This basically sums up the first episode of the 1999 television show "Freaks and Geeks." It's about a group of kids ranging from the nerdiest geek to the freakiest freak to the meanest bully and how they all interact with each other. I think this exemplifies the latent, and manifest, functions of school and what they mean to highschoolers. Obviously the manifest function of school is to learn. The latent function would then be learning to socialize and interact with people. In the show, for most people the most important thing was the latent function, socializing. Lindsay Weir, the main character, used to be one of the kids who was more interested in the manifest function, she was on the academic decathalon team and never skipped a class. But then she starts hanging out with "freaks" and starts skipping class and stops worrying about school as much.
I think that a lot of kids in this society have that sort of mentality, or at least a little bit. I think a big part of school is socializing and I believe that it is becoming more of a manifest function. The point of shcool is to educate us and prepare us for the future. Without learning how to interact with others, we wouldn't be able to function in society as well as someone who has learned how to socialize.
The big thing here is that while there are manifest functions and latent functions, the line between those can blur from time to time and overlap or maybe even switch and it's up to us to figure out what is most important.
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