
Dwight and William, "are going to school to play football."

Dwight and William.generally accepted Bob's verbal outbursts
and occasional attacks with a friendly good humor. It may appear to
an outsider that Bob is the controlling influence on the group because
he is the loudest and the most verbal member; but he is not. The
group assigns high status only to those individuals who are successfully

seductive and date. Bob does not have a girlfriend and does not date

104

regularly. William and Dwight consider him socially naive and in their
quiet way they exert a very strong influence on.him. They claim he
should "party more" and stop wasting his time flirting with girls he
never asks out. When Bob does go to parties, he usually checks

with Dwight and William on how to act and how to dress. He is the
most verbal and the most gregarious member of the group but these are
not the criteria the group established as high priorities. In order

to be the leader of the BJ, he would have to be more successful in

his social relations.

The BJ claim that the high school has not been much help for
them in selecting a college or counseling them on the best ways to
get financial aid. Dwight also claims that the school has not been
pushing them into the harder "college prep" courses. There was a
feeling in the group that the high school was mainly interested in
the white students. They did not think that the school's black
teachers offered them the kind of help they needed. They claim that
the white teachers did not expect very much from them because they
were black and the black teachers made them work harder than the
white students so they could "prove blacks can do well in school."

The BJ do not take all of their classes together. When they
did have classes together, they would take over one rear corner of
the room and fool around and talk up to, and occasionally beyond the
teacher's tolerance. If there were no other members of the group
in their class, they would sit with any other black students in the
room and if there were no other blacks, they would sit alone. One

of the courses the BJ did take together was Advanced Composition,

105

a "college prep" course taught by a white teacher. The class was
large and the seats were arranged in rows. ‘Mr. R., the teacher,
generally requested that I enter into all of the class activities
including the taking of examinations. The BJ appreciated this and
their grades on vocabulary tests mysteriously went up during the time
I was there. Bob would whisper to William: "Hey man, you're wrong
about number five, jack; the college kid's got another answer." If
Mr. R. heard these exchanges, he ignored them.

Mr. R. was a hard working and well organized teacher. His
course stressed reading as well as grammar and vocabulary but some of
the work he required of his students seemed of doubtful future value.
He required that the class memorize the Dewey Decimal System "so that
when they got to college, they will be able to use the library."

He also plans to put his classes through a ”mock college registration"
because his own registration consumed ten hours of his first day in
school and he wants the students to be ready for college.

The blacks had earned a reputation for physical toughness in
the racial violence of previous years. Most of the white groups
paid them grudging tributes of respect because of the way they fought
despite being outnumbered. There was also the feeling among the black
and white students that the teachers were more willing to discipline
a white student in class than a black student. The whites felt that
the blacks were getting away with something and the blacks felt that
the white teachers were afraid of them.

The BJ were often loud in class and every once in,a while

they could be rowdy. In one class, Bob and two other black males

106

tried to leave a few minutes before the class was scheduled to end.
The teacher told the group to sit down and wait. He then asked them
if they were on "C.P.T."

Bob: "C.P.T." What's that man"?

Teacher: "Colored People's Time. You guys always seem to be
on your own time and not the schools. You come late and you leave
early."

With that the group walked around the class asking the
students--white and black alike-~if they were "colored. " Bob
announced the findings to the teacher:

"There ain't no 'colored people' in here so you can forget
that C.P.T. shit."

The teacher said, "0.K. I'll call it §.P.T. then." The group
did not respond but left class a little early anyway and with some
'hand slapping and a lot of laughter they reaffirmed the fact that they
had won this minor battle with the white teacher. This seemed to be
one of the purposes of the BJ as a group and one of the things that
united them as a group. They are willing to play the game and get
good grades so that they can go to college but they are ever conscious

of being a black minority in a white school.

Black Academics (BA)

I would always ask the various groups I studied for permission
to accompany them to class. The Hempies and the BJ usually welcomed
me along and they did not indicate that my presence would be a harmful
distraction. In fact, the Hempies claimed to welcome my presence as

a "relief from the boredom" and the BJ liked to have me along during

107
an exam so they could, as Bob put it, "sit near the college kid and
see if he's having any trouble with the test." The BA would give
some thought to my requests to accompany them. They were very
serious students who worked hard in their courses and they believed
that school was difficult enough without the additional burden of
showing a visitor around.

The BA were actively involved in the school and they were
organizers and joiners of a great many activities. There were very
few clubs, plays, or organizations in the school that did not have
at least one BA as a member. They were on the class governing
councils, the Black Culture Week Committee, and the school radio
station. Their day was one of constant activity: running from class
to class, meeting to meeting, with little time to eat and no time to
hang around. They were exclusivelya school based, school oriented
group who, although they spent a lot of time together, knew very
little about one another. Some of the members of the BA, belonged to
several groups. As members of the BA, individuals could receive
support for their academic interests and achievements but for the
social, athletic or play aspects of adolescent life, they would have
to seek gratification from other black groups.

Allan is the key figure in the BA group. Without his presence,
the group would be nothing more than a collection of black individuals
who believe academic achievement is a significant aspect of school
life. When they are in a class without Allan, the BA are loners who
interact with few other students. When he is there, he forms the

nucleus around which a group can form and the group reinforces the

108

individual members. Some of the members of the BA are seniors and

they plan to attend a variety of colleges across the United States

next year, many in pre-professional programs. One of the males plans

to attend University of California at Los Angeles and one of the females
plans to attend a b1ack.womens' college in Georgia.

Allan is a short, thin, sixteen year old. He wears his hair
in a modest "fro" and he is always neat and well groomed. Like the
other members of the BA, Allan neither smokes cigarettes nor uses
drugs. He rarely cruises the halls and he never cuts classes. He
always goes directly from one class to another, never stopping in the
black hallway or on the black stairway. He eats lunch at the black
table but he interacts with very few of the other groups at the table
and he is not the most pOpular student in the black world at South.
Bob, the loudest BJ. refers to him as "the punk sissy" because Allan
allegedly hid during the race fight of last spring. Allan claims to
have only one friend in the school but he is not part of the BA's
and he does not attend classes with Allan. Their friendship begins
when school ends and they rarely see each other during the school day.

Allan lives in a neighborhood not far from the school which
he describes as "integrated." He claims that living in an integrated
neighborhood and attending an integrated school have caused him
some problems. He told me that,

It used to be in junior high school that if you were

talking to some white kids in the hall and the black

guys would see you, they would give you a hard time

about it. So I started hanging around with only black

kids and then we moved to an integrated neighborhood and

I didn't have many friends there. It seems that at

South, you can talk to whites and the blacks won't say
anything to you about it but I'm still confused.

109

Allan made a conscious effort to sit at the black table and
associate with blacks. He claimed that he had "nothing against
whites" but he thought that it was "better" if the blacks in the
school at least hung around together. If there were no blacks in
his classes, Allan.would sit by himself. Like most of the blacks
in the school, Allan felt that the black students at South were badly
divided and rarely cooperated with other blacks except during the
periods of conflict with the white students.

Allan considered physics to be his most interesting course and
he was not alone in his appreciation of the class and the teacher.
Although most of the students in the class were college-bound,
several Hempies and many students who had no plans to attend college
cited Physics as their favorite course. It was the rare student
who had not at least heard about the "good physics course" and many
students who were not enrolled in the course would sit in the back
of the room just "to watch the stuff going on." Kim and Cathy--the
girls who hang around with the Hempies-~regularly sat in on the
Physics class, in part because Jeff takes the course but they claim
to enjoy "just hanging around there."

Mr. H., the Physics teacher, was a doctoral candidate in physics
at a nearby university when he became interested in public school
education. Although he is only a dissertation away from his degree,
he claims that he is not interested in teaching the academic aspects
of physics to kids and he says that he is not a "physics teacher"
but rather he "teaches kids some physics." Students are greeted as
they enter his class by'a number of bumper stickers pasted on.the

door which read:

110

"Physics is X Rated,

This is Physics County, and

Joe Cool Takes Physics."

The bumper stickers are a part of the enthusiasm Mr. H.
generated for his course that captured the imaginations of the
diverse student population in his class. Mr. H. is a very active
teacher who is always in motion and always talking to students. He
dresses informally and on alternate days he could wear jeans and an
open neck shirt and then a jacket and tie. When he lectured on
Aristotle's concept of the physical universe, he wore a mock toga
and laurel wreath. The majority of his classes are not lecture-
recitation sessions but a series of individual experiments that the
students must perform to learn the physical principles involved. In
order to get credit for understanding the principle, the students
would individually "confirm” their knowledge with Mr. H. He would
ask them several questions to see if they had understood the principles
and the student's grade was in part determined by the number of
experiments he had done and the principles he had confirmed with Mr.
H. At first it confused me when I heard students speaking of going
to Physics so they could be "confirmed" but after a few sessions I
understood his system and realized that there were no religious
rites being conducted in class.

Mr. H. worked hard and the students appreciated it. They were
relieved when he had a student teacher because they felt that "it
‘would make it easier for him." Mr. H. let the students listen to an
FM stereo rock station as they worked and he encouraged rather than

demanded work from the class.

111

"Listen," he would say, "it's hot in here today so you can
work on the experiments and I'll be here to answer any questions. You
can confirm some of last week's work or if you want, it's o.k. to
c0p some z's." (take a nap)

His class was generally an incredible example of purposeful
activity for the entire period with students going from experiment to
experiment and Mr. H. running around confirming students and students
constantly asking and receiving help and advice from each other and
the teacher. It was perhaps this flurry of activity and the music
that attracted so many visitors. There were always a half dozen
students who were not enrolled in the course who would sit and
observe the physics class. Mr. H. had a great deal of equipment
lying around the room. There were balance scales, magnets, weights,
pulleys, springs, and a host of expensive electronic devices. I
asked him if he had any problems with vandalism especially since the
students had a "reputation" for stealing. He told me with a good
deal of pride that it was rare if anything was taken.

My kids don't take anything. I trust them and

they know it. Every once in a while, the kids who

don't take Physics come in here and they rip off

some equipment. I saw one of my kids stop an

outsider who was stealing some magnets. He told

the kid that 'we don't steal here.' I really felt

good about that.

Physics was a demanding course and although Allan worked hard,
he did not seem to like the course as much as many of the other students.
Many of the students who regularly came to Mr. H.'s class and worked
hard in Physics, cut their other classes or did little work in them

and they had time and energy to devote to a class that interested

them. Allan worked hard in all of his classes whether he was interested

112

in them.or not and Physics was just one more class to master in his
busy schedule. During Physics, Allan.worked with three other black
students--one male and two females. Their discussions and inter-
actions were limited to the problems at hand. For the BA, the
school provided the basic organization for their activities and they
believed in the importance of academic work. Allan would enter a
classroom, look for the black students and pursue the objectives of
the day with little time devoted to anything else. The students he
associated with rarely discussed their social lives or personal
problems.

Allan and I sat in the library during one of the unstructured
days with two girls from Haiti. Allan had known them for over a year
and he claims that he spent a good deal of time with them but he did
not see them after school and he did not know that they were from a
foreign country until I asked them. "I thought they spoke funny," he
said referring to the Haitian accents, "but I was always too embarrassed
to ask." He was surprised to learn that I knew anything at all about
Haitian politics or history--especially since he did not. He was
impressed and somewhat astounded that there is a black nation with
black leadership in the Western Hemisphere. Allan is very interested
in black history and black culture and he reads a good deal about the
subjects. He also subscribes to "Encore," a magazine which is geared
to a black college-bound audience. Allan's sister is active in the
NAACP youth council in the city but although he is a member, he does
not think.much of the organization. "If you ask me," he confided, "they

are more interested in social things than political things."

113

Allan is a junior but he will be graduating this year because
he has taken several courses in South's night school. According to
school administrators, the night school not only serves the adult
population of the community, but over 400 high school-age students
are also "clients" of South's night school program. Some of the
"clients" are like Allan and take a few courses at night in addition
to day time courses but most of them are high school age students who
are not currently in school or students who left school previously
but need only a few courses for their diplomas.

Allan took a psychology class this year and he was disappointed
that the course was not challenging enough. "I thought it was going
to be a tough course," he told me, "because there were a lot of older
people in there and I thought older people would be smarter." Allan
does not understand why everyone does not take school as seriously as
he does and on occasion, he shows signs of being an academic elitist.

He is a member of the junior class steering committee--a quasi-
legislative body--and he proposed that "no student should be a member
of the committee unless he has a "4 point" average (all "A" work).

His fellow committee members tried to lower the grade point average
to a "3 point" (a "B" average) but Allan protested.

I believe that a student with only a 3.0 average

should be spending his time in class. You must

realize that the primary function of the school

is to encourage learning.

Dr. Gordon, the building principal, was present at the meeting
and he objected to any minimum grade point average because it would
provide the non-academic students in the school with a "cause." Despite

Allan's previous hard-line stand on the grade point average he readily

capitulated to the principal's reasoning.

114

The Steering Committee represents the total extent of student
political organization in the school. Each class has a Steering
Committee which is composed of twelve elected members: four blacks,
four whites, and four Chicanos. Dr. Gordon is fond of pointing out
that this type of representation is similar to the U.S. Senate but
the absence of a body similar to the House of Representatives leaves
the school with a unicameral body which has few functions. The
Steering Committees are elected by the students and their function
is limited to planning some social events. When the issue of a
student strike to protest the change in schedule arose, few students
believed that the Committeeswere viable organizations which could
address the issues. The Committees lacked any real power or authority
and many students referred to them as a "sham."

Allan was frustrated by his role on the Junior Class Steering
Committee. It was rare that more than one—third of the members were
present for any given meeting and Allan felt it was primarily the
Chicanos who were letting the Committee down. At one Committee meeting
he said, "they can't be counted on. They never show up for meetings
and they never tell you why."

Allan doesn't have time to waste at meetings which accomplish
nothing. He rarely wastes time during his day. He runs from class
to class, takes an active role in every class and he is willing to
help a teacher out with a lesson that is not going well. He will
force himself to volunteer an answer when other students have nothing
to say. He will ask questions long after other students have stopped
paying attention and in one class he was the only one who was not

talking or taking a nap. Allan believes in school and the BA needs

115

Allan to make thembelieve that school is as important as he thinks
it is.

Allan has a part-time job on weekends and he rarely goes to
parties. Several of the BA are socially oriented as well as
academically oriented and belong to other groups which serve their
social needs. Some members of the BA could not imagine running into
Allan at a party. After school, Allan becomes something of a loner.
He would either get together with his one male friend or spend long

hours alone in front of the television.

College Bound Boys (CBB)

The college bound boys are a closely knit group of juniors
who take most of their classes together and spend a good deal of time
with each other after school and on weekends. They are polite, good-
natured and conscientious students who are welleliked by their teachers
and admired by a considerable number of sophomore girls. The CBB come
from the wealthier homes in the city. They wear their hair short,
sport well~fitting perma~press clothes and their cursing is limited
to mild Obscenities in the locker room. There are four central members
of this all white group but Ken and Carl are the closest friends and
they comprise the dyad around which the group forms. Ken and Carl
are approximately the same height and build and they look enough
alike that some of their teachers would, on occasion, confuse their
names.

The Hempies were glad that I spent some time with the CBB.
They claimed that Ken and Carl would be able to provide "another look
at the school." They were right. Ken and Carl never loitered in the

halls, cut classes, smoked cigarettes or used drugs. During the

116

time I spent with the CBB, I never ran into the Hempies except in
class. The CBB spent most of their unstructured time working in the
resource centers or in the library. They were usually surrounded
by girls and they interspersed their working with flirting and
casual conversation. Carl had a steady girlfriend during the time
I was there and one of the Hempies described her as "pretty cute
for a 'squeak.'" Carl's girlfriend is a sophomore so they do not
take any classes together and he is able to spend most of his time
with the group. Like most of the girls the CBB date, Carl's girl
friend is very attractive and well-dressed. She often'wore skirts
and stockings and in a school without a rigid dress code, this was
enough to set her apart from most of the other girls.

The school looked pleasant when I hung around with the CBB.
They enjoyed their classes; there was a good deal of light banter
and talk about sports and there was a constant series of gentle
flirtations with whatever girls (white) happened to be around. If
they had any annoying habits it was that they constantly were looking
in the mirror to comb their hair and comparing their present chest
size with their measurements of a year ago. They knew a lot of
girls and they flirted a good deal and they treated girls with what
they called "respect." They did not use Obscenities in the presence
of female students and they were willing to carry their books.

Ken and Carl began their day with a Co-ed gym class. The
class engaged in a wide variety of activities from horse back riding
to roller skating. Many of the activities involved leaving the school
and spending money out of their own pockets. These activities were

selected by the students in the class but the expense involved made

117

than prohibitive for many of the students in the school. Although
Ken and Carl were among the few students I knew at South who did
not work, they never complained of the expense. Bob, Dwight and
William of the BJ group were in the class during the first semester
but they did not enroll for the second semester because they said
the class was too expensive for them. The Co-ed gym class sponsored
a 1950's style sock hop to raise money for the class and although
Bob did not plan to take the course and would not benefit from the
fund raising, he did agree to serve as disc jockey for the evening
and he did a very good job. Although the CBB and the BJ were in
the same class, they do not interact.

All of the CBB were on the swimming team. The team, like
most of South's athletic teams, had only a mediocre season but this
did not dampen the CBB's enthusiasm for the sport. On the day of
a meet, they would be nervous in anticipation that only a high school
athlete can understand. On the day of one meet, Carl spent the
entire period of Co-ed gym in the locker room alone, trying to
"get himself together." An upcoming meet would dominate all
of their conversation and activity. The CBB complained about the
lack of attendance at the meets and Ken claimed that the "only
peOple who show up are our parents, a few friends, and two all-night
janitors." At the one home meet I attended, there were more spectators
from the visiting school than there were from South.

Most of the athletic events I attended drew a poor student
turnout although the faculty were faithful supporters of the teams.
At one basketball game there were over thirty faculty members in

attendance but the students filled less than one fourth of the

118

gymnasium. Students did not support the teams and it was not uncommon
to hear the students who did not participate in sports ridicule the
athletes.

"You can't get athlete's foot at South because there are no
athletes here," and, "Anyone who goes out for the team gets a Varsity
letter," were typical of these comments but on the morning after the
basketball team upset a local rival, the halls were electric with
praise for the team. On that morning, the students were saying that
South is too small to be a Class A team and if they were in Class B,
where they belong, they could be state champions.

During the second hour on structured days, Ken and Carl
and one of the other CBB had Chemistry class together. This was
another of the very papular classes in the school and the CBB would
often look over to me to see if I was enjoying the class and they
‘would want to know if I found the course "challenging." Like most
of the classes at South, Chemistry was not a rigorous academic course
and there was a wide variety of students and of abilities in the
class. Chemistry was a strange course for me to attend because there
was one Hempie and one BJ in the class as well as the CBB. I attended
this class quite often and depending on the individuals I was with,

I would sit in different areas in the room and interact only with
the group or individuals I accompanied to the class. The CBB claim
that they learn a lot in the class and they tell the story of the
mock nuclear reactor which the teacher set up. It covered the whole
room and Ken said, "you could sit in the middle of the thing and

watch the neutron.whipping around. It was neat."

119

Mr. T., the Chemistry teacher, was involved with many aspects
of student life and in the words of one of his students, "he really
cares about the kids." He is the advisor to the Outing Club and he
takes the club on ski weekends and camp weekends that attract
students from a variety of groups. The field trips that the Chemistry
class took were the talk of the school for weeks. His band plays at
school dances and he helps the gymnastic club and the cheerleaders.

In addition to Chemistry, Mr. T. teaches Consumers Math and those
students are also lavish in their praise for him. A black sophomore
boy referred to Mr. T. as the "hippest dude in the school."

Ken and Carl enjoyed Chemistry and they would often come
in during their lunch period to work on experiments. They are
diligent students and they did nearly as much work in drivers education
as they did in Chemistry. They were as concerned with their grades
in Co-ed physical education as they were in any of their academic
courses.

I trusted Ken well enough to ride around with him.in the
Driver Education car. The school has an elaborate driver training
course laid out in a parking lot on school grounds. It has curves,
grades, stop signs, traffic lights and an area to practice parallel
parking. The cars are equipped with radio receivers and the instructor,
who was located in a tower overlooking the course, could talk to the
student on the radio and tell them.what they‘were doing wrong but
the students did not have a transmitter and they could not answer
back. The instructor announced that he was going to call the roll.

"Blow your horn once if you are here. Blow it twice if you

want me to tell you your grade on your last test."

120

Ken blew his horn twice and his "A" was announced over the
radio. He smiled and looked around to see if his friends would
acknowledge his achievement and he then went on to talk about
something else.

"I have to hold my hands on the wheel like this," he said
indicating the two-hands-on-the-wheel driver's manual style, but I
know when I get my license, I'll have one arm out the window and
one hand on the bottom of the wheel. School's like that; they
teach you a lot of worthless things, but I'm having fun."

The CBB enjoyed the modular system. The unstructured days
gave them the time to get all of their work done in school and they
appreciated being free of homework after school. Ken told me that,
"the mod program let's you get your work done in school so you can
do other stuff." When I asked what other "stuff" was he said, "girls
and swimming--there's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

The CBB enjoyed school. They rarely had any trouble with
academic courses and if they did not like a teacher or a course,
they‘would evaluate the course by the grade they received. "That's a
pretty boring class, Ken told me, "but I get B's." If I would st0p
them in the halls with a casual greeting and ask them how they were
doing, they would respond with a report of the swimming teamis record,
their individual times, and their girlfriends.

The CBB often got together on weekends. No one in the group
had a car of his own but they seemed to have ready access to one of
their parent's vehicles. Ken, Carl and one of the other CBB played
guitar, folk mostly but they also played some rock, and they would

get together on weekends and play or they would go out on dates. A

121

date usually consisted of attending a school play, ball game or
dance or going to a movie in town.

As a group the CBB generated a reality that reaffirmed the
value of school as a road to college and success. They rarely
interacted with students who did not agree about the purpose of

education.

Isolates6

Most of the students at South belonged to at least one peer
group association and it was possible to be a member of two or more
groups. When "J" of the Hempie group runs track he spends at least
three hours a day with the track team and he considers himself a
"part-time Hempie and a part-time jock." He spends less time with
the Hempies during track season and he gets high less frequently. The
group can accept his dual allegiance although every once in a while
they drag him off to a car, with more drama than actual force, and
demand that he get high with them. "J" would scream that they were
"ruining a great athlete" but he did not resiazfor very long.

Seasonal involvement with athletic teams provides "J" with access to
his informal group of friends and the formal structured group of the
team.

Female students in particular could associate with a variety
of groups. There were all-female groups in the school such as the
several groups of cheerleaders, secretarial students, and groups of
females in other vocational blocks. Female students and female groups

could also associate with two or more male groups.

122

Joan is a junior who has close friends in both the CBB and
the Hempies and she represents the only informal contact these
diverse groups had with each other. Joan seems to be aware of the
group structure in the school and she does not discuss the members
of one group while she is with the other. The CBB and the Hempies
see each other many times during their school days but they never
so much as exchange greetings or nod their heads at one another.
Joan seemed equally comfortable with both groups but she did not
spend a great deal of time with either of them. Joan takes school
work seriously enough to share common outlooks and problems with
the CBB. Although she does not use drugs, she is honest, open,
and friendly and the Hempies consider her to be a friend. Joan
alternates her wardrobe between "basic blues" and a skirt and blouse.
The Hempies would compliment her when she dressed up and the CBB
sometimes teased her if she wore her "grubby jeans" too often.

Joan enjoys having a great many friends and knowing "a lot
of different people" as she puts it and she was genuinely popular with
both groups. When I asked Joan who her friends were in school, she
named members of several groups but Joan seems to have no one group
of her own.

There were many students like Joan who did not belong to any

one group but who were able to spend short periods of their day'with

 

6The term "isolate" refers to the students who have no group
of friends with which they regularly associated. See, Philip A.
Cusick, Inside High School (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1973), pp. 163-174.

123

several different groups. Donald is a white male who knows many of
the Hempies but he does not use drugs and he was not uncomfortable
when the Hempies would leave him to get high. Donald would often go
to class alone and interact with the students there. He was
comfortable in classes with the BJ and the CBB as well as in classes
in which he interacted with few students. His social life was built
around Church league basketball, the teams he played on in school and
neighborhood activities. All of his activities in and out of school
involved different groups and he interacted with many different
students. He found school "boring" but he claimed that he liked to
go to South because "it's easy to make friends and to know a lot of
pe0ple."

Not all of the isolates were as happy as Joan and Donald. Many
of them had no group of their own and interacted with very few people
during the day. Ray was one of those students. He is a black junior
who takes a three hour vocational block but he spends most of the
time in that class by himself and after that class he rarely ever
speaks to anyone else. His clothes reflect an all too apparent poverty.
He wears sneakers during the coldest and snowiest days of winter and
his ill fitting jacket barely covers his back. He stopped me several
times in the halls to invite me to come to class with him or just to
talk. During one of the unstructured days, we talked for almost an
hour in the main lobby. He told me the story about the "six white
guys he was looking for." According to Ray, they were trying to kill
him because he had moved into an all white neighborhood and all of
the white girls were in love with him and he was'going to get them

one by one."

124

As we talked five or six groups of black student groups
circled the main hallways and walked by us several times. Everytime
they would pass, Ray would look up at them looking anxious to exchange
some greeting‘with them but they did not look in his direction. For
the better part of an hour the groups passed by and not one of the
students gave him even the slightest recognition. Finally, one
sophomore boy walked by and nodded at Ray. Ray became very animated
and he excitedly recounted several stories that involved himself and
the sophomore boy. He told me that he could get that guy to help
him fight off the whites that were after him. Ray was happy: someone
had said hello to him that day.

Linda is a very pretty white senior. She is talented and
intelligent. She is involved in the school plays and she is one of
the few students who reads books outside of class but Linda is an
isolate. Linda knows a lot of people in the school but she rarely
spends much time with any one student. She claims that she has one
friend in the school but they do not take classes together and they
do not see each other very often. Linda says that things were lonelier
for her last year and school was more boring. She said that she
"used to smoke a lid [about one ounce] of marijuana a week" with one
other girl because there was nothing else to do. Linda does not
smoke as much marijuana this year but she still claims to be bored.
Linda spends a good deal of her time alone but she did not like to
eat alone or smoke cigarettes alone and it was not unusual for Linda
to ask someone to have lunch or a cigarette with her.

Linda is well known in the school and her teachers do seem to

take an interest in her and although she appreciates their caring,

125

she does not respond. She cuts class very often and her teachers

often would stop her in the hall to invite her to class or to come in
and talk with them. Linda would promise to see them but she often broke
her engagements. Several times she promised to meet me at one class

or another and then she would decide not to come without telling me.

She would invariably apologize and tell me why she had not been

there. "I just couldn't get it together for that clasd'; or, "I

was too stoned'; or, "I fell asleep in the car" explained away her
absences.

Linda is involved with school's dramatics and she is interested
in literature and theater. Her guidance counselor would like her to
go to college next year but she avoids making an appointment to see
him. She waxes romantic about living in "wyoming or Mbntana or
someplace like that" with a communal family. She describes her own
family as "just a bunch of people who live in the same house."

Linda's natural attractiveness is highlighted by a careful
application of make-up--slightly in excess of the average amount worn
by South's female students. She always has the attention of male
students but she has no regular boyfriend though she dates often.

She told me that "guys always want their egos booste " and she claims
to enjoy "deflating a few egos around here." Linda spent most of her
day complaining of being bored, getting high, and castigating the people

she referred to as "the snobs in this school."

126

Schedule Change

On December 11, Dr. Gordon sent a memorandum to the staff of

South High School concerning the change in schedule from flexible

‘modular scheduling to a more traditional system of five classes a

day five days a week (five by five). The following excerpts from

that document summarize his position.

To define the problem:

A.

Problem in general: The implementation of the flexible
modular schedule at [South] High School has been

an on-going effort over the past two years. On the

one hand, the program has been most successful for
those students and staff equipped to handle it, while
on the other hand, significant numbers of students have
not been served. In an effort to minimize the

problem of providing a basic education to all

students, [South] began an every other day schedule

of structured and unstructured time this fall. We

are now at a position to implement another step

in the [South] program. This involves retaining

those that have succeeded . . . differentiated
staffing, the evening school which serves 400 students,
large grouyamall group instruction while discarding
those that have not been judged appropriate--[flexible
modular scheduling].

Among the lessons learned at [South] is the hard

fact that not all students can successfully negotiate
blocks of unstructured time. Those that can, have
accomplished a great deal during the two years. Those
that can't have failed to show significant growth.
Because the number of students not exhibiting desired
growth is over 30%, the task became one of developing
a plan with which to keep the advantages as listed
above while providing a structure for those who need
it. Unstructured time should be available for those
who can utilize and have earned it while those who
cannot handle it will be placed into structured
situations and be encouraged to develop a capacity

to earn such flexibility.

Specifics of problem:

1. Data on student achievement: The number and
percentage of high school students receiving "E's"
(failing grades) across the [city] School District
have been compared over the last two years. The

 

127

data indicate a higher percentage of failure at
[South] than in the other three schools. In
contrast the number of [South] students receiving
"A" grades has remained consistent with the other
high schools. Drop-out rates between secondary
schools also remain consistent across the district.
2. Data on student class attendance: The number
of students missing classes over the second
semester has been documented. Comparisons between
structured and unstructured days this semester have
been made. Differences in 90% of the courses
affected by unstructured days indicate more
absenteeism on the unstructured days.

3. Personnel available to maintain open labs and
student centers: Over the past year, three
differentiated staffing positions have been cut

at [South] due to decreasing enrollment. The
positions have had an effect on supplying support
staff to keep learning stations beyond the

regular classrooms open.

4. Availability of extended dayjprogram.for
students to attain additional credits: This fall
[South] has offered courses for credit to students
through the extended day program. As the program
develops and course offerings are extended,
students desiring additional credits can be served.

 

 

The administration was faced with a problem. According to their
most recent survey, 85 percent of the students answered "yes" to a
question.which asked if they thought "the modular schedule has more
advantages than disadvantages." (see appendix C, page 185). On the
other hand, 30 percent of South's students received one or more
failing grades during the second semester of the 1972-73 school year.
This was nearly double the failure rate of the city's other three high
schools. (see appendix C , page 188) .

Dr. Gordon told me that the flexible modular schedule was
"just not working." He claimed that the school had to be "accountable"
for all of the students and with 30 percent to 40 percent of the
students receiving one or more failing grades during each grading

period, he did not believe that the school was serving the student

128

population well enough. Dr. Gordon and several of the staff members
indicated that the school was under fire from "downtown." The Central
Administration did not like South's failure rate and they wanted

South to "tighten up" and produce statistics that would be comparable
to the other high schools in the city. Staff members cite the
reduction in the paraprofessionals as an indication that South was
losing administrative favor downtown.

There was another troublesome statistic: the cut rate. South
collected data and reported the Comparative Absence Records of South
students. (see appendixc page 186). This data was gathered during
the first marking period of the 1973-74 school year. During this
period the number of students receiving one or more failing grades
had risen 8.3 percent from the previous year and stood at 38.3 percent
of the student body. The school found that the students were absent
from individual classes at the rate of 15 percent on "regular days"
(structured) and 25.66 percent on "flexible days" (unstructured). The
school concluded that the alternating days of structure and unstructure
were not the solution to the scheduling problem and they also
concluded that a move toward all structured days would lower the
absentee rate and make them more accountable.7 At first glance this

appears to be reasonable but the statistics need further explanation.

 

7Dr. Gordon's memorandum.of December 11, refers to those students
who have "exhibited desired growth" and who have "earned unstructured
time" and those who have not earned unstructured time. The new
schedule would impose structure on all of the students and the decision
of who has earned unstructured time in the future would be left to
individual teachers working with their students.

129

The cut rate for some classes differed considerably from the
mean cut rate of their sample. (see appendixc page 186 ). Students
‘were absent from Physics, for example, at a rate of 6.8 percent on
structured days and only 1 percent on the unstructured days when
mean cut rate of their sample was almost 26 percent. Students cut
American government at the rate of 24.1 percent on structured days
and 51.5 percent on unstructured days. They cut Life Science at the
rate of 30.6 percent on structured days and 64.7 percent on
unstructured days. The school's data suggest that several courses
were significantly above the mean for student absence and several
were significantly below. Why were students attending Physics,
Economics, Geometry and the Secretarial and Residential-Construction
vocational blocks with great regularity but cutting almost 50 percent
of their Life Science classes and over 34 percent of Advanced Metals
class and ahmost 38 percent of their Government classes? Was it the
schedule? the teachers? the curriculum? or the students who were
enrolled in those classes? The administration did not have the answers
for these questions and they did not want to make inferences from
the data beyond concluding that the alternation of unstructured days
and structured days was not working. Dr. Gordon did explain the low
cut rate in Physics by saying that this course "attracts better
students." By and large this is true but it does not account for
the Hempies, dopers and non-academic students who regularly attended
Physics but cut their other courses at or above the mean rate.

The school had data at their disposal which they consciously
chose to ignore--or perhaps more appropriately stated, they had access

to information stored in the computer which they did not wish to

130

retrieve. At an informal meeting of the lead teachers and the
representative of the district's Office of Research and Evaluation,
the researcher asked if they wanted to know whg_was doing the cutting.

It was possible to develop a profile of the students who were
absent from class an excessive number of times. Were they the blacks?
the Chicanos? the poor? the students from broken homes? The lead
teachers did not want this information. Whatever suspicions they
harbored concerning the students who cut classes, they did not want
a quantification of the data.

The faculty was badly divided by the proposed change. Rumors
of debate and heated faculty meetings filtered into the students' world.
There were rumors that some of the teachers would resign if the change
was implemented and some members of the faculty did check‘with their
union representatives to see if the change would be contrary to
provisions in their contracts. According to one member of the faculty,
the teachers were promised five years in.which to make the system work
and now after only two and one half years the systemwwas being
abandoned. He claimed that he did not know how to handle flexible
modular scheduling when he first came to the school and only now after
a great deal of work, and effort was it beginning to work in his
classes. He was angry that he would not be given the opportunity to
try it over a longer period of time. This feeling was shared by many
of the teachers. At one point, a vote of the faculty indicated
nearly a 50-50 split on whether they preferred to retain the old
system or adopt the new proposal. Although the administrators did

not address the students, many teachers discussed the issue in class

131

and the students made up mental lists of those teachers and administra-
tors who were "for" and those who were "against" the mods.

The pr0posed schedule change would not alter the schedules
of approximately 40 percent of the student body. During the fall
semester, there were 322 students enrolled in three hour vocational
blocks, 147 students in the Co-op program (released-time-fordwork) and
31 students who attended the Academic Interest Center8 for extended
periods during the day. The students in these programs would not be
greatly effected by the schedule change because the modular schedule
had had the least impact on these programs. A student enrolled in a
three hour vocational block had that block every day from 8 a.m. to
11 a.m. The alternating days of structure and non-structure effected
only the one or two classes he took in the afternoons. Jeff, of the
Hempie group, for example was on the Co-op program and he was released
every afternoon to work. The alternating days of structure and non-
structure effeCtEd only the two academic courses he took in the mornings,
and similarly for others.

The student groups that would be effected by the change had
an issue that could potentially unite them. Despite the differences
in their social realities, the modular system'was someting that 60
percent of the students shared in common. Tony claimed that this
was the first time that the students at South had been "excited about
anything." Several groups were meeting simultaneously to discuss

the schedule change and possible student reactions to it. The groups

 

a'l‘he academic interest center is designed to serve all of the
schools in the district. It provides special courses that could not
be staffed or draw enough students in any one school. Mr. H.,
the Physics teacher, teaches an astronomy course at the AIC, and
John takes a class in modern dance there.

132

had rarely communicated with each other previously and even now they
did not know what other groups were doing about the schedule. I
was perhaps the only individual in the school who knew that there
were several diverse groups meeting about the same issue. It certainly
would have helped them if they had joined in a common effort but my
role precluded any action on my part that would have brought them
together.

The various groups met in different places and at different
times to discuss possible actions and protests they could engage in
to prevent the school from abandoning the modular system. There was
something ironic about most of the meetings. The school encouraged all
sorts of ad hoc groups and afforded the students the use of conference
rooms in which to meet. The students were meeting in the school's
conference rooms during class time and drinking the school's coffee
while planning protests against the school's rigidity.

The Hempies met only briefly with a group called the Students
Rights Committee. This group was originally assembled to deal with
alleged infringements of the students' legal rights by the school but
they had not met prior to the issue of the schedule change and they
had only three brief meetings in all. A friend of the Hempies named
Barry was the leader of this movement. He is a member of the drug
subculture but because he takes most of his courses in the Careers
area, he did not associate with the Hempies during the day and he
rarely saw them after school. Barry, even by the Hempies relaxed
standards, is a "freak." He wears his hair long, spends a great deal

of his time hanging around the halls, and he always sports a roach

133

clip9 from his belt. During the time I was there, Barry had been
arrested for possession of drugs and violation of the city's curfew
ordinance, and he was in constant danger of being expelled from

school. He had been suspended once for possession of marijuana and
both Barry and the school administrators feel he cannot function well
in a traditional school setting. Next year he plans to attend the
city's alternative high school which is designed expressly for students
who have difficulty adjusting to the structure of high schools in the
city. The school will open next year for its first class and Barry
hopes to be one of its students.

Barry had led an unsuccessful student walk-out in the junior
high school and he wanted to try and organize some sort of walk out
or strike to protest the schedule change. He asked "J", Tony, Jeff
and myself to be part of his committee. We were joined by Ruben, a
Chicano who usually wore a wide-brimmed purple hat, and Harry a
slender black male who was a good friend of Ruben. He too wore a hat"
a black wide-brim--and sometimes he also wore a gold earring.

Ruben was quite outspoken and he had gone to see Dr. Gordon on
his own to protest the schedule change and ask for a student assembly
to discuss the issue. The principal refused to allow the assembly and
he explained to Ruben the problems caused by the failures and the
cutting. As he told all of the students who came to see him, the
school was just not "doing the job" it was supposed to under the mod
system. Ruben ran into me in the halls after his meeting with Dr.

Gordon and he was very angry.

 

9A device which is designed to hold small marijuana cigarettes

134

"Sadistics, sadistics (statistics), all he gives me is
sadistics"! Thirty-five percent of this, sixty percent of that. I'm
not a sadistic, man! I'm a person! I don't understand sadistics.
All I know is I don't like the change"!

It is somewhat difficult to understand all of Ruben's anger
because he rarely comes to school and he often cuts classes when he
was there. He was in the Co-op program that required students to
come to school in the morning and work in the afternoon. Many of
those students habitually cut their classes and often they cut the
whole morning but according to the teacher who supervised their work,
they rarely missed a day on the job and they were rarely late for
work. Although Ruben and the others on Co-op would not be affected
by the change in schedule, he felt it was his "responsibility to speak
out against something[he did] not like."

Barry, Ruben and Harry came to school so irregularly that any
sustained action to protest the schedule change became impossible. The
Student Rights Committee wanted to take radical action and stage a
protest or a strike or a walkout but they had no idea how to get the
mass of students involved in their programs. After talking about it
in two additional meetings, they decided that it was impossible to
organize and the group broke up. Tony's optimism for getting the
students united was short lived and he and the rest of the Hempies
attempted no other serious protests or activities to forestall the
change or protest it once it came.

The BJ and the other groups in the black community did not
organize into formal organizations to deal with the schedule change.

Dwight told me that he had been in the school for three years and he

135

was tired of them changing the system but that there was little that
anyone could do. He also claimed that if the new system was offensive
enough to the students, they would walk out on their own and no one
would need to organize a strike or a protest. Bob and William
believed that it was impossible to get South's students together on any
issue and they thought it was best to accept the change.

Allan of the BA wanted the students to unite behind the Class
Steering Committees and turn them into viable political organizations
which could present a list of grievances to the principals. He was
clearly hurt when the students bypassed the Committees because they
were, in "J's" terms," tools of the administration." Allan later
claimed that the modular system was too difficult a system because
it "put all the burden on the students." He said he would be happier
with the five by five system anyway because the work would be easier
and "you would know where you stand in every class."

The CBB had been the most vocal supporters of the modular system
but although they were disappointed to hear that they were being
cancelled, they claimed that they would go along with anything that
the school adopted. Carl asked me in confidence if I knew who the
students were who were causing all the "problems."

"You spend a lot of time in the halls," he said, "who is
ruining the system for the rest of us? Is it the freaks"?

Everyone was looking for someone to blame for the schedule
change. When they blamed the administration, they would point to
Mr. Wade who they considered to have been an enemy of the mods all
along and by his own admission, he was not a supporter of the system.

Some of the students blamed "those peeple downtown" but they were never

136

able to identify them for me. Most of the students blamed other
students in the school. Many students came up to me and in frustration,
accused a variety of groups for their problem. One white male told

me,

"It's not my fault that the students are failing; it's the
hippies. I know a lot of them and they're screwing it up for the rest
of us. I do my work. I plan to go to college."

I asked him.if he cut classes and when he responded that he
had, I told him that the school was probably upset with him too.

"Yeah," he said, "but I'm passing. The hippies fail everything."

Another student standing near us believed the fault lies'with
the blacks.

"It's the damn niggers. They are always so loud in the halls
and stuff that the school gets uptight."

Most of the students blamed someone else for the change. The
conversation I had with the two students was conducted in the legal
smoking area but at an illegal time when we were supposed to be in
class.

Linda summed up the majority sentiment of the students. She
said: "This school is always changing and there ain't shit you can do
about it"!

Not all of the students were so resigned. A group of college
bound white students organized a committee and called themselves The
Concerned Students for Better Education (CSBE). Daniel, one of the
leaders of this group of students, understood publicity better than

the leaders of the other groups. He circulated petitions which nearly

137

everyone in the school signed, and he and another student hung posters
which read:

"Five by Five is Bold Jive,"

"Preserve the System," and,

"The Mods are the Best, Our Teachers do the Rest."

The CSBE also had access to a mimeograph machine and they put
out several bulletins. One of them read:

IT'S NOT TOO LATE

 

The administration would have you believe that the
scheduling system for second semester has already been
decided. IT HASN'T! We can still save our system.
This can be done with the strength of present student,
faculty, and parent opposition to the changes which
have been proposed. We must stand up for our educa-
tional rights. With a united effort we can prevent any
undesirable change. Don't be discouraged! We still
can save our system by joining together. Show your
support by wearing S.O.S. buttons and signing petitions
asking to be heard. Ask your teachers to stand firm
against the proposed change and have your parents let
the administration know of their opposition. Join
together now for the betterment of education.

 

 

Concerned Students for
Better Education

The CSBE urged students to wear "S.O.S. Buttons" (Save our
System). Many teachers also joined the students and wore buttons and
signed petitions asking that the mods be retained. The CSBE also
contacted a lawyer from Legal Aide to determine if they had any rights
to demand a certain form of education and also to find out if it was
possible for them to stage a walkout or a strike. The CSBE drew up
elaborate plans to contact parents, the press and the local television
stations if and when they staged their protests.

The lawyer gave the students nearly fifty hours of his time

and he listened with great interest and respect to the questions and

138

problems the students presented to him. His patience and willingness
to hear the students out won him a great deal of respect in the
school. He spent two hours in a meeting with Dr. Gordon and Daniel
trying to find out if there was any hope for a compromise. He later
told me that despite the students dissatisfaction with the new system,
there was almost nothing they could do to fight it.

The CSBE tried to enlist parent support for the retention of
the modular system. They organized a phone-calling campaign and
asked parents to Speak out on the schedule issue and they arranged
several tables at South's Open House for Parents to answer questions
about the system. Their efforts were disappointing. Less than 100
parents came to the Open house and very few of them were willing to
wear S.O.S. buttons or sign petitions. The phone calls taught the
students something the administration had already known: most of
the parents were either uninterested or uninformed about the modular
system. Some students were offended by the rudeness and abusive
language the parents used on the phone and the opposition they expressed
toward the mods.

The administrators believe that the parents were the single
greatest force which caused the demise of the modular system. The
head of the guidance department claims that the parents never did
understand the system despite a bi-lingual newsletter that the school
sent out every month which explained the system and reported what was
going on in the school. He said,

The parents call up and say; 'Hey what's a six day
cycle'? . . . I can't explain this system to many
people. . . . It hurts me when I realize that they

don't understand me. I say we have three mods to the
hour and nineteen mods in a day and a six day cycle and

139

some pe0ple thought the kids were going to school
on Saturday! Then some of them would call and say,
'Where's my kid'? I'd say, 'Well, he's on
unstructured time right now.’ Then they would say,
'Well would you get him for me'? I'd have to say
that we didn't exactly know where he was. 'He may
be in one of the resource centers on F Day.‘ The
they'd say, 'F day what's that? You mean he goes
to different places on different days? What the
hell do you mean 'unstructured time'?

Mr. Wade, the assistant principal for Student Services, also

claims that it is very difficult to get parents involved with the

10

school unless the child was threatened with suspension. I asked him

if there was any other way to get the parents to come in to talk
about the problems of their children.

The answer is absolutely no; I've tried it. I can't
help it but that's the way they [the parents] are.
But the minute I send a letter out to the parents and
say your son is suspended and cannot come to school,
they'll be in the next day. It's human nature. I
called a Woman a couple of weeks ago and said 'could
you come in and see me? Your son is here . . . I'm
not going to suspend him right now but I want you to
come in because I want to nip this in the bud. . .
She said, 'Gee I can't make it for two or three
weeks. I'm so busy I really can't make it . . .'.

I said, 'Well in that case, I really don't want him
to miss any school but I'm going to have to suspend
him.' She said, 'Just a minute Mr. [Wade] , I'll be
up in ten minutes.‘ She was there in ten minutes.

 

10"Suspension" refers to the school punishment that denies a
student his right to attend school for a three day period. The most
common causes of suspension at South were Truancy, Drinking, and
Insubordination. Often a student could prevent his suspension by
bringing his parents to school. There were 162 suspensions during
the first semester of the 1973-1974 school year.

"Expulsions" refers to the school punishment that permanently
denies students the right to attend school. Very few students in the
city are ever expelled because an expelled student is denied use of
night school facilities including the program.where he could earn a
high school diploma. Students with serious discipline problems are
asked to voluntarily "drop out" of school so that some future time, they
can attend nighzschool. Fourteen students dropped out of school during
the first semester.

140

Three weeks when there was no suspension, ten

minutes with suspension.

Dr. Gordon claims that the community is the single most
important element in determining the success or failure of an
innovative program. I asked him what advice he would give to another
principal who wanted to try a flexible modular schedule or any other
innovation in education. He said,

The first thing I'd tell him is not to listen

primarily to educators. Telephone calls should

probably be made to key people in the community.

This is crucial . . . I'm saying that educators

can't just listen to themselves on this topic.

Student support for a strike or a walk out never materialized.
Attendance at CSBE meetings dwindled to less than ten students. The
momentary unity the students evidenced concerning the schedule
dissipated. The majority of the faculty voted to support the new
schedule, the administrators had always supported it, and the students

could not organize the divergent groups into a solid front to oppose

it.

On January 14, Dr. Gordon issued another Memorandum concerning
"Information Related to the Schedule Change." According to that
memorandum, the new schedule would begin on February 11 and every day
would have the same time schedule:

7:45-8:00 Teacher planning

8:00-9:00 First period and announcements. Students are
to remain in their first period class for
announcements which begin at 8:50

9:05 9:55 Second Period

10:00-10:50 Third Period

10:50-12:20 Fourth Period (student activities)

12:25-1:15 Fifth Period

1:20-2:10 Sixth Period (school dismissal at 2:10)

2:10-2:40 Seventh Period (student activities)

2:40-3:40 Teacher planning

141

Dr. Gordon emphasized the "internal flexibility" of the new
schedule. The resource centers, the library, and the Instructional
Media Center would still be available for student use. Individual
teachers were now responsible for providing the diversity of instruction
and flexibility of the curriculum that had previously been built into
the modular system. Internal flexibility was described in Dr. Gordon's
memorandum:

Flexible time for students:

1 Students may be sent to a resource center, the Instructional
Media Center, or the Career Center, by following the
procedures outlined for these centers.

2 Any two or more teachers by mutual agreement may let a
student work extra time in a given class (example: the
English teacher and Art teacher may allow a student to
miss an English class so that the student can spend
Egg hours in Art class).

3 A student activity period is designed for students to
participate in the following activities:

a. Resource Center use (homework, etc.)

b. Lunch

c. Enrichment activities

d. Tutoring

e. Student Meetings (e.g., assemblies, steering committees,
clubs, etc.)

f. Individual and group counseling

g. Extension to regular class activities (e.g., band march-
ing, co-ed physical education trip, etc.)

h. Athletic activities

The ninety minute lunch hour (student activity period) was
designed to provide students with time to "socialize" and meet with
their teachers in informal activities and clubs. There were also
school planned activities that Dr. Gordon outlined:

Lunch Hour:

1. Lunches will be served in B-lOl and B-102 from 10:50-12:20.
2. There will be Co-ed swim daily in the swimming pool from
11:10-12:10

142

3. The gym will be open daily from 11:10-12:10 for

physical activities (e.g. basketball, badminton,
intramurals etc.)

4. The student operated radio station may provide music

in the halls during student activity periods.

5. Student dances may be planned from 11:20 to 12:10 on

one day per week.

6. The media and resource centers will be open during the

student activity period and after school daily.

Dr. Gordon encouraged the teachers to discuss the new system
and the reasons for the change with their classes. He did not allow
the Steering Committees to call a general meeting of the classes and
he did not address the students in a body.11 On January 15, during
T.C.G.,Dr. Gordon officially announced the new schedule change.
Perhaps due to poor timing, the announcement was made shortly after
students were leaving their T.C.G. and going to their classes and
activities. Although the announcement could be heard in the halls,
very few students stopped to listen. Thursday, January 31 was the
last "unstructured day” in the history of South High School and the
CSBE carried around a mock coffin on which they had written, "The
MOdS"R. IoPo"

The effect of the new scheduling system on the various

students and student groups will be discussed in Chapter Five.

 

1'Dr. Gordon told me that the city schools rarely permitted

assemblies because they were potentially volatile situations and
fights often broke out.

CHAPTER V
ANALYSIS OF DATA

This research was guided by several exploratory questions which
were enumerated in Chapter One. This chapter contains an analysis of
the data presented in Chapter Four and responses to the exploratory
questions.
1. What is the nature of student groups? What unites the
members of a group? What is the extent of social
interaction between various groups?
The fact that students spend most of their school day in
voluntary peer group associations has been described by many researchers.1
The relatively minor role played by academics in these groups has also

been documented.2

It was found during this study that the attitudes
of students toward school varied from group to group and that the
academic aspects of school were a minor component of student reality
in all but the Black Academic group. What accounts for these

differences between groups? What unites the various members of a

group and how do they develop and maintain an "attitude" toward school?

 

1See for example: James S. Coleman, The Adolescent Society
(New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961); Philip A. Cusick, Inside
High School (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973); C. Wayne
Gordon, The Social System of the High School (Glencoe, Illinois: The
Free Press, 1957); August B. Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth (New York:
John Wiley and Sons, 1949).

2See for example: Claude E. Buxton, Adolescents in School
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973); Coleman, The Adolescent
Society; Cusick, Inside High School; Gordon, The Social System of
the High School.

143

144

At first glance, all of the students at South High School appear
to have a great deal in common. They are all teenagers who spend the
major part of their day in the same building.subject to the same rules
and regulations. Most of the students live within walking distance of
one another. Aimost all of them were born in the city in.which they
now live and they have attended the same public school system for
between ten and twelve years. Yet their habits in school and the
attitudes toward education vary considerably. Drug use is an example.
For some twenty to forty percent of the students, drugs-~principally
marijuana and alcohol--constitute a fundamental element in their
social reality while perhaps an equal percentage of the students have
not even experimented with these drugs. In order to understand this
and the other variations between students it is necessary to consider
the "perspective" generated by the individuals in their groups.

In Chapter Two, "group perspective" was defined as "modes of
thought and behavior and action developed by a group in a particular
situation. They are customary ways members of a group think about
situations and act in them."3 The concept that a group of individuals
deve10ps responses in order to act in certain situations needs some
further elaboration here. According to Shibutani,

A perspective is an ordered view of one's world--

what is taken for granted about the attitudes of

various objects, events and human nature. It is

an order of things remembered and expected as well

as things actually perceived, an organizational con-
ception of what is plausible and what is possible;

 

3Howard S. Becker, 2;.31, Boys in White (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 36.

145

it constitutes a matrix through which one perceives

his environment. The fact that men have such ordered

perspectives enables them to conceive of their ever

changing world as relatively stable, orderly, and

predictable.4

Based on their individual perceptions of any given situation,
the members of a group interact and create a group perspective and
develop reasonable ways of constructing their behavior based on these
perceptions. The explanation for the different behavior and attitudes
exhibited by various student groups is directly related to the manner
in which the group defines the social situation of the school and
their role in the school. The behavior of each of the groups is then
considered "reasonable" based on the group perspective. However,
though the behavior may be reasonable for the group, the parapective
that generated it may have been based on inaccurate interpretations
of the situation or "selective perceptions" of the environment.
According to Shibutani,

There is abundant experimental evidence to show that

perception is selective; that the organization of

perceptual experience depends in part upon what is

anticipated and what is taken for granted. Judgments

rest upon perceptions, and people with different outlooks

define identical situations difgerently, responding

selectively to the environment.

Thus, "J" of the Hempie group could claim that the schedule
change from flexible modular to "five by five" was just another example

of "our treatment at the hands of the running dogs of capitalist-

imperialism" and Ken of the College Bound Boys could maintain.that the

 

4Tomatsu Shibutani, "Reference Groups as Perspectives." Symbolic
Interaction, edited by Jerome G. Manis and Bernard N. Meltzer (Boston:
Allyn and Bacon, 1967), p. 161.

 

51bid., p. 162.

146
schedule change was "probably best for the majority of the school."
While the explanation provided by Shibutani accounts for the different
perceptions of the same occurance, it does not explain why the
perceptions are different.

One of the inherent weaknesses of the participant observer
methodology is that the researcher enters an ongoing social situation.
I was not present when the individuals began their regular group
associations and the factors which drew them together are unknown.6
The group in school is accepted as a given and an attempt is made to
understand the group as it is without the knowledge of how it was
formed. Another weakness of the participant observation methodology
in the public school setting is that the researcher is largely unaware
of the variations in home environment between the individual members
of the group or between groups. It is simply not possible to enter
the homes of the students for extended periods of time. There is,
however, considerable philosophic reasoning and empirical evidence to
indicate that early experiences with education and the economic and
social background of the family strongly influence the attitudes of

students toward public schools.7

 

6When the students were asked why they associated with certain
groups, they usually responded that they did not know and that when
they arrived at South they "just started hanging around together."

7See for example: John Dewey, Experience and Education (New
York: Collier Books, 1973), and Christopher Jencks §£_§}, Inequality
(New York: Basic Books, 1972).

 

147

It seems reasonable to say that the individuals begin school
with varying habits and dispositions toward education. Some of South's
students live in homes where one or both parents are college graduates
and there are heavy doses of middle class aspirations while other
students come from homes in which the values of education are not
stressed. The home environment coupled with the students' early
experiences in school produced certain habits and dispositions toward
education by the time they reached high school.

When the students arrived at South, they entered into voluntary
school associations with other students who shared similar perceptions
about education and the purpose of school. Regardless of their attitudes
toward school, the individual can usually associate with a group of
students which shares similar attitudes. They will be influenced by
the group as well as have an influence on the other members in the
group. According to Blumer,

. . group action takes the form of fitting together

individual lines of action. Each individual aligns

his action to the actions of others by ascertaining

what they are doing or what they intend to do--that is,

by getting the meaning of their acts. For [George

Herbert] Mead, this is done by the individual 'taking

the role of others--either the role of a specific

person or the role of the group (Mead's 'generalized

other'). In taking such roles the individual seeks

to ascertain the intention or direction of the acts of

others. He forms and aligns his own action on the

basis of such interpretation of the acts of others.

This is the fundamental way gn which group actions
take place in human society.

 

8Herbert Blumer, "Society as Symbolic Interaction." Symbolic
Interaction, edited by Jerome G. Manis and Bernard N. Meltzer (Boston:
Allyn and Bacon, 1967), p. 142.

148

Several of the researchers cited in Chapter Two maintain that
the group life of adolescents in school not only is the dominant source
of influence on their lives but that it also constitutes a "subculture."
James Coleman, for example, wrote,

The student is 'cut off' from the rest of society,

forced inward toward his own age group, made to carry

out his whole social life with others his own age. With

his fellows, he comes to constitute a small society,

one that has most of its important interactions within

itself, and maintains only a few threads of connection

with the outside adult society. . . .It is hard to

realize that separate subcultures can exist right under

the very noses of adults--subcultures with languages all

their own, with special symbols, and, most importantly,
with value systems that may differ from adults.9

Many researchers believe that Coleman overstated the case.10
Adolescents carry on extensive interactions with adults outside the
school and they exhibit many of the same concerns as other members of
their social class.11 Their daily contact with their parents also

tends to minimize the concept of a unique age-grade subculture. It

is perhaps more helpful to consider the adolescent as an individual

with several reference groups--his school group being just one of

these reference groups. The adolescent is influenced by the expectations

placed on him in his role as son or daughter, brother or sister as

well as age-grade associations. According to Brookover,

 

9James Coleman, The Adolescent Society, p. 3.

 

10See for example: David C. Epperson, "A Re-Assessment of
Indices of Parental Influences in the Adolescent Society," American
Sociological Review, Vol. 29 (February, 1964), 93-96; Frederick Elkin
and William Westley, "The Myth of Adolescent Culture," American
Sociological Review, Vol. 20 (December, 1955), 68-684; Marie Jahoda
and Neil Warren, "Myths of Youth," Sociology of Education, Vol. 38
(Winter, 1965), 138-149.

 

 

 

11See for example: August Hollingshead, Elmtown's Youth.

 

149

In societies with an extensive range of interaction

such as we have in the United States, the significant

reference groups or persons may vary greatly from one

situation to another. For example, the adolescent may
employ peer group values in his evaluation of himself

as a dancer. The same students may also use the

standards of his parents or other igults to appraise his

performance in algebra or history.

Viewed in this context, adolescence is not a period of sub-
cultural rejection of adults norms and values but a period in an
individuafs life when he has multiple reference groups and there are
multiple expectations placed on his behavior. He is not unlike the
adult who holds down a job which requires different standards of
behavior than those required by his family, church, and bowling team.

The group in school becomes one significant referent for the
student and the groups norms and values guide his evaluations of his
own actions. The expectations of some school groups differed
considerably from the expectations of the home and the school. Those
students for example, who smoked marijuana experienced more "role
conflict"--conflicting role expectations--than those who did not.
Those students on the other hand, who planned to attend college in
compliance with group, parental, and school expectations experienced
"role congruence"--closely aligned expectations from two or more
reference groups.

The school group provided a significant referent for the

individuals in that group but there was very little interaction between

groups and except for the expectations of the school, they had no

 

12Wilbur B. Brookover and Edsel L. Erickson, Society,
School and Learning (East Lansing: ‘Michigan State University Press,
1966. p. 70.

 

150

common school referent. The groups were isolated and there was no
group that was considered the leader in social affairs, clothing styles
or school leadership. The students existed in separate social worlds
under the organizational umbrella of South High School. Blacks seldom
interacted with whites. D0pe smokers seldom interacted with non-dope
smokers. The college-bound seldom interacted with the non-college
bound. When there were serious differences in the orientation of the
students' reality, interaction that could cause conflict was avoided.
The issue of race was never discussed between white and black groups
and drug users were never heard to argue the virtues of drugs with
non-drug users. As a testament to the research which indicates the
lack of importance of academics in the student world, successful
students could interact with unsuccessful students--this was not a
sufficiently significant issue which could cause conflict between
groups or individuals.

The informal structure of the students'social world tends to
divide the students into groups which respond to the school based on
the perspective of its members. The various groups do not interact
and the school does not openly encourage interaction. The lack of a
viable student political organization and the lack of school wide
activities and assemblies allows the students to perpetuate their
own perspectives. The lack of focus and centrality provided by the
school leaves the student body fragmented into peer associations with
few inter-group contacts.

When the change in schedule was announced, each of the student
groups interpreted it differently. There was little communication

between groups and each of the groups, based on the perceptions of

151

the individuals and the perspective generated by their interaction,
accomodated the schedule change to their social world. The new
schedule really did not have a drastic impact on any of the groups.
It allowed the students to carry on.most of their former activities
and at the same time it pleased the administration.

During the ninety minute "activity period" the students were
able to associate with their groups. The activity period permitted
the Hempies to get together, cruise the halls, and if they chose, they
could go out to the parking lot to get high. The CBB and the BA could
work in the resource centers and the library and complete all of their
school work during the day. The black students were able to congregate
in the black hallway and engage in the activities of their various
groups. The BJ were graduating seniors who accepted the change as a
predictable aspect of a school that had changed every year since they
had been there. The yearly changes in the schedule and the curriculum
were accepted by all of the groups as part of their social reality
around which they had to build their group activities.

The administrators seemed to like the change. The halls were
no longer crowded with students who were supposed to be in class. The
school looked more orderly and because the students were now forced
to attend class, complete assignments, and exhibit minimal compliance,
the failure rate decreased and the overall grades went up. The school
looked better to outsiders. The statistics indicating the failure
rate and the cut rate were now comparable to the other schools in the
city and there were no students loitering in the building. But there
was no basic change in the student realities. School was no more or

no less meaningful to the various groups. The teachers who had been

152

successful under the mods, were still successful under the five by
five scheduling.13 Good teaching seems to have transcended the
scheduling system. Mr. H., the Physics teacher who had been a strong
supporter of the mods, claimed that "Physics will be cool no matter
what kind of scheduling we have." The immediate effect of the
schedule change was cosmetic: the school had not really changed at
all, but it looked better to outsiders.

2. What is it like to attend high school from the perspective
of the students? What are students' concerns? What are
their fears, hopes,.and aspirations? What do they want out
of school?

South High School was a different place and it served a
different function for each of the groups studied. The Hempies viewed
the school as a place to meet their friends, to hang around and talk
about the personal issues and problems of their lives. The BJ viewed
the school as both a present social reality which provided fun and
athletic teams and also as a vehicle which could get them into college.
The group perspective generated by the BA established academic success
as the highest priority in their social world and the CBB would play
the "school game" as long as it allowed them to swim.and flirt and

did not require that they work too hard. The peer group is the basic

unit of organization with the social structure of the high school.

 

13The impact of the schedule change was felt most severely by
the teachers. The schedule that they had labored with and in which
they had invested considerable time and energy was eliminated. Several
teachers Spoke of resigning and many were resentful that the change
was forced on them. It was not immediately apparent how the teachers'
attitudes effected the students perception of the school and the new
schedule.

153

South High School contained many diverse groups which created and

maintained realities based on their interactions and interpretations

of their social world.14
Although the school was a different place for every group.

the environment of South High School provided elements of commonality

for all of the groups and individuals. Unlike the students of "Horatio

Gates High SChOOI" that Cusick studied,15

the students at South did_
discuss their teachers and the school administrators outside of class.
The teachers at South were real people in the students' eyes. The
students often discussed what they considered to be good teaching and
good classes and they had definite ideas concerning what constituted
poor teaching. (Poor teachers were those teachers who, according to
the students, lectured too often and did not have a real interest in
the students or the subject matter.) Many of the teachers shared a
good deal of their personal lives with their classes and the students
appreciated the trust and respect these teachers showed for them.
There was a feeling among the students that many of the teachers "cared"
about them as individuals. Cusick studied a school with a traditional
scheduling system but the difference in student attitudes cannot be

explained only by indicating that South used a flexible modular

schedule.

 

'41 encountered many groups which are not represented in this
reporting. There were groups of "New Christians" who met every day
before school and tried to live what they called a "Christian life."
They did not use drugs and they claim that they have found new peace
since learning to "love Jesus." There were groups of "hall freaks" who
lived from rock concert to rock concert. They would rarely miss a
concert within 90 miles of the school. There were many other diverse--
perhaps deviant--groups but their irregular school attendance made it
difficult to study them.

15Cusick, Inside High School.

 

154

The flexible modular schedule had provided the students and
teachers with a great deal of contact in small, informal classes. All
of the students had at least one teacher in the school who they felt
they could "relate to." Was this a product of the scheduling or the
personalities of the teachers? The flexible modular schedule afforded
the opportunity for increased teacher-student dialogue but not all of
the teachers took advantage of it. Some small classes with only ten
or fifteen students were characterized by the teacher talking and
the students listening or sleeping. It was clear that the schedule
did not increase dialogue between teachers and students in all of
the classes. On the other hand, many very creative teachers were
attracted to the school because it had a flexible modular schedule
that would allow them.to work in a less structured setting. It seems
that the flexible modular schedule did not increase informality and
teacher-student interaction by itself but it attracted teachers who
wanted this type of educational setting and it encouraged their
efforts and innovative ideas.

One of the most common complaints offered by the students was
that they could not talk to their parents about many of the substantive
issues in their lives. The students claimed that it was difficult if
not impossible, to discuss issues of sex, morality, politics, drugs,
and hair length with their parents. The school atmosphere of informality
and candor allowed most of the students to discuss personal problems
with their teachers in class or in private conversations. In many
ways the teachers at South acted as "interpreters" between the students
and their parents, explaining the parents problems to the students and

helping to promote a dialogue between them.

155

Mr. R., the Psychology teacher, seemed to be aware of the
communication breakdown between parent and student. The students
in his class often complained of their inability to discuss issues
with their parents and Mr. R. structured several activities which
were designed to facilitate dialogue. While working on a unit
entitled "Child Growth and Development," Mr. R. asked the students to
interview their mothers regarding the circumstances of their birth.
The students were to find out from their mothers where they--the
students-~had been born, if they were born in a hospital or at home,
if it had been a full-term pregnancy and if there were any unusual
circumstances or events surrounding their birth.

Mr. R. shared the information he knew concerning his own birth
with the students. In the two Psychology classes I observed, I
estimate that more than 70 percent of the students complied with the
assignment and those who did claimed that they found it very
enlightening. One of the students told the class that this had been
"the first time" he had "talked to his 'old lady' and she ain't too
bad after all."

Mr. R. had seized on an issue of maternal expertise and by
structuring an interview he provided a vehicle for dialogue. Most of
the students reported that their mothers were glad to talk about their
pregnancies and deliveries and the students were able to see their
mothers in a new light: a unique expert in the area of their own
births. However, as was stated in.Chapter Four, not every student had
a class in which he could discuss personal issues or even take an

active role. It was possible to follow a student for an entire week

156

and observe that not one of his classes required any more from him
than he occupy one of the seats and "pay attention" to what the
teacher was doing.

Although group perspectives varied and group attitudes and
orientations toward school differed, three common concerns of students
seemed to emerge throughout the study. The students wanted the school
to provide them with an opportunity to: (1) engage in a serious
exploration of self, (2) develop their academic skills, and (3) help
them with a career choice.

The most frequently expressed concern of the students was
a desire to understand themselves, their friends, and their parents.
This concern varied in intensity from group to group and while it was
almost a preoccupation with the Hempies, it was discussed less by the
CBB and the other groups. Overall, the exploration of themselves and
their values was the most pervasive concern of the students at South.
They were interested in exploring their values, the values of
society and the values of their parents in both an affective and a
cognitive manner. The students in the Psychology class liked to
explore their "feelings" and the "feelings" of the class but the
students in Philosophy class enjoyed their first assignment for the
term‘which required that they "prove that they exist." Who am I?

What am.I doing here? What is my relationship to other people and How
do I know? were questions the students were interested in exploring.

One of the reasons for the success of the schedule change was

that there was not a great deal of academic work required by the school

157

and the students did not have to do homework after school. The CBB and
the BA had lauded the virtues of the modular system because they claimed
that they could get all of their work done in school. They worried
that the imposition of the "five by five" system‘would force them to
bring school work home but this fear did not materilize. There was
very little school work required for most courses under the modular
system and even less under the "five by five" system. The students
were self-conscious about the lack of serious effort that was expected
from them. Jeff of the Hempies, claimed that all that was necessary

to maintain a "B" average in the school was to "draw a map, make a
collage and copy a few pages out of a book."

The students felt that they should be doing more work and they
expressed feelings of guilt that they were not. The flexible modular
schedule afforded the students adequate periods of unstructured time
to pursue any independent study of individual interest but most of
the students did not use the time for that purpose. It is somewhat
ironic that the Hempies in particular felt that they should be reggired
to do more work when they spent more time than the other groups in
non-academic activities. 'The students' education had, until they
entered South, followed a pattern of teacher—guided learning and many
of the students had a great deal of difficulty making the transition
to student-initiated learning. They felt that high school should
involve more academic work then they were doing but for many of the
students it was impossible to break old habits of education. These
students expressed genuine relief when the system went back to a
more traditional scheduling pattern and they would again be told

exactly what to do and when to do it.

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The students also expressed concerns regarding their careers
after high school. For the students who were planning to attend
college--approximately 28 percent of the graduating class--the decision
could be deferred but the majority of the students did not plan to
attend college and they were aware that they soon.would be faced with
the problem of selecting a career.

The "energy crisis" had an impact on the school and it added
to the students career anxieties. The school day began in total
darkness after the adeption of Daylight Savings Time and the school's
thermostats were turned down to 68 degrees but the fuel shortage caused
factory lay-offs and that had an even greater impact on theztudents.
For the most part, the parents of South's students had enough seniority
to retain their jobs but the students who had graduated last year
and the year before were laid off in large numbers. Reports circulated
around the school of individuals the students knew who had an expensive
apartment, a wife, and a child and were now laid-off. The large
number of factory lay-offs made it difficult for South's students to
secure part-time work. Everywhere they went for a job, they’would
find several people ahead of them who were out of school and out of
work. The "energy crisis" made it even more unlikely that the students
would find a meaningful job after school which made school all the more
meaningless.

All of the students who did not plan to attend college were
concerned about their future employment. Those students in the
"Careers area" who took vocational blocks were perhaps the most
concerned. They were often unsure of the career choices they had

made and were less certain that they could secure employment in those

159

areas. Discussions about future work were exceded only by talk about
girls in the male dominated careers classes which I visited.

One group of Chicano students15 found out that I had been in
the military and they asked me several times if they "could learn a
trade of something useful in the service." It was difficult to answer
their questions because my own military experience is clouded by the
Vietnam War. I was a draftee with five years of college and no
desire for a "military trade" but the sincerity of the students'
questions forced me to seriously reflect on the vocational aspects of
military service. These Chicanos and most of the other students at
South were very concerned about a job after high school and many of
them looked to the military for training that they felt they had not
received in school.

3. What is the effect of educational innovation on the
students' social reality on the school? How do students
and student groups perceive these innovations?

Educational innovation as defined in Chapter One refers to the
planned changes in the content and/or process of education which takes
place within the structural framework of the school. The innovations
at South were designed to provide students with a flexible program of
instruction that was tailored to meet their individual needs. The
innovations included differentiated staffing, team teaching, resource
centers, performance based teaching and flexible modular scheduling.

Rarely did the students mention or take notice of any of the

innovations except the modular schedule. The flexible modular system

 

15The Chicano students comprise about 2 percent of the student
population. I knew several Chicano students quite well but I was never
accepted by any of the Chicano groups and so they are largely ignored
in this reporting.

160

with itS‘mOdS of class time and mods of unstructured time was an
innovation that, at least in theory, charged the students with the
responsibility for their own education. The students were given large
periods of unstructured time during which they were to complete their
class assignments or pursue their own interests. Most of the students
seemed to thrive in this setting. They could get their work done in
school, socialize with their friends, eat lunch when they wanted and
by 2:10 p.m., when the school day ended, they would have no work to
bring home. They had a lot of personal contact with their teachers
and the school took on a very relaxed and informal atmosphere. But
the system was not working for everyone.

Over 35 percent of the students failed one or more classes
every grading period. The cut rate averaged between 20 percent and
50 percent for all classes and it became painfully obvious that cutting,
failing, and hanging around the halls had become an integral part of
the student reality for many of South's clients. It was not exciting
to hang around in the halls day after day and the students who did,
constantly complained of being bored but the feeling they communicated
was that attending classes would offer them no relief. This frustrated
the teachers who worked hard to make the system function and it
grated abrasively on the administrators who had to listen to complaints
from faculty, community and the Superintendent of Schools.

South was characterized in the local papers as a "multidmillion
dollar playground" and parents called the school calling for an end to
"permisiveness." Many of the students who were failing courses and
cutting classes loved the notoriety. It gave them a sense of uniqueness

and distinguished them from the students in the city's other high

161

schools. In a quest for superlatives, South's students felt they had
won; they may not have been the best in anything but now they had a
reputation for being the worst in the city for cutting, failing and
wasting time. Their athletic teams had won no honors, South won no
academic contests but no other school had received South's publicity
and no school was more controversial to outsiders.

When the schedule was changed to a more traditional "five by
five," the students who were passing their courses could not under-
stand why the modular system was abandoned considering that 65 percent
of the students were doing satisfactory work. There was a mixed
reaction among the students who were failing or cutting. To many of
these students education is a boring, agonizing and a painful process.
They endure it for several reasons. Some realize that they cannot
get a decent job unless they finish high school. Others come to
school simply because there is nothing else that they want to do or
they do not want to antagonize their parents who want them to graduate
from high school. Many of the students come to school solely for the
purpose of being with their friends and engaging in the social life
provided by group activity. The modular system afforded these students
a great deal of free time to associate with their friends. If the
students did not want to attend class, there were few sanctions forcing
him to attend. If they cut class often enough, they risked a call
to their parents and the possibility of failing the course but this
did not seem to coerce students into regular attendance. When they
did not attend class, the students would hang around the balls or sit

out in the parking lot or some other area of the school. Many of them

162

would get high during the day and occasionally there would be a party
at someone's home but most of the time they just sat around waiting
for something to happen.

Many of the students experienced conflicting role expectations.
As members of age-grade peer groups, they could admit that their
classes were boring and lacked meaning. Failing and cutting were
approved by their groups as legitimate responses to boredom and
irrelevance but the students were also subject to the expectations of
the school and their parents who demanded that they attend class,
keep out of trouble and graduate. The two reference groups created
role conflicts; the students often did not meet their parents
expectations and they often felt guilty. It was no uncommon for them
to express this guilt as one of the Hempies did. "I know I'm going
to regret not studying," he said. ”My mother says I'll never amount
to anything. Everyone had told me that I have the ability and that
I'll be sorry later on. . . ."

The role conflicts and the guilt that the students experienced
under the modular system were largely eliminated by the new schedule.
Under the "five by five" system, the students had to attend class and
by doing so they were meeting the expectations of home and school.

The students also had 90 minutes in the middle of the day to engage in
the activities expected by their other reference group. They could
hang around or get high and complain about school. For those students
who had been experiencing role conflicts, the schedule change that

had reduced their freedom also made it easier to live with two sets

of conflicting expectations.

163

This is not meant to imply that innovation is bad or that
schools should seek to avoid change. The students did not view the
innovations as anything that they had a voice in--and in fact they did
not. All of the changes and all of the decisions which were designed
to make the students better and happier learners were planned without
consulting the students. The students were not brought into the
decision making process when the modular system was begun and they
had no voice when the decision was made to abolish the mods. The
students viewed the innovations as something that concerned the
faculty and the administration and only demanded their compliance.
They saw themselves, as one student put it, as "guinea pigs for every
new idea that comes to the teachers and the principals." The faculty.
was unionized and they had to be consulted when instructional changes
‘were made. The students have no organization or unity and were
excluded from decisions effecting their education. If education is
to be based on "the needs of students," they must be brought into the
process which designs and evaluates educational programs.

4. What is it like to attend an integrated school? What is
the extent of black-white interaction in the school?

Although blacks and whites attend the same school and go to many
of the same classes, they really exist in two separate worlds. There
is a white world at South and a b1ack.world and there is very little
formal or informal contact between them.

The informal social world of the school with its student dyads,
triads, cliques and groups is divided along racial lines. Each group
of students had their own area of the school where they gathered but

almost all of the black groups tended to congregate in and around the

164

black hallway, the black stairway and the black section of the
cafeteria. White groups did not loiter in these areas and they had
only very limited contact with black students outside of class. Blacks
and whites passed each other numerous times during the school day but
rarely did they acknowledge each others presence with as much as a
head nod. When I followed white groups, I generally would be the only
one in the group to exchange greetings with blacks. When I followed
black groups, I would be the only one in the group who regularly
exchanged greetings with whites.

Social contact between blacks and whites in the informal world
of student groups was limited to the peripheral social contacts of
various individuals in the group. Bob, of the BJ group, knew many
white students but his contact with them was of a perfunctory nature
and often mildly antagonistic. He did not eat lunch with whites and
most of his conversations with whites took place near his locker which
was located in the hallway perpendicular to the black corridor. Members
of the CBB interacted with several black males but they were superficial
acquaintanceships and their communication changed when blacks interacted
with the group. The CBB would engage in a light banter with the few
blacks they spoke to and they avoided the topics which dominated their
normal group conversations--girls and swimming. Carl of the CBB told
me that he had "nothing against blacks" but he showed me a small scar
on his arm, the result of a racial fight of a year ago, and he shook
his head and wondered why the incident occurred and if another incident
will take place at some future time.

The Hempies, with the exception of "3" had almost no contact

with blacks. Blacks and whites did not smoke dope together and they

165

did not "hang around" the halls together and during the time of the
flexible modular schedule, these were the Hempies principal activities.
The Hempies accepted me to a greater extent than any of the other
groups. They would look for me before school began in the morning

and they would ask around if they could not find me. I spent more
time with the Hempies than any of the other groups I studied and

after the field work was completed Jeff told me that he "knew I would
like to hang aroun." with what he referred to as "my own ethnic
group." I asked him.what he meant and he said,

Well John [Butler] hung around mostly with the blacks

and you hung around mostly with the whites. That's

the way most people are comfortable--with their own

kind.

If I was standing in the hall and talking to a black student
and the Hempies passed by, they would come over and say hello to me
and often we would shake hands but it was rare if they would say hello
to the outsider--the black student. This happened several times and
each time the same pattern was repeated. The group would surround
ne, ignore the black student and the black student would slip away
without a word. It was obviously such a common occurence for most
of the groups at South that when I would later apologize to the black
students for the rudeness, they would indicate that "this is the way
it is here."

There were few examples of interracial dating and those couples
were always composed of a black male and a white female. There were
no couples, that I was aware of, composed of a black female and a
white male. One of the black students told John Butler that he would

"kick the ass of any white guy who dated a black girl." When.Mr. Butler

166

pointed out that there were several black males who dated white
females, the student acknowledged that this was "all right" but he
would not agree that it would be acceptable for a black girl to date
whites.

The formal structure of the school with its organization,
classes, and regulations did not encourage black-white interaction.
Blacks sit together in class whether or not they are members of the
same group. The BJ and the BA would both seek out members of their
own groups to sit with or work with during a class. If there were
no other members of their group in class, they would try to sit with
other black students. Some teachers consciously attempted to group
students to increase interaction but most did not.

On the first day of the school semester and the beginning of
the "five by five" schedule, Bob of the BJ was scheduled for the
Advanced Composition class. His schedule had been arranged in September
and it did not reflect a choice he had made because of the change in
schedule. The first thing that Bob did was to look for other blacks
in the class. Not finding any he told the teacher,

"Hey man, I ain't gonna be the only nigger in this class?

You better find me some 'brothers' or I'm gonna sit out

here in the hall."

The teacher, who was standing at the door, chose to ignore
the remarks and tried to coax Bob into taking a seat. Bob remained
adament and refused to enter the class until Dwight and two other black
males arrived at the class. Bob told them that he was glad they were
there and they looked over the room in search of a place to sit. Bob

pointed to the right rear corner of the room and led the group there.

II). ‘III llllllliiln

167

They decided to occupy that area of the class for the remainder of
the year. There were no whites in this section of the room and the
group interracted with few of the whites in the class.

There is only very limited black-white contact in the school
and this has resulted in an appalling ignorance. I had lunch with
Me1--a member of the "grand and glorious Hempie underground"-- and
he pointed in amazement to a group of blacks. Several of the girls
were putting the guys hair up into braids. Mel asked me what they
were doing.

"I don't know," I answered. "Why don't you ask them"?

"Yeah, I will. There are a lot of black dudes in my three hour
block. I'll ask one of them when the time's right."

"Are they friends of yours"? I asked.

"Yeah, you could say that."

Mel takes a three hour vocational block in Television Production.
As noted previously, this is a very popular course at South and it
is also a course where there are many black students and the blacks
and whites must work together in an informal setting for fifteen hours
every week. Many of the important leadership positions in the class--
directors, head technicians, etc.--were held by blacks.

Three months passed and just before I was about to end my
research, I asked Mel if he had found out why the blacks braid their
hair. He told me that he had not. He said, "the time has just never
been right to ask one of them." He spent three hours a day, five
days a week in a small informal, integrated class yet the "time had

never been right" to ask a "friend" why he puts his hair in braids.

168

The lack of information about the "other race" was not limited
to the whites. When I first arrived at the school, two black girls
asked what my name was. After I told them and spelled my last name
for them, one of the girls asked me if my name was "German or something
like that." Her friend answered before I had a chance to. ”Don't
be ignorant, girl," she said. "He can't be German, he's got curly
hair. He's Italian." Even Allan of the BA was confused by the
ethnic composition of whites. He asked me if I was Jewish. When I
told him that I was, he said that he could not understand how I could
be "Jewish with a Polish last name." He believed that the two must
be mutually exclusive.

Many of the whites and blacks did not even know each others
names although the school is small enough that they see almost all of
the students every day. At one basketball game I was impressed by the
ability and skill demonstrated by one of South's black players. He
had a smooth style and a shooting ability not matched by anyone on the
floor that evening. I had met him previously in the Co-ed Physical
Educationuclass but I had forgotten his name and I asked several of the
white students who he was. Not one of them could tell me his name
until they looked it up in the program.

Despite South's history of racial violence, there were no
serious fights in the school while I was there. There were several
serious incidents in two of the city's other high schools during this
period but the whites at South were largely unaware of them and most
of the blacks I spoke to considered them to be problems which did not
effect South. During the time I was there, the closest thing to a

racial incident took place in the cafeteria.

169

I had been walking around the halls when I entered the
cafeteria and sat down with a few of the Hempies and several white
female students. The girls were visably shaken; they were trembling,
drained of color and the backs of their hands bore large and fairly
deep scratches. They told me that they had been standing in the
lunch line and "two nigger girls tried to cut in." The white girls
had protested and there were a few seconds of scratching and punching
before the incident ended.

The cafeteria had become electric in the few seconds between
the time of the minor fight and the time I arrived there. The physical
gulf between the black section of the cafeteria and the white section
never appeared larger. Small groups of blacks crowded around the.
black combatants and white students grouped around the white girls.
Everyone in the cafeteria seemed aware that something was going on.

As the tension mounted, the two hall guards walked into the
cafeteria apparently aware that there was some trouble. There is one
female guard and one huge male guard and they are both black. They
walked over to the black section of the cafeteria and the white students
took this as a sign of black solidarity.

"Those niggers always stick together."

"Yeah, I'm sick of the niggers in this school. They think they
can get away with anything."

While the hall guards were talking to the black students,
several of the whites reached into their pockets and withdrew small
folding knives which they opened and closed several times. After a
few moments the female hall guard approached the white students and
asked the girls involved to relate the incident. The girls still

trembling, fought back tears and told their story.

170

"I thought that's what happened," replied the guard. "You have
to stick up for your rights no matter who cuts in front of you.
White, black, I don't care who it is. . . ."

The hall guards had successfully relieved the tension. I do
not know what they told the black girls but the white group felt that
there had been justice. The black hall guards had told them that
they were in the right. The hall guards had a good reputation among
white and black students. Everyone considered them to be "fair" which
is high praise coming from students. The guards told Mr. Butler that
they try to be fair: "We walk around and bust honkies one day and
niggers the next."

The formal structure of the school is attempting to address
itself to the issue of race in only the most limited way. I asked Mr.
Wade, the assistant principal, what the school was doing to increase
bi-racial understanding or at least dialogue. He told me that this
was an "official goal of the school" and the administrators had given
the message to the teachers so "whatever they are supposed to be
teaching should be tied into the idea of racial understanding and the
brotherhood of man." Dr. Gordon points to Black Culture week and the
establishment of the multi-racial class councils as positive steps
toward racial understanding. The efforts of the students who planned
the activities for Black Culture Week were enjoyed primarily by blacks.
A panel discussion that included several white teachers and Dr. Gordon
was videotaped and broadcast by the Television Production class. There
were only three whites in the audience and none of the white students

I associated with watched the television broadcast.

171

The class councils,as noted previously,were largely powerless
political organizations which did not have the support of the student
body but in some ways they did help to mediate black and white
problems. The dances they organized usually had two bands--one black
and the other white--which alternated and played to two separate
audiences. The schools radio station which broadcasts music during
the lunch period, alternates "disc jockeys" and it features "black
music” one week an. "white music" the next.

5. Why do students use drugs? What are the social effects

of drug use on the student, the school and the process
of education?

The participant observer gains access to the social world of
the students and he learns not only the tricks and devices by which
it responds to the school organization but also the secrets which it
keeps from the school. Drugs are one of these secrets. The teachers
and the administrators realize that there is considerable drug use in
the school but few, if any, realize the extent or the nwmber of
participants.

Association.with the Hempies granted me a badge of legitimacy
among the drug users. It was commonly known among these students,
that the Hempies were regular drug users and if the Hempies trusted me
then most of the students could trust me. Drugs soon became something
we could talk about and joke about outside of class. Rarely were
drugs discussed in class because very few classes provided a forum.for
open discussion of personal issues. In the classes that did invite
discussion, the students were generally open and trusting and many of

them spoke freely about drugs. Based on their prior experiences with

172

the teachers, the students would determine who could be trusted and who
could not be trusted. They knew that some teachers would accept them
the way they were and other teachers had to be lied to in order to
preserve the myth of a relationship. As one student told me: "You
can't talk about dope in some classes. You gotta tell some teachers
what they want to hear or they will hold it against you forever."

Drugs were widespread and drug use was not limited by age,
sex, or race. It was impossible to determine a drug user by the way
they looked or dressed. Some of the regular marijuana smokers Openly
wore "roach clips"; several male students would hang them from.their
belt loOps and some of the female students wore "roach clip" earrings
or necklaces. Most of the students--especially those who had been
arrested previously for possession of drugs--were more secretive and
more cautious and their costumes could be disarming. Powdered and
polished secretarial students with perfect make-up and neatly pressed
outfits were as likely to smoke as any long-haired and unconventionally
dressed student.

Students claim they smoke marijuana for two reasons: because
they are bored and because it is fun. More dope was consumed under
the modular schedule than under the "five by five." The students have
less "free time" under the "five by five"; they hang around less and
if their classes are no more interesting, at least they have to
exhibit minimal compliance by attending class and taking part in the
class activities. There appears to be a high correlation between
smoking dope and student boredom. In addition to the cut rate, failure

rate and student absenteeism, drug use at South indicated that something

173

was 225 happening in the school. Excessive drug use may be considered
an epiphenomenon; it may be symptomatic of a school which is not
addressing the problems, concerns and aspirations of many of its
students.16

It is difficult to determine how many students have tried
marijuana at least once but I would guess the total represents a clear
majority. How many smoke regularly? This is another statistic that
is very difficult to determine. My guess would be that at least
20 percent but no more than 40 percent get high a miniuwm of once a
week. The statistic is unimportant in itself; whatever the exact
percentage of regular smokers, it represents a large number of high
school students who are willing to risk school sanctions and legal
penalties to engage in activities that their parents and teachers have
told them were harmful. Smoking dope may be characterized as the
rejection of adult values and a willingness to break the law to
engage in peer group activity.

Drug use had a divisive effect on the student body and it also
tended to further separate many of the teachers from those students
who used drugs. Students who did not use drugs rarely associated
with those students who did. The interaction and communication between
groups who used drugs and those who did not was limited. Drug use--
or perhaps the absence of drug use--like race, and attitudes toward

academics, divided the school into various student factions which

 

16For a further discussion of drug use as an epiphenomenon
see: Victor Gioscia, "Grovin' On Time: Fragments of a Sociology of
Psychedelic Experience." The Sociology of Youth, edited by Harry
Silverstein (New York: The Macmillan.Company, 1973), pp. 454-63.

174

knew very little about one another. For the students who used them,
drugs were a very significant part of their lives and conversations.
Drugs were part of the reality for many students but they were not a
reality for all students they thus divided the student body.

Drugs also represented a division between the students and
the teachers. Those classes that did not discuss drugs were excluding
an aspect of student reality from class investigation and dialogue.
There were, of course, certain classes that did encourage discussion
about drugs and these classes afforded drug users and non-drug users
a vehicle for the exchange of ideas that was not available in the
informal world of student groups. Classes that even occasionally
encouraged these discussions were doing more than the students home
environment. According to my informal survey and school supplied
data, the students did not think that drugs were a problem in the
school but they also claimed that they could not discuss the drug
issue with their parents.

While I associated with the Hempies, I worried about how to
disguise them in my reporting to preserve their anonymity. I was
concerned that through me, their parents would find out about their
marijuana smoking but the Hempies assured me that their parents would
not believe it even if they were told. As one of them put it: "If
you described me perfectly, used my real name and put my picture on
the page, my mother would still swear it was someone else."

I asked Mr. Wade, the assistant principal, if the parents

were aware that their sons and daughters used drugs. He told me that,

175

I had one in this morning. I'll tell you what I did.
The mother was there and the boy was there. He bought
a ten dollar bag of marijuana -- we call it a "dime
bag." . . . I told her it was marijuana. She said,
'marijuana, what's that'? I said, 'it's dOpe. They
put it in cigarettes and smoke it.‘ She turned to
[her son] and said, 'you don't use that.‘ He said,
'no I don't. I was with the guys who were buying

it. I just loaned them the money.‘ I just leaned
back and didn't say a word. I could have said 'come
on now tell your mother the truth you bought the bag.
It's for you. But it would have served no good
purpose. I was really caught and I thought, Oh
Christ, what am I going to do now. I did what I

felt I had to do. I said, 'his story is that he was
with two other guys; they bought the bag and he loaned
them the money. He got in trouble for it.‘ His
mother says, 'okay, now don't you ever loan money
again.’ Now we settled the whole thing and I let

her go on believing. .

Mr. Wade confirmed the inability of the parents to believe
the truth about the students' drug use. When drugs are not discussed
at home or in school, they become exclusively the topic Of group
discussions which often lack a sophistication and an understanding of
the power of the drugs and their potentially addictive nature. Those
students who choose to use illegal substances are entitled to have
access to current medical and scientific thinking concerning the
addictive or other deleterious effects of drugs as well as the techniques
of overdose aid and drug counseling. The school cannot afford to

ignore this student reality.

CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Conclusions

 

This study has investigated the informal social world of

students in an urban, integrated and innovative public high school.

An attempt was made to see the school, the teachers, and the process

of education as the students see them. The students were viewed as
actors in a dynamic social situation. Their actions were considered
rational and based on their own needs, their group interactions and
reflective of the formal organization in which they existed. The
research design of participant observation allowed me to become an
"insider" to the social world of high school students and my conclusions
are based on an analysis of the field data as viewed from the
perspective Of the students.

1. The social world of South High School was found to be
composed of a great variety of student groups which experienced very
little formal or informal interaction with one another. Although the
individual groups were fairly homogeneous entities and there was little
variation in wealth, dress, or attitudes among group members, there
‘were marked differences between groups. When there were differences
in race, drug use, and social orientation between groups, the extent
of their interactions ‘was very limited. Blacks seldom interacted
'with whites. Drug users seldom interacted with those who did not use

drugs and athletes seldom interacted with those who did not use drugs

176

177

and athletes seldom interacted with the non-athletes. The school was
a different place and served a different function for every group
studied. Each group interpreted the school and the purposes of
education for themselves and there was little agreement among the
various groups.

2. The school provided no threads which united the groups and
it offered no central focus for their activities. The students were
afforded large segments of "unstructured" time during which they were
free to participate in a variety of activities. Most of the students
used this time to engage in the activities generated by their groups.
Students studied, played, flirted, and used drugs in small voluntary
peer associations which were guided by the social reality generated
by their interaction rather than any directions provided by the school.

South High School is a new school which has yet to establish
traditions, rites, and ceremonies which identify it as a continuing
organization to either the students or the community.1 South's
athletic teams have won no honors and the school has earned no positive
recognition with which the students can identify. The students were
influenced more by the norms and values of their peer group by the

expectations of the school.

 

1The importance of rites and ceremonies in a public high school
can be illustrated by the example of South's Homecoming Dance during
the 1971-1972 academic year. Although this was the school's first year
of Operation and there had not been a class to graduate from the school,
the students insisted that there be a homecoming dance because they
claimed that every other school in the city had one and they did not
want to be different.

178

3. Music and heterosexual interest came the closest to being
common themes in all of the groups. Although music was a significant
aspect in the lives of nearly all of the students, there was a great
variety of musical tastes in the school. The music enjoyed by the
black groups was not the same music enjoyed by the whites. It was
necessary to have both a black and a white band at school dances and
the school radio station broadcast black music one week and white
music the next. There was also a considerable variety Of music
within the black and white populations. Each of the groups exhibited
musical taste and sophistication as varied as the groups themselves.
Some white and black groups listened exclusively to "pop forty"
radio stations while members of other groups invested in expensive
stereos and mountains of records and their knowledge of music and
musical groups was impressive.

Student interest in sex, like their interest in music, was
nearly universal but here too there were connoisseurs and neophtyes
and differences between groups. Contrary to popular images of
secondary schools, there were very little overt sexual activities
or public displays of sex. There was certainly no copulating in the
halls, wild sex orgies, or venereal disease in epidemic proportions.2

Many couples who had been dating for long periods of time experienced

 

2Most of the students could identify two or three cases of
venereal disease in the school but they did not think it was a serious
problem and they expressed "pride" in.the fact that the students at
South were "clean."

179

mature human relationships which included sex but promiscuity was
atypical behavior for the vast majority Of the students at South.
While flirting and seductive behavior dominated much of the students'
time, sexual relationships were private, discreet and far less casual
and less frequent than the popular press would have us believe.

3. The school made few attempts to promote dialogue among the
various student groups. Several teachers at South structured experiences
for students which were designed to foster communication and the exchange
of ideas but these were isolated examples in a school which encouraged
student groups to remain separate from one another. The school provided
no general focus for student activity; there were no school assemblies,
no viable student political organizations or activity and nothing which
encouraged students with differing social realities to confront one
another.

The school placed a great deal of emphasis on its maintenance
subsystem.and it consciously attempted to eliminate potentially abrasive
situations. The school was fearful that racial violence or student
protests could erupt at any time if the students were allowed to
confront each other with their disagreements or organize to deal with
their problems. The students were encouraged to pursue activities in
their homogeneous groups and avoid contact and potential conflict with
other groups. The school followed a policy of student control which
was described to me as "spread 'em out and keep 'em moving." It was
a policy of conflict avoidance which assumed that if there were no
overt incidents of conflict or violence, there were no covert

hositilities, tensions or problems. This policy can only be regarded

180

as naive myopia because it ignores the fact that conflict is a
fundamental reality common to the lives of all adolescents.

The students at South were constantly confronted by conflict
producing situations when they dealt with the substantive issues of their
lives such as: this discovery of their own identity; the relationships
they had with their parents, teachers, and friends; the purposes of
school; their future; and their drug and sexual experiences. The
school could not pretend to address the concerns of students and avoid
conflict because the concerns of students centered on the conflicts in
their lives. By not providing the students with a mechanism to resolve
conflict, the school exacerbated the students' problems.

4. The lack of common purpose among the groups, their lack of
interaction and the absence of dialogue between them made it difficult
to consider the school as one organization with common purposes and
goals. Such concepts as "school spirit," "the student body," and
"school climate" became obfuscated and elusive. The informal structure
of South High School was reflective not of one school but of many
schools within the same building. South was really a loose organization
of student groups which maintained separate social realities and which
were encouraged to remain isolated from one another in an effort to

avoid conflict and maintain the appearance of stability and order.

Implications for Further Research

 

This study was designed to create a general picture of the
informal social world of students in one public high school. The
investigation provides a way of "knowing" for the individuals involved

in the educational process at South High School. The information

181

generated provides the school administrators and curriculum planners
additional data with which to evaluate their educational programs.

It allows the teachers to assess the extent to which their classroom
activities carry over to the informal world of student groups. It
could also be the basis Of a course designed to encourage the students
to investigate their social world, their school and their social
realities.

An investigation of the social world of one high school does
not provide information which can be generalized to reflect the
social worlds of all high schools. If a more generalizable set of
conclusions concerning the student world is desired, the study must
be replicated in a variety of schools with special attention given to
the sociocultural variables found between schools. A more reliable
set of conclusions would be drawn if the study was replicated in
several schools with special attention given to the factors of social
class, racial composition, the attitudes of the community toward the
school, the degree of student involvement in the decision making
processes of the school, and the extent to which the school designs
measures to deal with the conflicts in the student world.

Participant observer studies need not necessarily be long and
intensive to be beneficial to the researcher conducting them. Because
of the extent to which this researcher was accepted by the various
student groups and the candid responses which were received, I believe
that this research design would be of benefit to individuals in
teacher education, graduate students in curriculum or administration

and any student of education seeking a first hand knowledge of students.

182

Of a more specific nature, this research indicated that conflict
was a common theme running through the student groups. While conflict
resolution mechanisms are beginning to be introduced in secondary
school curriculums, they generally focus on the individual nature of
conflict. It was found during this study that conflict took place
not only between individuals and the individual and society but that
conflict Often resulted from group identification, conflict between
groups and the policies of the school which kept the groups isolated
from one another. The differences between drug users and those who
did not use drugs, conflict between blacks and whites, athletes
and non-athletes have a group component as well as an individual
component. Conflict resolution, as well as nearly every other aspect
of secondary schools, needs to account for the informal social structure

of the student world and its domination by student groups.

APPEND ICES

APPENDIX A

STUDENT SCHEDULE--MODIFIED FLEXIBLE MODULAR

SCHEDULE

Cycle No.

M d

O
0
l
2
3
4
5
6

Time

8:00- 8:20
8:20- 8:40
8:40- 9:00
9:00-99:20
9:20- 9:40
9-40-10:00
10:00-10:20
10:20-10:40
10°40-11:00
11:00-11:20
11:20-11:40
11:40-12:00
12:00-12:20
12:20-12:40
12'40- 1:00
11:00- 1:20
1:20- 1:40
1:40- 2:00
2:00- 2:20
2:20- 2:40
Meetings

 

183

CAREERS

Typing

Shorthand
Secretarial Block
Recordkeeping
Accounting Block
Survey of Business
Clerical Block
Advanced Clerical
Distributive Education
Drafting

Metals

Cycle Mechanics
Woods

Electricity
Graphics
Photography
Clothing

Foods

Family Living
Home Management
Childcare
Television Block

Residential Development

Food Management/
Quantity Cooking
Hospital Services
Dental Services
Commercial Art

APPENDIX B

SOUTH HIGH SCHOOL
COURSE OFFERINGS

EXACT SCIENCE

 

Concepts in Mathematics
Consumer Math

Algebra I

Algebra III

Trigonometry

Geometry

Analysis

Computer Programming
Biology

Chemistry

Physics

Life Science

Advanced Science

Boys' Physical Education
Girls' Physical Education
Co-ed. Physical Education
Driver Education

Heating/Air Conditioning

Construction
Special Education

184

HUMANITIES

English 10
Girl Talk
Language of
Personality
Reading Improvement
English Literature
Science Fiction
Publications
Journalism
Creative Writing
Advanced Composition
Communications
Spanish
German
U.S. History
Government
Economics
Sociology
Philosophy
Psychology
Geography
Humanities
Anthropology
Art
Music

APPENDIX C

South High School
Evaluative Information

I

10.

11.

South High Student Attitude Survey

 

The following information was coordinated through the efforts
of South's Instructional Council and the School District Evaluator.

This school seems to be getting
better

If I had my choice of high schools
in the city, I would choose South
High

I look forward to coming to school

The staff at South is concerned with
me, the student, as an individual

The staff is actively involved in
trying to make our school a better
place.

School is exciting and interesting
I need more help with my classwork
Students should be responsible for
keeping the school and grounds
clean.

I have too much unstructured time
I get more work done on structured
days (A,C,E) than unstructured
days (B,D,F)

I enjoy school more on structured

days (A,C,E) than unstructured days
(B,D,F)

185

Percent Agreeing

 

 

1971-72 1972-73 1973-74
Nov. June Oct. ngg Nov.
55% 73% 62% 50%

65% 80% 76% 80%

38% 46% 42% 52% 47%

41% 43% 29% 48% 40%

55% 63% 67% 64% 47%
32% 44%

46% 34% 48% 32% 30%

69% 67% 68% 60%

07% 10% 04%

15%

09%

186

Percent Agreeing
1971-72 1972-73 1973-74
Nov. June Oct. May Nov.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

12. I feel I'm learning as much in the
modular schedule as I did in the
traditional schedule. 49% 66% 68% 67%
13. I enjoy going to the commons. 54%
14. What our school needs is a strongly
enforced discipline code. 23% 24% 10%
15. The modular schedule has more
advantages than disadvantages 64% 73% 78% 85%
16. If there were more classes
scheduled during 3 p.m. to 10 p.m.,
I would probably sign up for at
least one of them. 25%
Highest number of students responding
to a single item. 700 379 333 749 541
II. Comparative Absence Records of South Students
A sample of students was used in acquiring the following
information:
A. 1972-73-1st marking--Second semester (flexible-modular)
10th 26.4 ABS/Student Average
llth 26.1 ABS/Student Average
12th 18.2 ABS/Student Average
B. 1973-74-lst marking--First Semester (modified-flexible-modular)
10th 19.1 ABS/Student Average
llth 18.7 ABS/Student Average
12th 16.6 ABS/Student Average
C. Humanities
Absences
#Of Students Regular Flexible
Am. Govt. Juniors 45 24.1% 51.5%
Econ. Jr. & Sr. 27 8.4% 21.8%
10 Hum. Soph. 50 17.8% 31.6%
Psych Jr. & Sr. 57 17.0% 30.1%

Cer/Scul. Soph., Jr., & Sr. 31 14.8% 27.4%

187

Absences

#Of Students Regular Flexible

 

Vocational & Industrial

 

Cons. Occ. Jr. & Sr. 47 6.7% 6.5%
Jr. Sec. Blk Jr. 27 7.9% 13.1%
Adv. Metals Jr. & Sr. 26 25.8% 42.3%
Hosp. Serv. Jr. & Sr. 31 20.6% 24.3%
Exact Sciences

Biology Soph. 85 8.3% 15.2%
Concepts SOph. 67 18.4% 26.7%
Algebra Soph. 36 10.7% 20.0%
Geometry SOph. 31 7.1% 8.7%
Life Sci. Soph. & Jr. 51 30.6% 64.7%
Physics Sr. 84 6.8% 1.0%

188

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. PARTICIPANT OBSERVATION STUDIES AND PARTICIPANT OBSERVER

METHODOLOGY

A. Books

Adams, Richard N., and Preiss, Jack J., editors. Human Organization
Research, Field Relations and Techniqpes. Homewood, Illinois:
Dorsey Press, 1960.

 

 

Becker, Howard S., and Geer, Blanche. "Participant Observation: The
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Homewood, Illinois: Dorsey Press, 1960.

Becker, Howard 8. "Problems of Inference and Proof in Participant
Observation." Sociological Methods. Edited by Norman K.
Denzin. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969.

 

Becker, Howard S.; Geerg‘Blanche; and Hughes, Everett. Making the
Grade. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968.

Becker, Howard S.; GeeryiBlanche; Hughes, Everett C; and Strauss,
Anselm L. Boys in‘White, Student Culture in Medical Schools.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

 

Bogdon, Robert. Participant Observation in Organizational Setting_.
Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1972.

 

Bruyn, Severyn. The Human Perspective in Sociology,gThe Methodology
of Participant Observation. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, 1966.

 

Cusick, Philip A. Inside High School, The Students' World. New York:
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973.

 

Gans, Herbert J. The Urban Villagers, Groups and Class in the Life
Of Italian Americans. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1962.

 

 

Geer, Blanche. "First Days in the Field." Sociologists at Work.
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189

190
Gioscia, Victor. "Groovin' on Time: Fragments of A Sociology of the
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Goffman, Erving. Asylum . Doubleday and Company, 1961.

Gordon, C. Wayne. The Social System of the High School. New YOrk:
The Free Press of Glencoe, 1957.

Jacobs, Glenn. The Participant Observer. New York: George
Braziller, 1970.

Liebow, Elliot. Tally's Corner. Boston: Little, Brown and Company,
1967.

 

Lutz, Frank W. and Iannaccone, Lawrence. Understanding Educational
Organizationsl A Field Study Approach. Columbus, Ohio:
Merrill Press, 1969.

McCall, George J., Simmons, J. L. Issues in Participant Observation.
Don Mills, Ontario: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1969.

McPherson, Gertrude. Small Town Teacher. Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press, 1972.

Stinchcombe, Arthur L. Rebellion in a High School. Chicago:
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Sjoberg, Gideon and Nett, Roger. A Methodology for Social Research.
New York: Harper and Row, 1968.

Wax, Rosalie. Doing Field Work, Warnings and Advice. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1971.

Whyte, William Foote. Street Corner Society. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1943.

B. Journals and Non-Book Sources

 

Ayling, Richard J. "An Exploratory Study of the Formal and Informal
Relationships Between White and Black Students in a Racially
Mixed, Urban, Secondary'School." Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
Michigan State University, 1973.

Burnett, Jacquetta Hill. "Ceremony, Rites and Economy in the Student
System of an American High School." Human Organization,
Vol. 28 (Spring, 1969), 1-3.

 

LaBelle, Thomas J. "An Anthropological Framework for Studying Education."
Teachers College Record, Vol. 73 (May, 1972), 519-38.

Scherr, Jacqueline." Qualitative Data/Trends: A Methodological Note."
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191

Schwartz, Morris S. and Schwartz, Charlotte G. "Problems in.Partici-
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(January, 1955), 344-7.

Sindell, Peter S. "Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Education."
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593-606.

 

II. ADOLESCENTS IN SCHOOL

A. Books

Bany, Mary A. and Johnson, Lois V. Classroom Group Behavior,jGroup
Dynamics in Education. New York: The MacMillan Company, 1964.

 

Berger, Bennett M. "On the Youthfulness Of Youth Cultures." Sociology
of Youth. Edited by Harry Silverstein. New York: The MacMillan
Company, 1973.

Buxton, Claude E. Adolescents in School. New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 1973.

Coleman, James S. The Adolescent Society, The Social Life of the
Teenage and Its Impact on Education. New York: The Free
Press of Glencoe, 1961.

 

Adolescents and the Schools. New York: Basic Books,

 

 

1965.

Eisenstadt, S. N. From.Generation to Generation. Glencoe, Illinois:
Free Press, 1956.

 

Friedenberg, Edgar Z. Coming of Aggiin America. New York: Random
House, 1963.

 

. The Vanishing Adolescent. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959.

 

Goodman, Paul. Compulsory Mis-Education. New York: Horizon Press,
1964.

 

. Growing Up Absurd. New York: Random House, 1960.

 

 

Hurlock, Elisabeth. "American Adolescents of Today--A New Species."
Human Dynamics in Psychology and Education. Edited by Don
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Hollingshead, August B. Elmtown's Youth, The Impact of Social Classes
on Adolescents. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1949.

 

192

Kandel, D. B.; Lesser, G. 8.; and Roberts, G. C. "Concept of Adolescent
Subculture." Adolescents and the American High School.
Edited by Richard F. Purnell. New York: Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston, 1970.

Parsons, Talcott. "The School Class as a Social System: Some of
Its Functions in American Society." Education, Economy,
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by A. H. Halsey, Jean Floud, and C. Arnold Anderson. New
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Polsky, Howard W. "The Sociology of Adolescence." Adolescents and
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York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.

 

Purnell, Richard F., Editor. Adolescents and the American High School.
New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1970.

B. Journals

 

Elkin, Frederick and Westley, William. "The Myth of Adolescent Culture."
American Sociological Review, Vol. 20 (December, 1955), 680-4.

Epperson, David C. "A Re-Assessment of the Indices of Parental
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Jahoda, Marie and Warren, Neil. "Myths of Youth." Sociology of
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Parsons, Talcott. "Age and Sex in the Social Structure of the United
States." American Sociological Review, Vol. 7 (January, 1942),
604-16.

 

Schwartz, Gary and Merton, Don. "The Language of Adolescence: An
Anthropological Approach to the Youth Culture." American
Journal of Sociology, Vol. 72 (March, 1967), 453-68.

Smith, Louis M. and Kleine, Paul F. "The Adolescent and His Society."

Review of Educational Research, 1966, Vol. 36 (October, 1966),
424-36.

III. OTHER REFERENCES'

A. Books

Berger, Peter L. and Luckman, Thomas. The Social Construction of
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193

Blumer, Herbert. "Society as Symbolic Interaction." Human Behavior
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Allyn and Bacon, 1967.

"What is Wrong with Social Theory?" Sociological Methods,
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Brookover, Wilbur B. and Erickson, Edsel L. School, Society and
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Denzin, Norman R., editor. Sociological Methods, A Sourcebook.
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Dewey, John. Experience and Education. New York: Collier Books, 1973.

 

. Human Nature and Conduct. New York: Holt, Rinehart,
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Good, Carter V. Essentials of Educational Research. New York:
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Hamachek, Don E., editor. Human Dynamics in Psychology and Education.
Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1968.

 

Hammond, Philip E., editor. Sociologists at Work. New York:
Doubleday and Company, 1964.

 

Jencks, ChistOpher; Smith, Marshall; Acland, Henry; Bane, Mary Jo;
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Kinch, John. Social Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill Book.Company,
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March, James G., editor. Handbook of Organizations. Chicago: Rand
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Mead, George H. Mind, Self, and Society, From the Standpoint of
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Merton, Robert K. Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe,
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. Organizational Analysis: A Sociological View. Belmont,
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Rose, Arnold, editor. Human Behavior and Social Processes. Boston:
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Schutz, Alfred. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated
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Silverstein, Harry, editor. The Sociology of Youth, Evolution and
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Blumer, Herbert. "Sociological Implication of the Thought of George
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Branson, James. "An Analysis of Principals' Attitudes Regarding Drug
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