Customer Reviews

Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was browsing through my library's High School/College section and in it I spotted the interesting title and design of the book. I decided to check it out and read it and within reading the first 2 pages I was completely immersed in it. This book is AMAZING. It really gives you a glimpse into these 5 students lives and ALL they have to do and put up with. Its also written very well, the writing is very effective.
The thing is I'm in 8th grade, going to be a freshman next year, and ALREADY I can see these things start to happen. I already see the start and/or development of the tactics that the 5 students do to "survive" in school, the cheating, the copying, and the plagiarism among others. And another thing, like this is really worrisome for me, I mean I can already see myself as an "Eve" clone, studying all the time, having ZERO life, in order to get into an Ivy. But is there ANY other option but to do these things? I don't believe so. It seems like if students don't do all these things they WON'T "succeed" grade-wise in high school and then WON'T get into a good college, won't get high paying jobs and be successful, what kids like the ones described (and I) want to get. It seems like its the only choice. And what are people going to do about it? NOTHING. It would take forever to reform all of our high schools and middle schools and odds are it wouldn't succeed. So are we pretty much just STUCK where we are? Really seems like it, and its pretty bad. I WANT to be engaged in learning and all of those things, but by the look of it, it seems like that won't happen in high school. You never know though, right?
Anyways, this is an EXCEPTIONAL book and everyone should read it (especially anyone with an education related occupation, such as a teacher). I wish more adults read this kind of stuff and were aware of what goes on every weekday from 7 AM to 2 PM at their local (and maybe their kid's) high school. The high schoolers already know. I highly, highly recommend this book.

When I found this book on the bookshelf at the library, I couldn't believe my eyes. A book about how I feel. These 5 kids are so similar to myself and my friends at school. Most of my student body sees me or my friends as those kids who are going to be going to UCLA, UCSD, Stanford, or an Ivy League. It's a lot of pressure on all of us. If I get anything under a 90% on some test, everyone makes such a big deal, and the putdowns don't help any either.

I am one of those kids who doesn't get much more than 5 hours of sleep on a good day , without all the homework to worry about. On a bad day, with lots of homework, I might end up staying up until 3 or 4 in the morning, then having to wake up for school at 6. I haven't done an all-nighter, but I've had friends who've had 2 all-nighters in one week, and she was on the verge of going crazy from lack of sleep. Weekends are the only time I can catch up on sleep, but I can't sleep in because of all the homework that I'd put off during the week that I'd have to finish on the weekends.

I don't relate to just one of the 5 kids, but certain traits are similar to mine, like when Eve talks about how her friendships with people are strained because they are all competing for the same grade. Same with when Kevin brushes off a "B+" as no big deal, but really wanting that "A", I totally understand where he's coming from, because that's how I am.

I think that this is a book that everyone should read, whether or not you want to believe it, since what is there is true for a lot of kids, and maybe if it is known that all the pressure on us really takes a toll on our lives, then maybe this pressure with be lifted.

The book centers on five students that the author shadowed during a year of high school. The students attended a high school where 95% of its graduates attend college. Now most teachers of "lesser schools" (like my own that sends 2% to college) will echo Pope's colleague's comment that "I wish my students had some of those problems" but I do think that all schools possess students who are stressed-out even if they are flunking. The students in this book were forced to cheat, act different, etc. in the pursuit of high grades. The author mainly addresses the "force" as coming from the inadequately structured school system, family, and in the end, America itself. I was looking for some insight from students regarding how school can be better. A few of the students had some respectable suggestions such as fostering student engagement by allowing students to pursue topics that actually interested them and connected to other courses as well. But combine that suggestion with the one that espouses the need for getting rid of letter grades and you have a book that works only half the time. While I too would love to eliminate grades (much like art teacher Mr. Freeman in the novel Speak) we need to have some written measure of how well the students meet their goal or demonstrate mastery. And while I agree that the school system is not a place that fosters learning (ironically), I agree with Pope that much more than just the schools need to be changed: America's own stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated culture needs to change. Maybe if that changed America would have fewer schools that had such high apathy and low college attendance rates.

Ms. Pope superbly examines the question - can the pursuit of high grades to lead to unhealthy consequences in a child's mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual health? As a parent (and I think most parents would agree), the answer is yes. This book encourages parents to reflect on whether their children are involved with such an unbalanced lifestyle, and most importantly, whether I as a parent am encouraging (usually unwittingly!) such an unbalanced lifestyle.
Ms. Pope falls short when she tries to generalize her conclusions about the five students she followed over the course of a school year to an indictment of the state of education in that particular high school (and ultimately, the state of education in America as a whole). These students suffered from multiple problems such as probable sleep deprivation, to possible mental illness and personality disorder, to family dysfunction. Just to examine whether the high school itself was a prime culprit in fostering an unhealthy emphasis on grades, Ms. Pope would have needed a much larger study including psychiatric, social work, and medical evaluation of the students, but also the families, teachers, administration, and even of the characteristics of the surrounding community.
Even then, generalizing her conclusions to other school districts would have been impossible, since the problems facing any given school system are unique. For example, poverty, racism, and drugs didn't seem to be prominent problems for the students in her study, but I am sure teachers and administrators in other districts might say that such problems are of paramount importance to them.
As a result, as a scientific investigation of the state of education in the high school Ms Pope studied (and in America as a whole), Ms. Pope's book is useless.
Forget the inflammatory title. I highly recommend this book as it was written - a call for parents to reflect on the lives of their children.

Denise Pope's engaging book is a wonderful vehicle to stimulate dialogue and discussion about the state of the high school experience. Unlike most books on education that are written by "academics", "Doing School" features the authentic voices of students and the stress they feel in a competitive academic setting. I highly recommend this book to teachers, parents, and students as a way to consider changes to practices at schools that create unnecessary stress. "Doing School" is also a cry to teachers to make classrooms engaging environments and to revise grading practices so as to encourage genuine work rather than "gotya" tests.

I'm not much for long winded paragraphs so I will just quote Albert Einstein "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has fogotten the gift." With this said, are we creating a society lacking in compassion, insight, and understanding and less capable of DEEP thought and CRITICAL thinking? We as parents, teachers, and administrators should give this some DEEP THOUGHT.

While it has been a year or so since I've read this book, during this time I have recommended this book to several parents with high school aged children. As a student who attends a supposedly "elite" university, I often wondered where, or from whom, my classmates developed their misplaced sense of ethics when it comes to achieving academic success....and then I began tutoring students in the very competitive high schools that surround this university. I witnessed students who were more interested in getting A's in all of their classes - by whatever means necessary - than in actually understanding the material at hand. As a result much of their time was spent devising ways in which to "work the system", which, it seems, are good skills to acquire if one wishes to attend the top universities. God forbid that any of these students should attend a "second tier" university, for their parents would have to hide their faces in shame when among their peers.

It no longer surprises me when the students around me resort to the methods outlined in Ms. Pope's book. True, not all of these methods are "technically" prohibited and (fortunately) not all students approach their studies in this way, but enough of them do that it is time to reevaluate just what is most important when approaching our children's education. Ms. Pope's book attempts to redirect this focus so that American students do not continue to fall further behind the rest of the world.

I just graduated from a high school very similar to Faircrest High. I must say that my own experiences from it compared to the students' in "Doing School" were nearly identical. I kept wondering throughout reading it if Pope had been secretly at my school instead of Faircrest. Truly a must-read for anyone involved in high school curriculum: teachers, administrators, board members, parents, etc.

I certainly empathize with the five students profiled in Ms. Pope's book. And I agree that they seem to suffer from an unhealthy amount of stress in the pursuit of their college goals. In my opinion, however, the blame does not reside on the goals themselves. The fact that these young adults have focus and a desire to make the most of their abilities is not something to be chided. Yes, their self-descriptions of these goals does ring somewhat materialistic. But who among us doesn't suffer from this same flaw? Does not the aspiring professional athlete dream of the money and fans, the aspiring academic dream of professional recognition, and the aspiring politician dream of power? The rationale does not diminish the importance of having a vision for one's life.

So how can we reduce the chaos in these student's lives without reducing their ambition? Here's one alternative suggestion: Fix their habits. Both schools and parents should take mutual responsibility for working with students to improve their time management, project management, and study strategies. Most high school students lack these highly specific skills, and don't even realize it. No one has taken the time to teach them that with a smarter study system, they could reduce the time it takes to prepare for a test from many hours of random review to one hour of focused self-testing. No one has shown them how a simple calendar and daily plan could make sense of their many competing obligations. Of course, if after all of this, the students are still overextended, then, as Ms. Pope suggests, parents should discuss their expectations, and make the student feel good about a strategic reduction in obligations. But I wouldn't be surprised if most students would find their lives transformed back into something quite manageable once these key skills are developed.

This is why I disagree with suggestions of "Doing School." The answer is not to eliminate competition from schools. Students aren't stressed because their History midterm is timed. They are stressed because they're not sure that they will have enough time to study for it. And the answer is not to change curriculum to move away from hard subject matters to instead bend over backward to accommodate the specific hobbies and interests of each student. Engagement follows from mastering material in the absence of undue stress. And if a student doesn't necessarily love ever subject taught; well, too bad. An athlete doesn't like working out, but he does it as means to the end of mastering a physical activity. Similarly, a student might not like physics tests, but it's an important step toward mastering knowledge and polishing one's ability to think critically and engage new challenges.

In short, I am not sure that books like "Doing School" are helpful beyond a cheap sense of shock and disdain. Let's stop treating ambition like a dirty word, and start helping young Americans develop the skills needed to compliment their drive.

Doing School, for me was a good book. The author of this book is Denise Clark Pope. On a scale of 1 to 10 I would rate this book a 6. All of the stories are very similar, that's why I rate this book a 6. All of the kids in the stories are in high school and are all trying to please someone other than them selves. This book is divided up into sections for each student's story. I could relate very well with this book and that surprised me because I don't consider myself stressed.

My opinion of Doing School is that it's good but it needs more variety in the stories. All of the stories in the book explain from an outer person's part of view. You can see that the kids don't have fun and are unhappy. I can relate to this book very well. I know how it feels to have so much work you don't even want to try to do some. I also know how it feels when you procrastinate when a project is due. Also some people in my school feel if they don't wear popular clothes they won't be popular.

In To Kill A Mockingbird Scouts first impression of teachers wasn't good. The teacher didn't like that Scout already knew how to read when she came to 1st grade and the teacher put Scout in a time out in the corner. The teacher wouldn't listen or try to understand why Scout already knew and was mean to her. In Doing School the teachers won't try to understand why a student doesn't have their work they just give them a zero. I would recommend this book to a teacher because next time a student who normally does their work doesn't have it they will try to hear the student out.