Author: Edward Humes
Publisher: Harcourt, Inc.
Website Link: www.edwardhumes.com

By GEORGE SCOTT
Senior Editorial Writer EdNews.org

Whitney High School - Cerritos, California. School of dreams or school of horrors?

Preconceived philosophies and biases may well 'self-impose' an early answer to that question by intellectually lazy readers before they have even completed the prologue. That would be a shame.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist Edward Humes' chronicle of a year in the life of a public high school whose existence is justified by superlative academic performance of its students is, quite simply, profound.

In School of Dreams , Humes extrapolates a simple behind-the-scenes concept of a story-teller describing an interesting place and interesting people into an extraordinarily layered focus on a full range of issues confronting America's public education system.

Some readers may well retreat early into a comfortable bias that Whitney High School has become an Asian stronghold with a unique cultural 'force-field' that first captures and then compels its students to follow a path of unreasonable expectations and burdensome personal pressures.

Some readers may well retreat early into a comfortable rationalization for the low or modest expectations of significant percentages of modern high schools that public schools should focus upon the whole child of which academic performance is just one component.

Some readers may emerge with a notion that high expectation alone is the 'cookie-cutter philosophy' that should march across the continent transforming the nation's testing preoccupation with defining literacy into global academic excellence.

Because of Humes' journalistic integrity in telling the story of Whitney High School and its family of students, teachers and families, readers will have all the sentences, paragraphs and pages they'll need to buttress their preconceptions.

Understand this.

Whitney High School is not about producing high school students who earn high school diplomas. It is not about preparing students to attend college. It is not even about producing high school graduates who can earn a college degree.

Such goals might well define the upper parameters of a "better" high school in the United States. At Whitney, such low expectations would be wholly unacceptable.

Whitney High School is about superlative performance on The College Board's advanced placement testing program. It is about accepting students in the 7 th grade who will receive a 'thick' package of acceptance from an elite University when they prepare to leave Whitney as seniors. It is not about surpassing national means; it is about producing students ready to compete in a global environment with the world's best students.

Humes' School of Dreams is a story of a school once destined to die transformed into a school that finds families moving from overseas in an effort to enroll their children. While not portrayed as typical, the magnet of desired enrollment has produced offers of sex and money.

It is a story of a school that once had classes in ceramics and culinary arts that morphed into a school where math and science are the foundations of its incredible standards of academic excellence.

It is a story of 'driven' students often pushed by 'driven' families in an environment that elevates academic expectations so far beyond the national norm that questions of precise replication are legitimate - both practically and philosophically.

It is Humes' commitment to journalistic honesty in telling his story that permits readers to experience the real and perceived warts of Whitney.

It is that same attention to honesty that lets a reader suspend one's concerns and search for context and justification.

Throughout School of Dreams , the students themselves are the most important story. Poignantly captured in a combination of events, conversations with students, staff and teachers over the year and students' essays, Humes does not portray victims.

While students are 'driven' to achieve excellence, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the students (at least most of them) consider themselves to be the drivers.

Just as one might be prepared to conclude that Whitney represents "too much of everything," Humes takes you into an assembly where the students themselves skewer the brother of the President of the United States in town to tout the advantages of corporate encroachment's chosen tool - technology.

Neil Bush, whose new technology company has found a California threshold at Whitney, undoubtedly found his meetings with company investors from Japan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia more deferential than his meeting with Whitney students. One can well imagine that the Crown Prince of Dubai and the president of China did not turn private dinners with the President's brother into a debate on the merits of calculus.

Consider this excerpt from Bush's meeting with Whitney students: "No one really wants to study calculus, he says triumphantly, calling it a prime example of being 'forced to study something a kid thinks is terribly useless and obscure.'"

Says Kosha to Neil: "I like calculus. It instills critical thinking.It's definitely a challenge, but it forces you to think in creative ways. Some students may think school should be a cakewalk, that it shouldn't be hard, that you should play all day. But that's not the way to excellence."

Says Neil to Kosha: "That's an interesting defense of what I consider to be a broken system.Once you get to high school, you have special interests evolving. I don't see what's wrong in allowing kids to pursue interests.Why must we continue to cram this other stuff down their throats?"

Says Kosha to Neil: "Well, you would just have apprenticeships then, instead of high schools."

Says Neil to Kosha: "So what's wrong with that?"

Says Kosha to Neil: "Because it abandons the whole notion of building a whole person."

And so it went. From a 13-year old middle school student to an 8 th grade 'guinea pig' class for Bush's interactive study of social studies to a senior 'product of the pressure-cooker', it was Whitney's students who (when given the opportunity) forcefully and articulately challenged the challenger of high expectations and rigorous academic demands.

School of Dreams is a remarkable story. However, it is not a story told in black and white. It is a story that can produce deeply conflicting attitudes. Whitney High School compared to what and for whom? That's the bigger issue America must confront as it seeks to define a high school of dreams.

As the father of a college student whose public high school accomplishments in math, science and English AP testing almost certainly meet or exceed the top graduates of Whitney, I can attest to some basic facts. His personal accomplishments came at a Texas high school whose expectations are as low as Whitney's are high. He slept at night. He was accepted to several elite universities. His college career is soaring.

Given our individual circumstances, neither his mother nor I would have enrolled him at Whitney High School. Nor would we enroll our daughter there now. Clearly, the low expectations of any given school do not automatically prevent students from achieving great accomplishments.

Yet, out of that fact arises the harsher reality that School of Dreams forces readers to confront.

Our family's Texas public school district is rated as one of the elite in the State. Its student composition is drawn from suburban affluence. High scores on national achievement tests are common. Unlike Whitney High School, capital facilities are state-of-the-art if not "gold-plated."

Like Whitney High School, its high schools have their own form of compulsiveness that drives student activities. At Whitney, students arrive early to take a "zero" period a course in AP Biology.

Katy I.S.D., like many suburban districts in Texas, has turned sports, band, drama, choir, drill-team and other such activities into a semi-professional obsession that consumes students even at the junior high level every bit as much as the pursuit of high academic achievement appears to consume Whitney students. Early morning tennis, volleyball, basketball, and the like are the demands and expectations of the coaches.

There are sufficient high-performing students in Katy I.S.D. (based upon SAT/ACT/SAT9 scores) to overflow the facilities of Whitney.

Yet, where 4's and 5's are the expected performance levels on AP testing at Whitney, not one single high school in Katy I.S.D. has one single objective standard of expectation of performance on one single AP test. (At "our" high school, great individual teachers helped our children immensely.)

Where Whitney families and students evaluate performance upon the basis of international excellence, Katy I.S.D. revels in its eliteness relative to an academically-compromised common denominator.

Whitney High School - Cerritos, California. Katy I.S.D. - Katy, Texas.

I closed School of Dreams with absolute ratification that the underachieving acquiescence of the Katy I.S.D.'s of America will not preserve and protect the future of the United States yet unwilling to fully embrace Whitney as a school of my dreams for America.

Humes' School of Dreams defines America's challenge. How quickly can it move away from the diminished expectations and distorted priorities of the Katy I.S.D.'s of the country, and just how close to Cerritos, California must America live?