School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School

by Edward Humes

Book Overview

The pressure to succeed in our nation's most competitive public high schools is often crushing. Striving to understand this insular world, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Edward Humes spent a year... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151007039
• ISBN13: 9780151007035
• Release Date: September 2003
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 14 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 9 and higher

Customer Reviews

a close reading

I'll start with a disclaimer. I'm a Whitney alum, so let's get a few inaccuracies and omissions out of the way. First, the big orange lockers were not part of the original décor; they were installed in the late 1980s, a vast improvement over the old one foot by one foot sorry excuses for lockers. Second, despite not having a gym way back then, Whitney still offered an impressive array of varsity sports, including basketball, tennis, and water polo. And third, unless the food in the Hutch has gone completely downhill over the past decade, it was never *that* bad. That said, as a scholar, I think Hume has written a good ethnography within a solid historical context. I have no doubt that if he'd spent a few more years on the campus, the picture he paints would be even more revealing, simply because he would have been able to share even more insight from a wider variety of people. (Perhaps this volume would then include interviews with my favorite teachers who are still teaching at Whitney, Mrs. Breik, Mrs. Kesinger, and Mrs. El Moussa, and maybe even a few in-depth portraits of students that were more like me!) In all honesty, however, I can't imagine the average reader wanting to read much more than the existing 400 pages.From an educator's point of view, here's what I think this volume has to offer to K-12 teachers and administrators: 1) Get parents involved. Parents have a vested interest in their children's achievement. Take advantage of their natural enthusiasm; the next time you run into obstacles with the school board, get your parents to attend a board meeting.2) Believe in your students. It doesn't matter if you enroll your students through an admissions test or they came straight off the streets. If you believe in them, they will succeed. 3) Use technology wisely. Computers are not a cure-all. In fact, they can even be a hindrance. Don't let them displace a well-designed traditional curriculum. Use them only where they are relevant.Finally, as a parent, I find Hume's treatise to be a useful cautionary tale. Despite having attended Whitney not too long ago, I'd already forgotten much of what it was like, and this book brought it all back: the students' misguided focus on grades, the pressure cooker atmosphere during comps, etc. One parent's confession was especially poignant - she didn't know what it was like because her daughter never said anything to her. I want to teach my children to try their best but know how to have fun, and it's good to be reminded that what we don't say is just as important as what we do say.

Education Book of the Year

If you read one book about education in the New Year, make it School of Dreams, the story of a school that works, teachers who inspire, and kids who give us hope for the future. Whitney High was a public school with no money and run-down facilities that remade itself at the grass roots level into the top school in California and one of the best in the USA. But Humes gives us more than the story of a public school that works. He writes intimately of the lives of high-achieving students, the pressures they face (and are subjected to by parents) and the sometimes overwhelming temptations to cheat or cut corners they struggle with in a test-obsessed culture more interested in grades and scores than in the best possible learning experiences. A must-read for parents and teachers who wonder where are schools are headed... and where they could be.

A Great Account of High Achievers

This is an important, readable and incredibly well-balanced book that really brings us into the lives of students and teachers at Whitney High. You can tell that Humes cares for this school, its earnest and impressive students, and its hardworking teachers. What's most impressive about this book is that it makes an extremely balanced assessment of not just Whitney High but the entire history of and debate about the meaning and possibility of public education in the U.S., while telling an engaging story filled with sensitively drawn characters. Every educator, school administrator and concerned parent should read this book. As for the sensationalism that some readers detect, of course the book won't be representative of every single person who goes to Whitney. But it captures the contradictions inherent in the culture of high achievers, when getting the grades becomes more important than the substance of learning. Anyone who recently attended a top college (especially those who came to that college from a low-achieving public school, as I did) will recognize these students and their uber-competitive culture of studying. These are the kinds of issues that we should all be thinking about and discussing as a country.

A dream book on education

This terrific book about a high performing public high school in California is one you won't be able to put down. It reads like a novel, with nuggets of wisdom and insightful observations on what truly goes into achieving an exceptional public high school. This is not an uncritical look. The pushy parents and students who would rather cheat than risk a grade below "A" are rampant. But the message of success is clear -- excellent teachers, a supportive environment where all students are known, high expectations planted before puberty kicks in, and focus on an indepth, academmically challenging curriculum, rather than test scores, is the ticket. Most refreshing is the total absence of educational & bureaucratic jargon. School of Dreams is a must-read for anyone who cares about what is going on in public education today. Kudos to Edward Humes for this breakthrough book.

School of dreams...future of reality

It was a special opportunity to read a book about something so close to my heart. It's been more than a decade since I wandered sleepily through the halls of Whitney High School, but through Hume's honest portrayal it's as though I never left. Memories of feeling "never good enough" came hurtling back only to be replaced with the gratifying realization that like me, the kids in the book will soon find it's what they learn in the proverbial classroom of life that truly matters. Whitney gets you to college, you get you through life. I urge parents who view Whitney as the Holy Grail to read this book carefully and then read everything in quotation marks again. These are the voices of your children. These were the words in my head that never found a voice...until now.