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Coffee Break: An excerpt from School of Dreams A little before two in the afternoon, the Whitney High School pep squad performs one of its most familiar routines: Eight girls in white–and–gold cheerleading sweaters and skirts are bellying up to the coffee bar at Starbucks. They are the very picture of wholesome teenage Americana, but for the triple grande lattes and towering mocha Frappuccinos they grab and guzzle as they race back to cheer practice. For kids whose waking hours can start before six a.m. and end somewhere around two or three the next morning — virtually all of that time devoted to school work — the high–octane coffee drinks are no luxury. The only way through the day, they say, is to ride a caffeinated wave. And they’re not the only Whitney students craving a coffee buzz. This Starbucks in an open–air mall three blocks south of the school grounds has become a virtual campus annex. It–s a teen meeting place, study hall and new–age cafeteria rolled into one, where kids as young as twelve, some of whom have to stand on tiptoe to see over the tall counter, swill powerful espresso–based drinks the way previous coffee–phobic generations once pounded down Yoo–Hoos. Coffee hasn’t just become cool in the past decade for so; for many high schoolers, it’s now a staple. Kosha, the irrepressible pep squad captain, provides a perfect example, a girl who entered Whitney in the seventh grade and who gave her life over to its rigors for the next six years. She is a model student, a born leader, funny, attractive, talented, charmingly sarcastic — the sort of classroom presence good teachers love, not because she’s particularly agreeable, but because she’s just the opposite: She challenges them constantly. (Her pithy encounters with former–savings–and–loan–executive–turned–would–be–education–guru Neil Bush, the forty–third president’s brother, have become the stuff of Whitney legend during his visits to the school). But like many of her fellow students, Kosha maintains a level of activity and time commitments — and accepts a level of stress and exhaustion in her life — that would have been unthinkable for previous generations, and that even today might stagger the heartiest corporate CEO. There are times when this rail–thin young woman with the dancer’s erect bearing slips into her seat in class and simply cannot stay awake. Fatigue is a way of life with the maximum course load she has taken in her senior year: five Advanced Placement classes, the equivalent of a year’s worth of college crammed into four–fifths of a high–school year. With AP classes in economics, English literature, Spanish, physics and a second year of advanced calculus on her schedule, a more challenging course of study is simply not possible at any American high school, public or private. The byword here is challenge. The weighting schemes American colleges use to rate applicants vary and are often quite secretive, as with the Ivy League’s infamous Academic Index, but there is one universal: Extra points are always awarded to those students who take on the most challenging courses of study at their high schools. AP classes are rewarded over honors, honors over college-prep, college-prep over general — the result being a kind of academic arms race among top high schools to see who can offer the most AP courses, which in turn compels kids to take on ever greater workloads to keep up with collegiate expectations. At the end of the year, after a series of grueling national exams, Kosha’s five AP courses (assuming she scores at least a 4 on each, out of a possible 5), can allow her to shave a whole year off her college experience, a potential baccalaureate in three years. And with her sights set on Yale, the University of Pennsylvania or Stanford next year — two Ivy Leaguers and their similarly competitive West-Coast rival — she could save not just time, but more than $30,000 in annual tuition and costs. A course load like that would be enough to keep anyone busy. But to grasp Kosha’s typical day, add to those five hours of college–level classes, two hours a day of cheer practice, one hour daily as a history teaching assistant, a senior position in student government, prom planning duties, participation in the Model United Nations program, an after–school and weekend tutoring job at an academic preparatory academy, the crafting of college applications, essays and interviews, and her very active competition in the California Junior Miss contest (she already won the local Cerritos Junior Miss title). With four hours of homework, course–related reading and various class projects still ahead, Kosha gets home around six, has a light vegetarian meal and a short nap, then stays up late to get it all done. Such is the life of today’s top high school students. Kosha seems to relish it, projecting the aura of a kid whose life is hyper–busy but still in balance. Not all of her friends pull it off quite as well, they say, and even Kosha concedes there is little or no time left for dating, movies, shopping or any of the other staples of teenage life — just the occasional coffee outing with her similarly burdened pep squad compatriots. Even her vacations are given over to school: She spent last summer rising at six in the morning to go to economics camp. And her schedule is not unique at Whitney, where the entire student body is college bound. Small wonder, then, that the local Starbucks is such a draw for Whitney students. This is where kids with (and sometimes without) outside passes get a midday pick–me–up. This is where they rendezvous after school for group projects or study sessions. This is where they land just before eleven in the evening, when the coffee shop is about to close and the only obstacle to finishing that English project or cramming for that calc final is the overpowering urge to sleep. And this is also where a certain former student can be found hanging nearby some nights, peddling more powerful and illicit stimulants to a small clientele, part of a new and alarming trend: substance abuse not to get high, but to get by, an academic analog to the blight of performance–enhancing drugs in varsity athletics. Whitney has always considered itself immune to this sort of thing, but a nasty wake–up call is on its way this semester. A few of the kids at Starbucks see it coming, but no one is talking. Not yet. And so all the awesome achievements of today’s high–powered, college–bound high school students — with the equally awesome stress and strain many of them accept as the price of success — are on display daily not just in Whitney High School classrooms, but here, in a shopping mall coffee shop, where savvy marketing, sweet flavored drinks, and heavy eyelids find a synergy any Madison Avenue executive would envy. Anyone who spends time at Whitney can see it delivers everything we could ask of a public school: hard work, dedication, academic excellence, a sense of mission all too lacking in other schools, a love of learning, a commitment to civic involvement, a safe haven, and last — but not least in this era of accountability and school budgets linked to performance — test scores to die for. But also on display are the unintended consequences of building the public high school of our dreams: the creation of a new generation of high–achieving, highly pressured young people who fall into despair not from failing a course, but from getting a B; who may tackle subjects and extracurricular activities not out of love and interest, but because of how they will look on their college applications; who sometimes feel that their lives will be over if they do not get into one of the top schools in the country; who sometimes are compelled to cheat or take stimulants in order to keep up with impossible schedules and expectations; and who retake their grueling SATs, even after scoring in the 1500s (putting them in the top 99 percent of students). Why? Because an extra ten or twenty points might make the difference between receiving in the mail the thick Welcome–to–Yale–University envelope crammed with orientation materials, and the horrifyingly thin Dear–Applicant–we–regret–to–inform–you envelope with just one piece of paper inside. The kids of Whitney did not give up sizable parts of the childhood most others take for granted in order to get the thin envelope. Thick and thin, that’s what it all comes down to in the end, Kosha observes morosely: Six years of insanely hard work boils down to peering inside your mailbox and shuddering or celebrating at the size of an envelope, knowing the outcome before you even open the missive in your quivering hands. This is an event Kosha and 163 of her fellow seniors are anticipating with delicious, horrible fear this year, the culmination of six long, wonderful, grueling years. Forget Generation X. Kosha belongs to Generation Stressed. “Around here,” a senior named Tony says with a mirthless laugh while waiting in line behind the pep squad girls, “four is the magic number. We all want 4.0 grade point averages. We all get by on four hours sleep. And it can take four big lattes just to get us through the day.” Excerpted with permission from the author from the Prologue of School of Dreams: Making the Grade at a Top American High School (Harcourt). The writer: Journalist Edward Humes won the Pulitzer Prize for Specialized Reporting in 1989 and is the author of seven nonfiction books, including Baby E.R., Mean Justice, No Matter How Loud I Shout, and Mississippi Mud. His latest book is School of Dreams, was released in paperback in September 2004. Edward Humes lives in Southern California. The book: The author spent a year at Whitney High School, a ramshackle campus in an unfashionable part of Los Angeles County, where the budgets are tight, the student body resembles a mini United Nations and families move across town — and across the world — hoping to get in. Whitney High delivers everything we want in a public school: love of learning, a sense of mission, and SAT scores to die for. But attending a top–ranked school can take a toll on high–achieving, high–pressured kids. At Whitney High in Cerritos, kids struggle to harmonize ambitious parents’ dreams with their own goals, and teachers search for an elusive balance between creating great test–takers and fostering great learners. “Beautifully written and compulsively readable, told compassionately but with a journalist’s eye to getting the whole story, School of Dreams sheds light on the increasing pressures of giving and getting an American education” says Rachel Simmons, author of the best–selling Odd Girl Out. On the web: Visit www.edwardhumes.com |
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