A theoretical perspective on the historical origins of adolescence in the United States is outlined. Based on a materialist theory of social change, it is argued that adolescence is best understood as the state-appropriation of youth leisure, that the imposition of this status was effected through the enactment of compulsory education legislation, and that the reason for enacting this legislation was to increase the average propensity to consume within the population. We appeal to Dahrendorf's theory of class and Poulantzas' theory of the state to aid in our reconstruction of the history of compulsory education in terms of the creation and maintenance of adolescence. We conclude that adolescence was not a by-product of a socio-cultural need to institute a compulsory system of public education, but the reverse, that child-saving movements reflected the need to institute adolescence. The primary purpose of secondary education is to manipulate the deployment of youth within the economic sphere, and to serve as the locus of confinement within the structure of authority relations in the culture.
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