(1) Do people put on and take off a new set of duds or a hairstyle as if they were a new set of duds or a hairstyle? It seems to me that most fashion choices are variations on previous choices, and you can't make wholesale changes in them any more than you can make wholesale changes in your mannerisms or your accent. If your clothes don't match your mannerisms, people can tell.
(2) You can't be a prep or a burnout without the cooperation of other preps and burnouts. So yes you have some choices, but how far you can go with them depends on previous choices and circumstances.
(3) "Prep" and "jock" and "burnout" and "skater" have different meanings and impacts in different times and places (and maybe the words are obsolete and have been replaced by others) but my guess - and this is a guess, and I don't know if there have been any studies - is that where these are major groups in a school (preps and jocks on one side, burnouts and skaters on the other), membership in them is a better predictor of the students' future income and social role than would, say, their parents' current income and social role. But then, a majority but by no means all preps will have parents who are salaried professionals, and a majority but by no means all burnouts will have parents who are blue-collar workers.
(4) High school seems crucially important to a discussion of class and music, but why? I'd speculate that, especially in what in the U.S. are called "public schools" (and what in Britain are called "state schools"), a wider range of people are thrown together doing similar things than you get among adults on the job and in their day-to-day life, and the students pretty much have to be there and the school pretty much has to take them (obv. kids can choose to drop out or to a limited extent choose a different kind of school; and schools can expel a few students and in effect force out others, but not a huge amount of them). And teenagers haven't figured out who they are yet, so "class" (or whatever) is more up for grabs, so people think about "classes" more and give them names.
(5) Where arty-boho types are prominent in a school (in times past were called "freaks," or "punks," maybe still are) things go a bit kerblooey, because the freaks are confident and obnoxious enough to challenge the status of preps and jocks as top dogs (ha! we're better) but also to challenge the status of the burnouts as the main refusal group. Freaks can be as closed-minded and exclusive as anyone else, but their attacks on the preps and the burnouts oddly enough open the doors for preps and burnouts to jump to the freak category, since the freaks are modeling a new kind of status that people can emulate. Also, the freaks provide a motive for the preps and the burnouts to absorb freak characteristics (which is how bohemian ideas get pulled into the mainstream).
(6) A loner or a misfit who punches a time clock is classed as blue collar/working-class, but a loner or misfit in a high school is not a burnout; he's a loner or a misfit. To be a burnout he has to have burnout friends. And one can say that the preps in a high school are high status but you can't say the burnouts are at the bottom; the burnouts will have a lot of friends and esteem (as opposed to the misfits). But then, status can be very much in the eyes of the beholder. Note the difference in the words "loner" and "misfit."
Re: class is the elephant in the room?
(1) Do people put on and take off a new set of duds or a hairstyle as if they were a new set of duds or a hairstyle? It seems to me that most fashion choices are variations on previous choices, and you can't make wholesale changes in them any more than you can make wholesale changes in your mannerisms or your accent. If your clothes don't match your mannerisms, people can tell.
(2) You can't be a prep or a burnout without the cooperation of other preps and burnouts. So yes you have some choices, but how far you can go with them depends on previous choices and circumstances.
(3) "Prep" and "jock" and "burnout" and "skater" have different meanings and impacts in different times and places (and maybe the words are obsolete and have been replaced by others) but my guess - and this is a guess, and I don't know if there have been any studies - is that where these are major groups in a school (preps and jocks on one side, burnouts and skaters on the other), membership in them is a better predictor of the students' future income and social role than would, say, their parents' current income and social role. But then, a majority but by no means all preps will have parents who are salaried professionals, and a majority but by no means all burnouts will have parents who are blue-collar workers.
(4) High school seems crucially important to a discussion of class and music, but why? I'd speculate that, especially in what in the U.S. are called "public schools" (and what in Britain are called "state schools"), a wider range of people are thrown together doing similar things than you get among adults on the job and in their day-to-day life, and the students pretty much have to be there and the school pretty much has to take them (obv. kids can choose to drop out or to a limited extent choose a different kind of school; and schools can expel a few students and in effect force out others, but not a huge amount of them). And teenagers haven't figured out who they are yet, so "class" (or whatever) is more up for grabs, so people think about "classes" more and give them names.
(5) Where arty-boho types are prominent in a school (in times past were called "freaks," or "punks," maybe still are) things go a bit kerblooey, because the freaks are confident and obnoxious enough to challenge the status of preps and jocks as top dogs (ha! we're better) but also to challenge the status of the burnouts as the main refusal group. Freaks can be as closed-minded and exclusive as anyone else, but their attacks on the preps and the burnouts oddly enough open the doors for preps and burnouts to jump to the freak category, since the freaks are modeling a new kind of status that people can emulate. Also, the freaks provide a motive for the preps and the burnouts to absorb freak characteristics (which is how bohemian ideas get pulled into the mainstream).
(6) A loner or a misfit who punches a time clock is classed as blue collar/working-class, but a loner or misfit in a high school is not a burnout; he's a loner or a misfit. To be a burnout he has to have burnout friends. And one can say that the preps in a high school are high status but you can't say the burnouts are at the bottom; the burnouts will have a lot of friends and esteem (as opposed to the misfits). But then, status can be very much in the eyes of the beholder. Note the difference in the words "loner" and "misfit."