ABSTRACT
Western, media-dominated, popular culture presents adolescence as a carefree time, when life is there to be enjoyed and anything is possible. Teenagers are encouraged to grasp opportunities and experiment with ideas and activities, to have a good time before they have to take on the heavy burdens of responsibility that are seen as coming with work, long-term relationships, and parenthood. This chapter looks at the relationship between education and adolescence, from the point of view of how the adolescent meets the challenge of formal education but also from the opposite perspective. It shows how do the teacher, the school, and the college adapt itself to cope with the challenge of educating large numbers of individuals in this phase of development? In the United Kingdom, secondary transfer takes place for most children at the age of 11 years. This does not necessarily coincide neatly with puberty and the onset of adolescence.
