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Journalist Edward Humes shows us a little-seen side of our nation's educational system: the side that works. Humes spent a year (2001-02) at Whitney High School in Cerritos, California, a small, middle-class suburb of Los Angeles, where he taught a writing workshop and observed the daily workings of this top-ranked public school. The book honestly examines the extraordinary effort (and elusive chemistry) it takes to achieve that status and the subsequent toll it takes on the remarkable students at the school. It also provides a wonderful portrait of American life. For all its distinction, Whitney High School reflects a cross-section of America, where immigrant families struggle with their American counterparts to guide their children toward academic excellence.It comes as no surprise that at the heart of Whitney's success is a devoted staff of teachers and administrators who are as overworked and brilliant as their high-achieving charges. Nor should it shock us that the school's ranking does not come without a price. Whitney students are driven and well-rounded, but they are also sleep-deprived and often subjected to extreme parental pressure. The downside of life at Whitney is that a focus on high grades and college placement sometimes takes the place of the joy of learning, and worse yet, sometimes leads some students to cheat. Still, as Humes's engaging narrative reveals, the triumphs far outweigh the inevitable shortcomings. Unfortunately, the model Whitney provides is easy to identify but not easy to reproduce. As Humes observes, our nation's most successful schools "are small, intimate, and attentive. . . marked by high expectations put to work in tangible ways. . . [with] rigorous traditional studies (as opposed to rigorous drilling for annual high-stakes tests); longer hours of study and work; strong parental involvement. . . low absenteeism and few discipline problems; and leadership with a vision."--Silvana Tropea
Yuk This book was a chore to get through. There were some spots that were entertaining, but for the most part I found to be boring. And maybe because I went to a public school that was doing this kind of AP type stuff 30 years ago, and managed to do it without excluding anyone or needing entrance exams.. and still found time for those kids who maybe did not wish to go to college (and believe me, they did everything to try to talk you into going to college).. I was just not that impressed. Back then many of my teachers saw alot of this college prep stuff as a memorization game rather than true learning and said so. Anyone blessed with a good memory could play the system. This whole book to me had a pompous tone, and many of the students seem like little elites. But to be fair the author does point all this out, which is why two stars. If you really want to read this, please get it from the library so you can give it back.
The Route To Success There are more and more books coming out each year that try and uncover what it means to be a public high school student today. Edward Humes does this beautifully, but he takes a different route. He goes into the heart of one of the nation's top schools, Whitney High, located in Cerritos, California. This is not your typical school. Whites are among the minority, and Asian-Americans make up for over 70 percent of the students. There is an admissions process. Unheard of, at least by me, until I read this book. Every student is expected to not only go to college, but to a top college. Where drop-out rates, drugs, and sex are running high in many of the schools in the country, Whitney doesn't have this problem.
The problem is pressure. Not the pressure to keep passing grades. Not to date the right guy. Not to win the state championship in football. But, the pressure to succeed. Parents, teachers, and students are driven by this force. Humes uncovers something that is almost unheard in America: a sound educational system.
Not that Whitney doesn't have some of the same problems that face other schools in the country, they just deal with them better. They put education back where it belongs. The top spot on the students' priority lists.
Humes also deals with issues that plague the country. Should we take standardized tests as the only way to know how well a school is doing? Shouldn't we be looking at what students learn inside of classrooms? Should schools follow the route of Whitney, forcing students to succeed? All questions that education policy-makers should be asking.
Humes reports what life is like in a community where its members are driven to succeed. This is a must-read for anyone interested in making education in America a top priority.Fascinating Exploration of Over-Achieving Students In School of Dreams Edward Humes "chronicles the year he spent inside one of America's top public high schools." The students he shadows, interviews, and profiles in the book are the type of over-achieving students that attend the best colleges in the nation. I've taught at a couple of very good universities, and I found his descriptions of Whitney High School students, students so similar to those I've taught, to be insightful and moving. I'm amazed at the sacrifices these students make to achieve their high levels of academic success. Sure, they make stellar grades and AP and SAT scores and pack their CVs with extra-curricular activities, but they do so at the expense of sleep, health, pursuit of personal goals not deemed sufficiently academically or financially rewarding by their parents, and sometimes any sense of deep learning. Humes forces me to view my own students as whole people, not just academic success machines.
Humes' book is an exploration of these students and of the disconnects that almost define their lives. There's the disconnect between the student's goals and interests and their parents' desires to see them go to the top colleges and universities (top priority goes to HYP, the Harvard-Yale-Princeton triumvirate of Ivies). There's the disconnect between the students' pursuit of grades and test scores and their teachers' desire for the students to learn both course content and critical thinking skills in ways that will last beyond the next big test, a disconnect that one science teacher profiled in the book overcomes in dramatic fashion. And there's the disconnect between the ideas and plans for improving American public education made by politicians and policy-makers and the reality of life in a high school that, in spite of its pressure cooker of an academic environment, largely works.
In speaking to the latter disconnect, Humes describes a visit to the school by Neil Bush, the president's brother, whose ideas for makings schools more engaging and responsive to students like himself whom he sees as "hunter-warriors" clash comically and tragically with the experiences of Whitney's students who surprise and confound Bush with the assertion that "gaining knowledge is a pleasure." Humes also details several ways in which the No Child Left Behind Act and the "Texas Miracle" upon which the act is based fail miserably at encouraging success in public schools. Whitney, for example, has been awarded several Blue Ribbon excellence awards from the U.S. Department of Education, but it in danger of being declared failing by the NCLB Act for lack of "improvement."
However, the NCLB Act and politics constitute a minor theme in Humes' book. His story is really about the students and teachers at Whitney High School. (I found the attention to the teachers especially interesting after reading Denise Clark Pope's similar book, Doing School, which focused entirely on the student point of view.) Through Humes' descriptions of these students and teachers--and through samples of the students' writing and college essays--School of Dreams paints a thorough and compelling picture of life at one of the best public high schools in the nation.
