Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Social Lives
Unstructured leisure time is often spent with friends, sometimes just ‘‘hanging
out.’’ Often for girls, as well as for some boys, weekday social interaction outside
of school involves talking on the telephone, reviewing and interpreting the day’s
events. Asked about how she spent her time after school, one 17-year-old high
school female replied:
I spend most of my time on the phone. I would say at least 3 hours a day.
I also have to do chores—do the dishes sometime, vacuum, not much. Mostly
I just talk to my friends and this one guy who is almost my boyfriend. I also

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spend a lot of time with my best friend—we spend a lot of time together. We
talk about what happened in school.
Boys spoke more of time spent ‘‘hanging out’’ with friends, though as students
got older this often happened in mixed groups. There were widely differing stand-
ards about the amount of time that students spend in peer interaction outside
school. For many, it is a routine part of after-school time, relaxing and talking with
friends, perhaps playing sports together. However, among the more studious,
weekday afternoons and evenings seemed devoted primarily to school-related
activities, with the weekends providing time for social activities. Even as early as
middle school, some reported how this had changed since their elementary years:
I like to talk with my friends at school, but I don’t hang out with them as
much as I used to after school. It always seems I can’t find time for that, even
though I’m still really good friends with them. (Student, King)
For high school students with heavy academic loads and several scheduled activi-
ties, there is even less time for socializing during the week. As one high school
student, asked about his social life, described it:
It was a high priority earlier, but as I get more serious about what I want to
do, I find that I don’t have time, especially during the week. I may talk to
a girl between classes, during lunch, before or after school. I might talk on
the phone, but not much during the week. I do go out on the weekends. For
some of my friends, though, it is a higher priority. (Tenth-grade male, Hamil-
ton)
Some of these academically-oriented students described combining studying and
social life. One student said, ‘‘During the week, if I want to hang out with my
friends, I just go to the library with them.’’ For others, particularly those less stu-
dious or less engaged in school, time with peers routinely occupies many of the
hours after school, though how it was actually spent was ill defined. Among this
group, some older students who have paired off are also likely to see each other
regularly. One junior male commented that he usually saw his girlfriend for a few
hours every day:
We don’t talk on the phone much, because I just usually walk over and see
her. We go out, the rest I can’t say on tape. I usually see her after I get back
from the park.
Parental control over time spent with friends varied, as did their expectations
about what was appropriate. Some Hispanic families interviewed expressed the
opinion that it was inappropriate to visit with school friends after school, and this
seemed to be particularly enforced for daughters.

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Discussions with students about their social lives made it clear that ‘‘dating’’ as
it was known a generation ago is clearly passe
´
in the communities studied. Adoles-
cents appear more likely to spend time in-groups than in pairs. A mother of six
summarized what many expressed in our interviews:
When I was young, the definition of dating was a date. You got called up and
asked to go to one event. But that is not a date necessarily today. Today it
is much more group oriented. (My daughter) might go out with one or two
girl friends and then meet up with a group of boys, and in that group may
be the boy that she is dating at the moment . . . . With the exception of
dances and stuff like that, I have not had a lot of experience of my kids dating
one person. With my daughters, I can count on one hand the number of times
a boy has come to the front door to pick them up for a date. It is more
groupie. (Mother, Springdale)
Students who do pair up are ‘‘going with’’ each other, a slippery term with evolv-
ing connotations as children age. Exclusive relationships certainly exist, but as one
teacher said ‘‘Dating as something proprietorial is not as important. ‘This is the
one and only’ is much less pronounced.’’ A ninth-grade female at Hamilton, asked
about dating, said:
I am friends with a lot of guys, so I hang around with them. I am sort of inter-
ested, but I have time. For most of my friends it is medium to high (priority),
for me I guess it is medium. I talk on the phone around 2 hours, about half
talking to guys.
Weekend social life may include ‘‘partying,’’ which often connotes the use of alco-
hol or drugs. One student gave the common lament that in his town ‘‘there is
not a lot to do. You can drink if you drink, but I don’t personally. So we just
kind of hang out, we go someplace.’’ Asked if that was typical, he responded,
‘‘No, most people drink and go to parties . . . . We are not into it yet.’’ His com-
ments, and those of others, seem to imply that partying and drinking is an ex-
pected activity during the upper years of high school. Middle school students also
talked about ‘‘not partying 
yet
.’’ One group of junior and senior students at
Springdale, asked how they spend weekends, described the changes over the
course of his high school years.