On the Outside Looking in: A Year in an Inner-City High School

by Cristina Rathbone

Book Overview

Journalist Cristina Rathbone, who spent a year at New York City's West Side High School with inner-city youth, offers a moving, brilliant, bittersweet work of literature with the power to focus wide... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0871137364
• ISBN13: 9780871137364
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Reality like a slap in the face

This is one of those eye-opening books that brings to vivid life a world that you might previously have known absolutely nothing about. This is not fiction - this is real. Cristina Rathbone is a journalist who spent a year as an observer in one of New York's most struggling high schools, one which has become a "dumping ground" for the students that no other school will take. 'On the Outside Looking In' is Ms. Rathbone's chronicle of the experience.The students of West Side High are deeply troubled. Many are homeless, in trouble with the law, victims of abuse, members of gangs, or any and all of the above. They have never known a world other than the streets that they grew up on. It is evident through Rathbone's writing that she grew to care deeply about many of the students that she came into contact with. Through her chronicling of the time she spent with them, Rathbone shows how several of the kids allowed her brief glimpses into their inner selves, the personalities hiding behind the tough front. One scene in particular comes to mind, as a 13-year-old girl who comes to school every day from a home for disturbed teens uncharacteristically volunteers to read to her class a prayer that she had written: "...So, Father, can you tell me who there is to talk to when people seem deaf? How is there a river overflow when there's no tears? How is there fear when there's no emotion? How are you a victim with no crime? There is no response. Just dead silence....Where do I turn when loneliness is near? Will the answer appear or will I have to just keep on searching?" Revelations like this are strewn throughout the book.This is *not* a book about how to teach urban youth. Rathbone is a journalist, not a teacher, and this book is not a method book. Rather, this is a book that exposes those of us who have led rather sheltered lives to a frightening reality that too many people in this world have to face every day. It also brings to light many of the problems with public education, and how the schools that need funding the most always seem to recieve the least. Cristina Rathbone has written a well-written and moving memoir, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is willing to read it and face a painful reality.

A Hard and Honest Report

The book sings, though the song is most often as sad as can be. Rathbone fumes and hopes and gets kicked around by an experience harder than any I've personally ever had. The environment in a "last-chance" high school in New York City is not one I would EVER intentionally place myself. This of course is the whole point. Rathbone immerses herself in the lives of the most marginal of human beings...she literally goes to places none of us want to know exist. She becomes friends with people for whom chaos is an everyday reality. Out of her experience comes a brilliant book, one that slaps the face of those of us who want to look away, those of us who are ashamed and afraid to know. I applaud her bravery. It has made living in New York a different experience.

Hauntingly compassionate

Ms. (Or is it Mrs.?) Rathbone's true life observations of high school life in an alternative school in Manhattan's West Side is a book I'll never forget. The characters are unforgettable as well. The situations are so graphically real and sad that you almost forget the kids are real. That feeling doesn't last long though, as memory reminds the reader that these tragic lives are lived in cities across the country. The portraits of these kids lives' are unforgettable, can make you angry at their situation and you want to try to help them out of it. Cheers to Christina Rathbone's professionalism in writing the book and it is understandable that she became part of their lives for a bit. As an observer, what else could you do?

Terrific account of inner-city kids and their school

Cristina Rathbone is an exceptional writer and person -- her book tells us more about poverty, schools, teachers , kids and the educational system than a truckload of statistics and white papers. EVERYONE involved in the schools should read this book! Shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Book prize for Nonfiction of current Interest.