In middle school, I had good grades but was considered a bit of a teacher's pet and was not well liked (especially since I sucked at sports). So I stopped doing homework, I showed that I didn't make effort to try and be better accepted. I still did any graded homework (less than 20% of the homework given) but didn't bother with anything else. Luckily school was easy for me so I still got good grades but I got very habits from that that I have needed to unlearn after.
I strongly believe that peers are important and choosing school based on the type of peers is a valid choice. As another (more positive) example, we live in HK in a multilingual family (I speak French, my wife speaks Cantonese), my son goes to an international school in English and Mandarin. Most of his classmates speak at least 2 languages, many speak 3. In that environment, it's easy for my son to see value in speaking multiple languages and he's never rejected one language. I have a friend whose daughter is in France in a monolingual school where her peers don't value speaking multiple languages. As a result she's ashamed and refuses to speak Cantonese.
I strongly believe that peers are important and choosing school based on the type of peers is a valid choice. As another (more positive) example, we live in HK in a multilingual family (I speak French, my wife speaks Cantonese), my son goes to an international school in English and Mandarin. Most of his classmates speak at least 2 languages, many speak 3. In that environment, it's easy for my son to see value in speaking multiple languages and he's never rejected one language. I have a friend whose daughter is in France in a monolingual school where her peers don't value speaking multiple languages. As a result she's ashamed and refuses to speak Cantonese.