ABSTRACT
One of the main dangers of institutional care lies in the peer group. Everpresent, it envelops the inmate and carries him to doom or glory. Since most group environments have been for the undesirable, the individual usually is pressed to move in the direction of behaviors that the larger society depreciates or even resents. Polsky (1967) found this to be so in Cottage Six; others have made similar observations before and since his excellent study. The group is omnipresent, hence omnipotent. Its power is so great that adult leaders are unable to act as a balance, so that they, too, actually become co-opted and not only accede to but often participate in the behavior that society has charged them to reduce or eliminate. The fact has led to its assumption.
Some settings, however, do not begin with the assumption that adolescent 248 peer societies will evolve conduct unacceptable to adults nor that pressure of age-mates will confirm the young person in his misbehavior. Clearly the kibbutz youth group is predicated on the opposite premise—namely, that peers will clarify and cajole, push and reward in order to move a member toward adult values. In this effort they seem to succeed (see Chapter 15 ), but more than that, if unconstrained in their youthful exuberance and ideological purity they may well push and succeed to excess. In his studies of adolescents Bronfenbrenner also finds a lack of divergence between the culturally approved values and those that Soviet school children accept. In boarding schools where peer pressure is bound to be intense conformity to societal values is even greater than among children who live at home, whose environment contains a diversity of socializing agents.
