Research has consistently demonstrated that small groups have a powerful emotional influence on their members. We recommend that American educators likewise give greater emphasis to the principle of group persistence.
Families are small, intimate, persisting groups of adults and children.
It is in their nuclear families that children learn the attitudes and values that will make them good or poor students. Other studies have demonstrated that another powerful learning influence is the student peer group, a small, intimate, persisting band of children or adolescents. Finally, a variety of analyses of the research and the lilterature have emphasized that stability, persistence, and intimacy are the characteristics of influential groups. Presumably, one reason that schools generally have less influence than families and peer groups is the low level of intimacy and persistence that often prevails in school groups. Similar principles apply in education.