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Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education By Robert Crosnoe Cambridge University Press. 2011. 280 pages. $25.99 paper

2012; Oxford University Press; Volume: 93; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/sf/sos125

1534-7605

Irenee R. Beattie,

Early Childhood Education and Development

From Fast Times at Ridgemont High to Mean Girls, social experiences in high school loom large in American popular culture. Rather than mere nostalgia, this fascination reflects an important reality that scholars such as Coleman (1961) have been documenting for decades: informal, social aspects of high school influence formal, academic experiences as well as later life outcomes. Robert Crosnoe's Fitting In, Standing Out: Navigating the Social Challenges of High School to Get an Education offers an empirically rich and theoretically grounded wake-up call for us to turn our attention to the ways socially marginalized teens lose out educationally. Crosnoe argues that if recent education reforms have been ineffective at improving student achievement, a key reason is that these interventions ignore the social side of high school, which has grown increasingly influential due to recent changes in the economy and technological advances. I imagine that many who have earned doctorates are quite aware that social marginalization during high school is not sufficient, in and of itself, to derail educational advancement. Crosnoe draws from an array of disciplines and uses multiple methods to vividly illustrate the ways teens manage the identity project of not fitting in, and shows how these efforts can influence their academic outcomes. In the face of social marginalization, some adolescents adopt problematic coping mechanisms such as internalizing others' judgments (often leading to depression), self-medication (using alcohol or drugs) or disengagement from school. Dealing with stigma among peers in these ways can provide short-term psychological benefits, while subsequently leading to such academic problems as lower grades and accumulating fewer college-going credits and thus lower odds of college enrollment. Other young adults are able to avoid negative coping mechanisms and school difficulties by relying on two key sources of resilience: (1) supportive friends, parents and others and (2) niches in which they can achieve and meet peers who share their interests such as sports, the arts or clubs (Hello, Mathletes!).