ADOLESCENCEto formulate and pursue life plans. Young people
are constrained and enabled by opportunity struc-
tures of school and work, but they also construct
their life course through their active efforts. This
section provides a set of examples that highlight
structured pathways that describe likely sequences
of social positions in terms of education and work.
It also discusses sociological efforts to understand
the active efforts of adolescents to shape their
biographies in these structured settings.
Educational pathways through adolescence.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, youth fortu-
nate enough to attend school typically started their
educations late and attended class sporadically.
Academies of education, not uncommonly a single
room in a private residence, were eager to accom-
modate the seasonal demands of agriculture. Con-
sequently student bodies encompassed a wide range
of pupils, whose ages often said little about their
academic accomplishments. This situation was more
pronounced in district schools, where attendance
was said to fluctuate from hour to hour. Further-
more, teaching was not yet an occupation that
required credentials, and teachers frequently re-
sorted to violence to impart lessons or to maintain
order, as did the students in response to frequent
humiliation.
At the college level, the violence was pro-
nounced. There were riots at Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton, nightly stoning of the president’s house
at Brown through the 1820s, and frequent beating
of blacks, servants, fellow students, and professors
(Kett 1977). During the early years of the republic,
little in the educational system was standardized.
Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, the edu-
cational system changed as Horace Mann, Henry
Barnard, and Calvin Stowe led the common school
revival, aimed at creating regulated, controlled
school settings. In addition to the efforts of early
reformers, many social, economic, political, and
cultural forces contributed to the standardization
of schools, particularly in the late nineteenth cen-
tury (Tyack 1974; Tyack, James, and Benavot 1987).
Today, the educational system is highly stand-
ardized and adolescent pathways through school
are readily identifiable: Adolescent pathways through
the educational system can be described in terms
of the transition to the seventh grade and tracking
through the high school years. A considerable
body of sociological research also examines the
many structured connections among secondary
education, tertiary institutions such as colleges
and vocational schools, and the workplace.At the transition to seventh grade, children
may remain in the same school (a ‘‘K–8’’ system) or
change to a junior high school. The latter structure
is thought to be more stressful by sociologists, as it
typically brings with it a disruption in social net-
works and the student’s first exposure to a bureau-
cratic setting with a high degree of specialization.
Students in K–8 systems continue to have one
teacher and one set of classmates for all subjects,
while students attending junior high school often
have a different teacher and classmates for each
subject. In fact, students in K–8 systems are more
influenced by peers, date more, and prefer to be
with close friends more than students making the
transition to junior high school. The latter report
higher levels of anonymity. Further, girls who
make the transition to junior high school appear
especially vulnerable to low levels of self-esteem
when compared with girls in a K–8 system and
boys in either system (Blyth et al. 1978; Simmons
and Blyth 1987; Simmons et al. 1979).It may be that the negative effects of the
transition to junior high school are amplified as
the number of transitions experienced by a young
person increases. A ‘‘focal theory of change’’ main-
tains that young people are better able to cope
with significant life events serially rather than si-
multaneously (Coleman 1974). Some evidence sup-
ports this view: As the number of transitions—
including school change, pubertal change, early
dating, geographic mobility, and major family dis-
ruptions such as death—that students must cope
with concurrently increase, their grades, extracur-
ricular involvements, and self-esteem decrease
(Simmons et al. 1987). These associations are par-
ticularly deleterious for girls. How the transition
to seventh grade is organized can thus have perva-
sive implications for the well-being of youth.
Within secondary schools students are fre-
quently assigned to ‘‘tracks,’’ different curricula
for students of differing talents and interests. Soci-
ologists have identified several noteworthy fea-
tures of tracks, including selectivity (the extent of
homogeneity within tracks), electivity (the extent
to which students choose their tracks), inclusive-
ness (the extent to which tracks leave open options