The distribution of deviance among 13-14 year old students *

‘How to control a class’ is a familiar problem to beginners in teaching, but not only to them. For an experienced teacher, to admit to difficulties with whole classes amounts to an admission of failure. The head is usually unsympathetic, and educational researches may seem so, because they tend to stress that order depends on the teacher's effective role performance in the lesson. ¹ It is safe to single out an individual from a class and comment upon his behaviour, since this may be attributed to his background and emotional adjustment alone. Nevertheless, in sympathetic company – a clique of colleagues for example – many teachers will say that whole classes are problems to control, and in secondary school no group is mentioned more frequently than third year boys and girls, especially of low ability. It is the aim of this paper to explain the frequent hostility and intransigence of some of these students.