¶ … junior high and high school are challenging in at least one aspect. For popular children, the academic aspect may be difficult to handle, while academically strong students may find it difficult to fit in with the particular social setup of the place and time within which they grow up. In fact, fitting in with this type of social environment may seem like the most important element of life for the teenager in question, regardless of how strong he or she is academically. This may be particularly challenging when a student is from a background that is not necessarily assumed to be strong in an academic sense. The writers Rodriguez and Rose, for example, address challenges that might be faced by students who enter the academic world from a working class background in their essays The Achievement of Desire and I Just Want to be Average, respectively. These essays address issues that can be compared, such as the challenges and benefits that might be derived from an education, even from a working class context. They way in which the authors go about making these points, however, contrast significantly, with Rodriquez focusing on the effect of education on family life and the price of above average performance, while Rose focuses on the way in which working class students might choose to avoid the rigors of academic performance by remaining average, and the inherent price that this might entail. Focusing on his success, Rodriguez considers the basic separation that...

When he began to focus on education as an important element in his life, he experienced a separation from the life he was used to before he entered education. In this way, what he gained by becoming a more academically focused person also meant a loss in terms of his separation from the family and friends he knew while growing up. In essence, what this means is that he became emotionally more detached when expressing himself, whereas his self-expression among family members prior to his academic education was always colored with emotional language. Between home and school, he faces a fundamental difference between expressing himself in an emotionally rich way and using a more detached way to express himself. This was a particular challenge Rodriquez faced when entering the world of academic achievement. His new world was one of order, calm and intellectual thought, which was the complete opposite of the world that represented his home life. This made it necessary for him to unravel himself from an identity he cultivated throughout his years as a child in his family home.
Rose's work focuses very much on the separation between the expectations teachers and educational programs in general have in terms of student achievement and the actual ability of students to reach these expectations. One of the main pieces of advice Rose gives is to "float the mark you set" meaning that expecting…