Doing School

I also just finished ”Doing School”: How We are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students by Denise Clark Pope. She is another author that I heard on NPR. She followed the 5 best students (based on counselor recommendations) for a year at the prestigious Faircrest High School, a public high school in a wealthy California suburb. Each of the students are driven and motivated by the desire to get into a good college so they can eventually get a good job and “make lots of money”. The first chapter is an introduction to the school and the students being profiled. The next 5 chapters is an in depth profile of each student, and the final chapter is an evaluation. There is an epilogue that tells what the students are doing now.
Although each of the students has been labeled as one of the best, they are very different. Two come from wealthy families, so they don’t need to have an outside job to support their family. One of them did what he considered the bare minimum to get “good grades”. However he really stressed about feeling selfish whenever he did anything that wasn’t related to school work. He found school boring and was only really excited when he was working as a volunteer that collected school supplies for underprivileged kids. The other worked so much that she made herself sick, and although she never took time to go to the doctor, probably had an ulcer from the stress. Both of these resorted to cheating on occasion and regularly contested grades and were able to raise grades by badgering. Neither was proud of their actions, but felt that with the level of competition, it was necessary in order to get into a good college.
Another of these students did her early schooling at a private school where she was able to follow her passions, especially her passion for acting. She also did not need to work to earn money. She was a very talented actress and the public high school was a frustrating experience for her because even though she enrolled in an independent study program, the supervising teacher decided mid-term to have the whole class follow his program instead of the independent study. When she transferred out, he set up a meeting with her counselor and the principle (she wasn’t invited) to accuse her of trying to “get away with something”, even though she was doing an entire month’s make-up work in all the classes she was transferring to. She was frustrated that her only choices were super-hard classes whose homework would impede her passion for drama or the easy, unchallenging classes that were full of out-of-control, unmotivated students. She also disliked the disjointed aspect of school where classes didn’t have anything to do with each other and there was no decompression time to absorb and process what she was learning. She told about one day that she watched a disturbing excerpt from the movie Cybil in one class followed immediately by a violent montage from the movie Born on the Fourth of July in another class. She left the classes shaken and was expected to be top of her game in the next class. She even considers dropping out of school entirely and getting her GED so as to skip the tedium.
A fourth student was Hispanic, the daughter of a single mom. She worked 35 hours a week on top of her school work and was always sick. She also was the main transportation and translator for a large extended family as they negotiated doctors and social workers. She is frustrated by her lack of English speaking and writing ability and though she wants to improve, doesn’t feel that any of the teachers are willing to help her. She regularly misses important information in lectures because she doesn’t understand, and when she gathers her courage to ask a question, the teachers are impatient and the other students treat her as though she were stupid. She is passionate about the Hispanic Society at school and participates fully in learning dances and putting on exhibitions and celebrations. She also feels that she is not able to learn in “bits and pieces”. When she is shown a violent film about the Holocaust, she is visibly shaken and asks, “Why was everyone killing all the Jews? This is the first time I have heard of this.” She enrolls in the business track at school, but after a year in it, feels that her time was wasted. The other students sloughed off and weren’t held accountable to the work and she didn’t feel anything useful to the “real world” was taught. She receives high honors in these courses, but refuses to accept them at an award ceremony because she sees them as false. She didn’t have to work that hard and there was no real contest. She was the only one to have done the work. She has difficulty taking tests, even when she has demonstrated mastery of the subject, so resorts to cheating on a regular basis in order to get the grades she feels she deserves.
The last student is also Hispanic and while he has a 2-parent home, also has to work 20-30 hours a week. His family is very supportive, to the extent of commuting long distances to his apartment after work in order to tutor him. He is teased in his community for his dedication to school. He responds with offers to tutor them. He tutors other students regularly, even when it impedes his own work because of the time commitment. He is quiet and attentive. He is not aggressive at all, so misses out on opportunities, such as signing up for a harder math class because he didn’t want to interrupt a staff meeting to get a crucial test score, so misses the deadline for sign-ups. He refuses to contest the decision because it’s “rude”. He also refuses to stand up for himself when he’s accused of cheating, even though he didn’t, and so receives an F on a project that he’d worked on for hours. He feels that to redo the project is an admission of guilt, but to contest the accusation would be disrespectful. He is not a good test taker, like the previous student, but scrupulously avoids cheating, and so receives poor marks and grades despite his knowledge of subject matter. He is very nervous speaking in front of groups, and even after repeatedly practicing oral presentations successfully, can only mumble and is unable to answer fielded questions, thus receiving poor grades again. He is continually frustrated when he starts an assignment as soon as a teacher gives it out, only to have the teacher change the requirements multiple times during class. It’s not a problem for the other students, because they haven’t even started yet, but for him, he ends up doing things 2 and 3 times. Of all the students, he is the one who would be the model pupil, but because he doesn’t “play the system” because it’s dishonorable, ends up paying the penalty.
Ms. Pope finishes up by summarizing the characteristics of successful students: multi-tasking, establishing allies and treaties among the faculty, cheating, and aggressively being a “squeaky wheel” in the matter of grades. All the students expressed feeling trapped in spouting information in return for grades with no real passion or retention required. All of them wanted to get into good colleges, and worried that they weren’t doing enough, even when they were so over-worked that they were sick and on the verge of mental breakdown. (There were episodes in each of the profiles in which the students “broke”. Generally it was manifested in violence in the boys and deep depression and hysterical crying in the girls.) One student described the purpose of school was for building up a tolerance to stress and finding out who was the fittest to survive in the world. Unsuccessful students generally are those who haven’t figured out how to play the game, and so feel that by high school, there is no point in trying anymore.
Part of the problem stems from the school system’s assessment of student achievement being based on test scores and class rankings. Ms. Pope acknowledges that a large part of this is because of the colleges wanting something objective with which to decide admissions. She even traces the problems to the work environment where people who survive best are often those who “kiss up”, “pass the buck”, “cover” themselves, and fake control over things that are out of control. Schools, perhaps, are only trying to successfully help student enter this environment rather than learning actual material or following passions and living joyfully.
I really enjoyed this book. My only complaint is that there are not real suggestions on what could be done differently. I must admit that even though I’m homeschooling, I give my 8-year-old tests on a regular basis, not so much to show mastery of material, but to give her experience with test taking. She’s required to take a multiple day standardized test annually. I also worry about college admission and am trying to get her interested in volunteering somewhere, partly to give her the chance to “give back”, but also to look good on a college application. At least I get the opportunity, as her primary teacher, to connect all the different subject matters and include things from outside school. I can say when we’re out and about, “Remember the other day when we were studying such and such? Here’s another example of that!”