The present structure of rewards in high schools produces a response on the part of an adolescent social system which effectively impedes the process of education.

Schools are successful only insofar as they reduce the dependence of a child's opportunities upon his social origins.

If we refuse to accept as inevitable the irresponsibility and educational unconcern of the adolescent culture, then this poses a serious challenge.

In every school, more boys wanted to be remembered as a star athlete than as a brilliant student.

Cultural dominance of middle-class norms prevail in middle-class schools with a teacher teaching toward those standards and with students striving to maintain those standards.

The higher the social class of other students the higher any given student's achievement.

It is one thing to take as a given that approximately 70 percent of an entering high school freshman class will not attend college, but to assign a particular child to a curriculum designed for that 70 percent closes off for that child the opportunity to attend college.