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

Personal and Interpersonal Concerns
Academic pressure and the stress it places on individuals was mentioned by many
students, but more often by those in the middle school years than by those in
high school. A student at King Junior High School said that ‘‘Homework is the
most stressful thing for me, but it’s mostly about when I’ll get it done on time
and when I’ll find time to do it.’’ Another said that ‘‘I’m in the honors lab and
our teachers give us a lot of work there and sometimes they give us the whole
lab project at one time and it’s hard to stay ahead. But somehow I do it.’’ Some
middle school students also worried openly about where they would attend high
school, a concern expressed even more often by their parents. In Metro City, stu-
dents can attend their neighborhood school or apply to specialized schools or
academies. In the suburbs, private schools were more likely to be mentioned as
an option. Within the city, some described the possibility of relocating in order
to attend better high schools, or at least those perceived as safer.
Compared to middle school students, high school students were more likely to
worry about their future:

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I guess it’s just an undecided mentality. Like, you do not know what you are
going to be doing. Just a worry about the future, whether you are going to
have a stable job, just what is ahead for the future . . . . It is like you are
coming to the end of an era. So it is kind of scary. (Eleventh-grade male,
Springdale)
A Hamilton student spoke of the pressure to excel not only now, but also in the
future:
I had a teacher say, ‘You are all the cream of the crop. You are going to be
running the country in 10 years, and if you do not go to these colleges and
do this, then you are all just failures.’ This is a horrible mindset.
Peer acceptance is very important to early adolescents, especially during the tran-
sition to new schools. Two first-year high school students at Hamilton said that
the primary concern for students their age was ‘‘to fit in and be accepted by their
peers. Students worry about being liked, about having friends, about building rela-
tionships.’’ As they get older, this concern may focus, for many, on relationships
with the opposite sex. As a 15-year-old male noted, ‘‘A lot of kids get very caught
up in the social things. ‘She called me this or that’, or ‘my boyfriend dumped me’
or whatever—that kind of stuff.’’ Some students talked about these interests over-
shadowing academic goals. A Hispanic female at Uptown said:
From what I’ve seen a lot of girls’ grades go down when they have a boy-
friend. You want to talk to him and be with him and if he is really good, you
know, cute and faithful and can fight, then he is more important than grades.
Students also worry about being pressured by friends. As early as middle school,
students said that the biggest problem was ‘‘hanging around the wrong people,
and letting other people bring them down.’’ A female student in her first year of
high school at Uptown said that the primary problem student’s deal with is ‘‘nega-
tive peer pressure. Your friends might say, ‘Let’s not go to biology, let’s go to
lunch.’ ’’ A Hispanic sophomore at the same school said she thought the main
problem was ‘‘peer pressure to smoke weed or skip class. I don’t do it but many
do, because they are trying to be popular, because the ones who cut (class) are
the most popular in school.’’