In this speech, the author considers how the authority dimension of school organization may be related to students' lack of attention to long-range goals and to some of their motivational problems in the classroom. First, the author reviews how the distinction between short-run and long-run returns is similar to familiar distinctions made by…

The School Organization program of the Center for Social Organization of Schools is currently concerned with authority-control structures, task structures, reward systems, and peer group processes in schools. This report, prepared by the School Organization program, examines one aspect of authority-control structures in high schools--content of…