"How do young people envision their occupational futures? In a world of rapid change and uncertain work prospects, what roles do families, schools and communities play in helping teenagers develop habits and values that will be useful in their careers? What do teenagers feel about their schooling and after-school work, and how do these experiences affect their passage to adult work? These are the questions - never before exposed to systematic research - that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and sociologist Barbara Schneider posed in their five-year study of adolescents. The students come from an unusually broad cross-section of education institutions - ranging from a magnet school famous for training elite scientific talent to inner-city schools. The detailed results provide a window of society's future through which we can glimpse how adolescents are preparing themselves for the lives they will lead in the years to come."--BOOK JACKET.