High School Students in the Labor Force: Some Costs and Benefits to Schooling and Learning

For several decades, social critics have questioned the almost exclusive emphasis placed on formal instruction in promoting the development of adolescents (Goodman, 1971; Illich, 1971) and have proposed that the education and socialization of all students, not just those bored with or alienated from school, would be facilitated by earlier experience in the world of work, either as an alternative or a complement to high school (National Panel on High Schools and Adolescent Education, 1976; Panel on Youth of the President's Science