Permissible Advantage?: The Moral Consequences of Elite Schooling (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education) by Peshkin Alan

Author:Peshkin, Alan [Peshkin, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Education
Publisher: LEA
Published: 2009-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER5

The Goodness of Students

Honestly, I think there was much less work as an undergraduate in college than there was in high school here. I remember in high school just feeling sort of overwhelmed a lot of the time.

—Former Academy student

As members of an intensely academic community…

—Academy student newspaper editorial

AP: What do you think the Academy takes very seriously in the education it offers you?

S: Hmm, that 99% of their graduates go to college.

—Academy student

There is nobody here that I know that couldn't succeed if they wanted to. There are very few people I know who couldn't excel if they wanted to. There are an awful lot of people who don't seem to want to excel. I guess that is ok, too. That is something that is almost impossible to weed out.

—Academy student

Four more days until I am out of this hellhole…

—Academy student

High schools are places of counterpoint, indeed, of proliferating, shifting, situational counterpoint, so that in the course of a day, week, semester, and year, students will cross and recross boundaries into contrasting, if not antithetical, domains of activity, expectation, and mood. Their traversing of domains—some of it institutionalized and thus required, some of it not and thus a personal choice—students eventually take as normal. They do not have to like what they do, and they can do what they have to do with varying degrees of enthusiasm, interest, and willingness. But however variable their behavior, they will be in classes that range across many cognitive domains, they will participate in extracurricular activities that also include the cognitive but extend as well to the athletic, artistic, and service activity, and in one way or another they will engage in the many social or interpersonal occasions that always are available to bring joy, pain, or both to adolescents.

The pristine elegance of the Academy's architecture and physical environment could lead to thinking that what money has constructed will have its counterpart in the behavior of its adolescent participants. Of course, this is foolish. Students are not pristine. Academy students are like other students, notwithstanding the selection hurdles they have leaped in order to gain admission. The school that is built around this academically skewed bunch of young people is, in many ways, recognizably an American school, yet its resemblance to other schools does not make it like other schools whose defining features are modest academic achievement, athletic obsession, and predominating social affairs. What follows, therefore, is what exists at Edgewood Academy, but is not consequential for my purposes.

Students steal. A teacher's e-mail message contains the story: "I know we would all like to think that we are without thieves at E.A., but the facts stand for themselves." The "facts" were the three "major" pieces of audiovisual equipment missing from the library.

Students are unruly. Another e-mail message from an administrator gently informed teachers that "as you may have noticed, the natives are restless today. Your presence in the hallways is much appreciated."

Students disrupt. "Due to the recent misuse of water weapons

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