These factors include economic forces, peer and family pressures, sexual behavior, pregnancy, drug abuse, lack of economic success, and the inability of students and teachers to create a meaning system in which they can function together. The author hired students from a dropout prevention program and taught them to be his collaborators by tape-recording conversations with their peers and helping analyze the data and decide which were the most important in explaining the participants' lives. The youths interviews are both males and females ages 14-19. After detailing the problems and the youths' attitudes, the book concludes with recommended solutions and describes successful and unsuccessful program models. These solutions link education with work, involve structural changes in education, and delegate more responsibility to teachers. Index and 43 references