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A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools

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As a very recent graduate of Stuyvesant (class of 2005), I find that in his book, Klein swiftly misrepresents the majority of Stuyvesant's student body. How? By neglecting to represent them at all.

Klein's representation of Stuyvesant as a hotbed of intellectual activity, where the students excel and the teachers encourage, is certainly not false. But it is extremely narrow. Klein writes of the spattering of advanced math and science courses; the exemplary English classes; the self-sacrificing and highly dedicated teachers; the student who brings a textbook to Senior Prom. He writes of the students and parents who fret over grades of 98 and 97, and the intense competition to get into highly-coveted colleges. But not everyone at Stuyvesant is a genius, a Milo or an Andrew or a Romeo. Not everyone at Stuyvesant is as strung-out, competitive, and over-achieving as Klein portrays them to be. And not every student is as caught up in the illusion of Stuyvesant as Klein himself gradually seems to become.

To his credit, Klein has no pretenses that all the students at Stuyvesant are extraordinarily gifted (although he does have a slightly annoying habit of quoting a disproportionate number of Ivy League-bound seniors - how about a little liberal arts action?).

It is true that at Stuyvesant, teachers go out of their way help and encourage their brightest students. This is apparent in the wide array of course offerings and in the abundant resources and support offered to those who excel in certain subjects, often math or the sciences. Brilliant students are rewarded - as they should be, particularly at a school like Stuyvesant. That's part of Stuyvesant's promise, and to a select few, it delivers. Let's not forget that this is a school that is equally as obsessed with its own image as it is obsessed with its most talented and successful students.

So what about those students who are mediocre in chemistry, okay at physics, or decent at calculus? Teachers at Stuyvesant rarely reach out to a student unless the student is at one of two extremes in a subject: soaring, or failing. Students who receive marks in the 70s and 80s are sometimes chided but mostly ignored. Without top grades, many are discouraged from pursuing higher-level courses, even if the student shows a strong interest that doesn't necessarily match his or her GPA. This is a school that emphasizes success, not learning.

Klein writes about how Stuyvesant draws its teachers from the same pool as any other NYC public high school. What he doesn't write about is how the best teachers often teach the most rigorous, engaging, and desirable classes - usually AP or some variety of advanced/upper-level. These classes are attractive to most students, but actual enrollment is (usually) limited to those who make a cut-off grade. As such, it is often the top students - also the same students - who take the top classes. Because the best teachers are reserved for these classes, students who are not in advanced-level classes have a higher probability of being taught by a teacher who is less experienced, less engaging, or simply egregious at their job, occasionally to the level of incompetence (I know that high school Physics teachers are difficult to come by, but seriously?).

At a public school the size of Stuyvesant, much of the experience comes down to something of a crapshoot, particularly regarding what -- and whose -- classes a student is able to get into. Obviously, there are exceptions to every rule. Unfortunately, Klein writes almost exclusively about these exceptions -- or, at least, the good ones. Perhaps Klein should have spent less time fawning over the most talented (or controversial) teachers and students, and more time exploring the failures of a system that privileges its best at the expense of the rest.

In his book, Klein unfortunately reinforces the stereotypes about Stuyvesant that make the school detestable from the outside - and reinforces the school's system of privileges that could make it even more difficult for the majority of the students on the inside.

In 1859 Charles Darwin concluded his "Origin of Species" with a memorable, truly moving, paragraph that includes this famous phrase, "There is grandeur in this view of life....". Had he met the brilliant students and teachers of Stuyvesant High School described by Washington Post reporter Alec Klein in "A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools", he might have also said, "There is grandeur in this view of education..". A view of education in which high expectations are not only desirable, but are required, from students. A view of education that promotes freedom, fostering the development of a meritocracy based solely upon intellectual curiosity, not wealth or other societal privileges. An educational philosophy recognizable not only to Thomas Jefferson, who advocated the establishment of an aristocracy based solely upon talent, but to Charles Darwin, granting him the very intellectual tools required for transforming a vague hypothesis on the origin of species into a firmly rooted, well-established Theory of Evolution via Natural Selection by the time he was ready to publish "Origin of Species". An educational philosophy that may seem elitist and outdated, but one which could easily transform the very nature of American public school education if it was applied throughout the country, at no additional financial cost, by school administrators, teachers, students and parents. This, in essence, is the story which Alec Klein has told remarkably well in "A Class Apart"; an exceptional, exhilarating piece of well-written journalism which covers the lives of the administrators, faculty and students of Stuyvesant High School during the Spring Term of 2006.

In "A Class Apart", Alec Klein isn't only recounting the saga of one semester in this prestigious one hundred and three year-old New York City public high school, that is noted not only for its academic excellence in the sciences and mathematics, but truly, for having had such a profound impact on American intellectual life in everything from politics and law to literature and the performing arts. Instead, he is actually reporting on a microcosm of American society that still retains an overtly optimistic view of it; that anything is possible given ample talent and determination, even, as he notes, this lofty goal isn't one that's always attained by Stuyvesant High School and its "extended family": administrators, teachers, students and parents. It's a view that is best expressed in the time-old rite of passage known as the entrance exam to Stuyvesant and several other New York City high schools - most notably prestigious Bronx High School of Science - in which those who make the highest cutoff score - approximately 3% of those taking the test - are offered admission to Stuyvesant. While this exam is designed to ensure that Stuyvesant acquires the cream of the crop of the New York City public schools - and those from New York City private and parochial schools too - critics have noted with some justification that this test is a better indicator of those students who are financially able to attend test preparation courses and private academic enrichment programs (local ethnic versions of the infamous Japanese "cram schools") than a true measure of intellectual aptitude. It is also a microcosm of American society that's all too familiar, replete with underlying racial tensions between the dominant Asian majority of the school's student body and the much smaller white and black student populations. But it is also a microcosm of American society that remains hopeful, through the student body's widespread acceptance of tolerance, and in the sudden, unexpected outpouring of grief over the deaths of two popular student athletes in a freak automobile accident.

Klein deftly weaves the interlocking sagas of three students and several administrators and two young teachers, against the backdrop of intense student and faculty politics, the annual SING! musical competition (A Stuyvesant tradition dating from 1973 that has featured such talents as future prominent alumni Paul Reiser and Tim Robbins, among others.), a New York statewide mathematics competition, and, of course, the senior prom and graduation. We're introduced first to Romeo, captain of Stuyvesant's woeful football team, who is also mathematically brilliant, having taught himself calculus, and placing out of it to attend more advanced mathematics courses offered at his school, while also immersing himself in a nuclear fusion project supervised by an elderly NYU physicist dying from pancreatic cancer (He also dreams of attending Harvard University.). Then there's young Milo, a ten-year old mathematical genius taking Stuyvesant mathematics courses - and not yet enrolled officially as a student - having dropped out of his local elementary school's 5th grade; the school itself a short distance from his new school. Last, but not least, there's Jane, the brilliant poet and heroin junkie, who becomes a personal reclamation project of sorts for Assistant Principal Eric Grossman, the young, charismatic chairman of Stuyvesant's English Department. Both Grossman and Danny Jaye, the chairman of the Mathematics Department - who is almost ready to say goodbye to 34 years teaching at Stuyvesant to become a senior administrator at a Bergen County, New Jersey high school for the talented and gifted - are important reoccurring figures in Klein's saga, along with college dropout - and brilliant Polish-born mathematician - Jan Siwanowicz - Milo's instructor in the Mathematics Research course - and a young Korean-American student teacher, Ms. Lee, who demonstrates an excellent talent for teaching history and social studies.

Klein has rendered a riveting, mostly optimistic, portrait of Stuyvesant High School. Its realism is aided immensely by Klein's own excellent journalistic skills, covering everything from strong faculty and student opposition to the implementation of new technologically-based security measures, to adverse press coverage, and the annual electoral campaign for the student government. It is truly an exceptionally well-crafted piece of journalism in which Klein does a most admirable job in remaining objective, despite his own ample admiration for the school, its students, faculty and administrators; an admiration born out of an unexpected return visit to Stuyvesant in 2004, as a participant in the school's Centennial celebration; as a guest of honor at an alumni event organized by the Stuyvesant High School Alumni Association. But he also compares and contrasts Stuyvesant's success with other prominent schools, including Fairfax County, Virginia's Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology, and arch rival Bronx High School of Science, whose notable alumni include seven Nobel Prize laureates in physics; the most of any high school in the country (In stark contrast, Stuyvesant has only four, who are mentioned, along with other notable alumni in a separate Appendix at the end of the book (biologist Joshua Lederberg, chemist Roald Hoffman, economist Robert Fogel, and neurologist Richard Axel). Stuyvesant's distinguished alumni also include past and current presidents of several prominent American universities (presidents of Colgate, Chicago, Minnesota and Rockefeller universities), other prominent scientists (geochemist Bruno Giletti, physicists Brian Greene and Lisa Randall, and biologist Eric Lander, who led one of the two competing teams that sequenced the human genome), lawyers (Bernard Nussbaum, Richard Ben Veniste, Dick Morris, who is better known as a political analyst), musicians (Thelonius Monk, Bobby Colomby of "Blood, Sweat, and Tears", Walter Becker of "Steely Dan", and New York Philharmonic Orchestra musician David J. Grossman), writers (Frank Conroy, Gary Shteyngart) and actors (James Cagney, George Raft, Ben Gazzara, Ron Silver, Paul Reiser, Tim Robbins and Lucy Liu).). Such schools, Klein notes, share Stuyvesant's success by being similar, if not identical, in both their missions and practices; these include stiff admission requirements via entrance examinations, having high expectations of their students, and promoting freedom. Such freedom includes fostering excellent scientific research, which ironically, is also the subject of a recently published Simon and Schuster book, "The Edge of Evolution", written by leading Intelligent Design advocate - and Lehigh University biochemist - Michael Behe. Elsewhere I have noted that brilliant students from Stuyvesant High School could spot easily the many errors made by Behe, in his book, that challenges contemporary evolutionary biology, claiming to have found the "mathematical limits to Darwinism" (Unfortunately for Behe, such errors don't demonstrate a true "limits to Darwinism", but instead, are mere examples of his own mendacious intellectual pornography that represent regrettably, his own limits to excellent scientific thought.). After reading Klein's book, I am more convinced that my appraisal is absolutely correct.

Klein concludes his riveting tale by recounting the fates of those he's profiled. Romeo, the football captain, will be attending Harvard University in the fall of 2007 (This past June I had the pleasure of meeting him at a senior award ceremony organized by Stuyvesant's other alumni organization, the Campaign for Stuyvesant - where he was the recipient of the student athlete award - and encouraged him to think seriously of studying with eminent physicist Lisa Randall, who is highly regarded for her research in high energy particle physics and string theory (Her high school classmate was none other than Columbia University physicist Brian Greene.).). Milo and his older sister are currently attending Stuyvesant, after passing its entrance examination. Jane didn't graduate, but instead, dropped out, and may be finishing her high school education at a high school in Maryland. Danny Jaye is now a senior administrator at the Bergen County, New Jersey school, where one of his colleagues is mathematician Jan Siwanowicz. Eric Grossman is still the chairman of the Stuyvesant English Department.

Klein also concludes by stating the very reasons for Stuyvesant's success, which could be easily replicated throughout the country. He notes the importance of high expectations, recounting a conversation he had with Stuyvesant Principal Stanley Teitel, who stressed the necessity of adhering to a "rigorous curriculum". He also stresses the importance of a sense of freedom. Finally, Klein notes the ample interest shown by parents in their children's education, by getting involved through service on various after-school committees (From personal experience I know of the strong commitment of one parent towards her son's award-winning Robotics team; he will be studying engineering this fall at Princeton University, and was another award recipient at the senior award ceremony that I attended back in June.), as well as by e-mailing teachers. Left unsaid by Klein is a fourth ingredient, the considerable interest in the school's ongoing mission taken by its alumni, which ranges from donating time and money to both of Stuyvesant's alumni organizations to visits by prominent alumni like Tim Robbins and Dick Morris in support of the school's superb theater program and award-winning Speech and Debate team. Stuyvesant may seem anachronistic to those who advocate mixing the gifted and talented kids with the rest of the student population, but its decades-old tradition of academic excellence offers ample hope that its success could be duplicated throughout the United States. There is, indeed, grandeur in Stuyvesant's view of education.

Alec Klein's A Class Apart examines Stuyvesant High School from the inside. Klein spent a semester sitting in on classes and talking to students, teachers and administrators. What emerges is a fascinating study of an institution that really is an Anti-High School: A place where students care more about a theater competition and studying, than they do about football games. These kids are for the most part from modest backgrounds. Many are first generation Americans whose families could never afford the cost of private school.

Stuyvesant makes an ample target for critics of the magnet school system. While Klein addresses some of these issues, he thankfully stays away from easy, dogmatic arguments. Yes there are many Asians at Stuyvesant and few African Americans. Yes the school is funded with taxpayer dollars and only a select group gets to attend. Yes the competition is fierce and debilitating for some. There is no question that these are important issues that need to be addressed in a serious and thoughtful manner. Still, for those who call the place elitist, there is one extraordinary, irrefutable fact: You can not buy your way in. You have to take the test.

Klein ultimately supports the school's version of meritocracy, but more importantly he goes deep into the lives of his subjects and his affection for them is palpable. This humanistic approach is far more effective and enlightening than the usual dry analysis of Public Education. The book reads like fiction and you find yourself wanting to spend more time with the characters (really people struggling through their lives). By the end you start to miss them - in the same way that Klein, in his epilogue, says he misses them.

A Class Apart is uplifting, devastating, honest. It reminds me not only of striving for excellence, but the painful truth that adolescence is a transition that many of us barely survive can't be ignored. The book is real, yet it reads like a story book, drawing us into the lives of the characters, while anchoring us in the reality of the plight of gifted students. I picked up the book seeking answers to today's pressure to succeed, yet found myself pierced by very raw human emotions. In the end, I turned each page no longer looking for the Stuyvesant High School of my youth, but immersed in the tragedy of the talented heroin-addicted poet. But what happened to Jane? I kept asking myself. Each drama documented by Klein crescendoed in the readers' frantic worry about Jane's absences, digressions, regressions, self-destructive behavior. Klein's masterful weaving of school documentary with personal narrative, casting the story in the lives of its students and teachers, sets the book apart.

Lauren Eisenberg Davis
Coordinator, Maryland Writers' Association Creative Nonfiction Critique Group
Stuyvesant `75

Those of us interested in the state of our national public education system may loathe the idea of reading endless reams of policy papers, government mandate reviews, and evaluation reports that serve to obfuscate readers on the true failures happening in our public schools. Rather than expounding on national policies and programs, Alec Klein's book takes a more local and personal look at one of the nation's leading public schools for the gifted and talented, Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan.

With references to the "American Dream," Klein offers a sympathetic and candid portrayal of life at Stuyvesant. He spends a year back at his alma mater observing its students, parents, teachers, staff and administrators. There he meets Romeo, a gifted football player-scholar, a title that sounds oxymoronic but makes perfect sense given that he is a senior headed for Harvard. He presents Mr. Jaye, a committed and passionate administrator who is willing to "bend the rules" to ensure that the students and faculty live up to their full potential. And we meet Milo, a 10-year old mathematical prodigy who occasionally retreats to the simple pleasures of childhood.

Wishing to refrain from the temptation of projecting the observations witnessed at Stuyvesant to the nation at large, Klein chooses, instead, to focus on a few of the people who make this school exceptional. The book serves as a reminder that it's the people, not the policies that make a school successful. Klein's book is an effortless read that offers personal and caring insight into the passions of learning and teaching.

On one level, A Class Apart is a quintessentially American story: the desire to lift up from modest circumstances, the iniquities of a distant homeland or the struggles of the underdog. On another level, it's a human story of the possibility, the openness and the upset that youth can bring. But more prominently, it is a distinctive story about what it is like to be in the community of the gifted: the abounding braininess, the accolades garnered and the fantastically creative energies spawned in the company of formidable talent.

But A Class Apart is also about the unfettered competition that plagues Stuyvesant students and the significant issues that come with being gifted, but are sometimes under articulated in the limelight of achievement. Smartly outfitted in a North Face backpack and a pair of distressed jeans and equipped with the very useful skill of re-assimilating into the teen orbit, Klein walks knowingly into the lives of seven Stuyvesant students, their peers and their teachers. He observes junior year SATs and senioritis but also experiences these ground breaking moments with the students, or rather, re-experiences them as one of the gang.

The roster of students Klein profiles includes Romeo, a football star and part-time fusion researcher, Jane, an SAT whiz and serious drug addict, Mariya, who toggles between grades and love, and Milo, a ten year old math prodigy.

It is Klein's ability to capture the vibrancy and notably eccentric shades of Stuyvesant life, as well as his narrative grace all give force to this almost novelistic account of one of America's best high schools. This reader, who never went to Stuyvesant, has never lived in New York City and is not a math whiz, finds veritable elegance in the pages of A Class Apart.

As a Stuyvesant Graduate, Class of 1955, I found the book a great read. I believe that anyone who wants to read about what an education should be about, must read this book. It is well written and the characters selected represent a good cross section of the type and caliber of students.

In my day, we were at the old facility on 15st. and didn't have the distractions of girls in the class. I am determined to go back to New York and visit the new school and see what has occured in over 50 years.

Martin Wartenberg
University of California, Irvine
Engineering and Information Technology
mrwarten@uci.edu

In "A Class Apart," Alec Klein purportedly presents an insider's perspective into Stuyvesant - one of the nation's most prestigious high schools - with the apparent goal of objective journalism. Regrettably, the author elects to tell the Stuyvesant story by featuring the lives of 4 students whom he trailed during his observation period who are distinguished by their eccentricities, but are not prototypical. A sample size of 4 is simply not meaningful. While Klein does a good job of documenting the school's historic past and the unique life stories of his 4 subjects, the students he chose to feature do not fairly represent the characteristics of the entire student body. The vast majority of Stuyvesant students are disciplined, hardworking, and ambitious, working in pursuit of the American Dream. Oddly, Klein chose to feature a young Asian American woman who is a drug addict on the verge of dropping out and on suicide watch as one of his 4 subjects. By no means does her life story represent the lives of the 58.5% Asian Americans that comprise of the Stuyvesant student population, yet she is the only Asian American student featured. He opted to portray the irresponsible sexual conduct of a few deviant, immature students who hardly represent the norm in Chapter 4, entitled, "Cuddle, Puddle, Muddle," rather than the thousands of students who forego an active social life to study in hopes of gaining admissions into a coveted Ivy League university. Stirring up sensationalism may be an effective tactic for selling books, but represents a slanting of the facts. Readers without a Stuyvesant background may extrapolate from these anecdotes and unknowingly reach false conclusions about the character of its students. Stuyvesant and its faculty have played a pivotal role in educating America's best and brightest throughout the past century. They deserve better, as do its students and alumni.

Klein's narrative explanation of Stuyvesant crept up on me at first, and it took me until the last chapter to realize that, before I read it, I hadn't fully understood my four years in the miserable, terrifying 15th Street building. Klein captured the incredible collection of moving parts beautifully, and his largely gentle treatment of the students made for a truly warm read.

I don't have much to say except that this book was very informative and sparked a lot of interesting discussion on the state of our public school system.