Life Span Development II School Age and Adolescence

Life Span Development II: School age and Adolescence 3 (2+1)

Lesson 26 : Adolescent interests

Educational Interests

The attitudes of older adolescents toward education are greatly influenced by their vocational interests. If they are aspiring to occupations which require education beyond high school, they will regard education as a stepping-stone. They will be interested in the courses they feel will be useful to them in their chosen field of work.

There are three types of adolescents who have little interest in education and who usually dislike school. They are first adolescents whose parents have unrealistically high aspirations for their academic, athletic or social achievements and who are constantly prodding them to come up to these goals. The second type are those who find little acceptance among their classmates and who feel that they are missing out on the fun their age-mates are having in extracurricular activities. Third, early matures who feel conspicuously large among their class mates and who, because they look older than they actually are often expected to do better academic work than they are capable of.

Adolescents who have little interest in education usually show their lack of interest in the following ways. They become underachievers, working below their capacities in all school subjects or in the subjects they lack interest in. Others who are disinterested in education become truants and try to gain parental permission to withdraw from school before the legal age for leaving. Still others become dropouts as soon as they reach the legal age of school leaving, regardless of whether they have finished the present grade. This is especially true of early matures who find school not only uninteresting but often a humiliating experience.