Early Adolescence: Can Education Provide New Opportunities for a Critical Period of Development?

The author considers the key features of adolescence & the potential for the community, & particularly the schools, to contribute to the development of vigorous, skillful, adaptable young people. He addresses the problems of attrition & achievement in junior high schools & discusses the Carnegie Corporation’s initiative in developing a biology teaching program which would relate essential concepts to problems that students encounter in their daily lives. (GW)