Adolescents\' Emotional Adjustment Reaction Paper School Organization

Adolescents' Emotional Adjustment

Reaction Paper

School Organization and Adolescents' Emotional Adjustment

Watt's article explores the connection between school organization and adolescents' mental health. There is a commonly held belief that adolescents receive a superior educational and interpersonal experience in private schools and small schools. Watt cites studies by Coleman and others that have given support to the perceived superiority of private schools. Coleman's findings in support of private schools did not however address mental health, but were instead limited to academic achievement.

Watt's questions "Are private schools better not only for academic achievement but for mental health? Are small schools associated with broad indicators of emotional well-being?" (2003, p.345) form the basis for her study. Watt's study addresses these issues by examining three indicators of adolescents' emotional adjustment: depression, suicide attempts and violent dispositions.

Watt's study analyzed data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent health, which surveyed health-related behaviors of adolescents in grades 7-12. The survey measured depression using the "feelings scale," consisting of 19 questions that addressed how often adolescents felt sad, depressed, lonely, fearful and so forth. The survey measured suicidality by number of suicide attempts, and measured violence by a question about the use or threat of use of a weapon. The study was designed to examine multiple indicators of mental health because males and females often exhibit distress in different ways, externalized vs. internalized. Watt justified the study design by citing a study by Pearlin that found that "females tend to internalize their stress and become depressed, while males tended to externalize their stress and become aggressive" (2003, p. 349).

Watt's study also took into account independent variables, such as school characteristics, socioeconomic status, community-neighborhood influences, intact family status and peer relations. With respect to depression, her study results showed that males who attend small schools have higher levels of depression than males attending large schools, while school size had no effect on females' depression levels. The study also found that males who attend small schools were almost four times more likely to have attempted suicide in the past year than were males who attended large schools, while school size and sector did not affect female suicide attempts. The study showed that both males and females who attended private religious schools were more likely to have used or threatened to use a weapon in the past year.

Overall, the study did not support arguments that private schools and small schools were beneficial to adolescents' emotional adjustment, finding instead that they may actually be detrimental to adolescents' mental health. Watt explained this observation by noting that the unique needs of adolescents as they struggle to construct an identity are more easily met in large and/or public schools.

Watt concluded the article by citing several studies that show evidence of a relationship between school size and academic accomplishment, which have been used to determine governmental and educational policy. These studies did not however investigate a relationship between school size and mental health. Watt's study suggests that policy choices in favor of small and/or private schools may not "necessarily be conducive to emotional adjustment and, in some cases, may actually be harmful to adolescents' mental health" (2003, p. 364). She calls for additional research because "we need to know whether choices that are conducive to emotional stability are at odds with those that promote academic achievement" (2003, p. 364).

My Response

The article concludes that, with the exception of more supportive friendships among females, "all the other analyses, which examined perceived social acceptance, friendship supports, depression, suicide, and weapon use/threat, suggested that adolescents do not benefit from attending private and/or small schools" (Watt, 2003, p. 362).

The study findings are significant because they fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Over the years a number of studies have found that small and/or private schools produced better academic outcomes for adolescents, and it was just assumed that mental health outcomes must be similar. Watt's study showed, however, that such assumptions were misguided and offered plausible explanations for the flawed thinking that her findings exposed.

The explanations that Watt offers for the unexpected study findings are especially plausible. Small homogenous communities may indeed be beneficial for adults, whose identities are already formed, but adolescents who are struggling to construct an identity would understandably have different needs. It seems intuitively obvious that adolescents would prefer larger, more anonymous environments in which to initially define themselves.

Similarly, adolescents' need to fit in with a group would more easily be accomplished in a large, diverse population. There will inevitably be some individuals who do not fit in with the dominant group. The odds of them finding others like themselves who also do not fit in would of course increase in a larger, more diverse population. The larger the school, the greater the odds that there are more isolated individuals, who will in turn be able to offer each other support and identity validation.

Watt's explanation of the interaction between social control and mental health at small vs. large school also makes sense intuitively. Again, for individuals who feel they do not fit in or measure up, the pressure they would experience in small and/or private schools would be painful, in some cases to the point of being violence- or suicide-inducing. It stands to reason that these individuals would feel less pressure to conform in larger, more anonymous environments.

My Experience

Having attended small and large Catholic schools, I find it interesting to read scientific explanations that validate the interactions that I observed. In the smaller school with only a few hundred students, not only did many of the students already know each other, but their entire families were frequently known to each other as well. Almost any incidence of scandal, divorce, substance abuse, or poverty was common knowledge, and that lack of privacy must have been painful for individuals who sought acceptance but were made to feel isolated and inferior instead.