In the context of increasing school enrollment, the functioning of the school system and, in particular, the teaching structures of second-cycle secondary education play an essential part in determining the educational, vocational, and social choices of young people. It seemed appropriate, therefore, to define this role and to examine the nature…

Rising youth unemployment has been arousing increasing concern in nearly all the industrial democracies, while it has become more clear throughout the 1970's that prolongation of schooling has brought severe problems of adjustment for young people who are being held in school through a combination of parental and societal pressures, and are not…