The First Year out: Understanding American Teens after High School

Tim Clydesdale spent one year hanging out at a New Jersey public high school. He also conducted in-depth interviews with a core sample of 50 "culturally mainstream" high school seniors, interviewing them again after their first year out of high school. He asked them about their school work, paid jobs, leisure time, religious faith, political commitments, career goals, and relationships with family, friends and significant others. Contrary to the grand ideals that we professors have of the transformative power of a liberal arts education, Clydesdale finds that most students merely tolerate our lessons, but do not integrate them into their sense of self. They are not the critical thinkers we want them to be. They certainly don't examine their own lives with much intellectual curiosity, nor are they very engaged civically. However, if teens behave this way we should not be surprised. After all, as Clydesdale reminds us, few American adults live their lives with such lofty purpose either.