A Class Apart by Alec Klein (Simon & Schuster, $25) is the story of Stuyvesant High School, one of the special exam schools in New York City that attract some of the brightest students in the city. This is one of those journalist spends several months in a school book (practically a sub-genre) but with a twist; Alec graduated there in 1985, so when he spent a semester there in 2006 to research the book, he was able to gain exceptional access and form connections with both the students and the staff.
What is memorable here are the characters – the preteen genius, the math chairman’s struggles against the rules and the school disciplinarian, the genius who serves as a school aide because he’s too smart to finish college, the student teacher who worries about having to leave and teach in a regular school, and the school’s self-destructive rebel who writes poetry.
There is some focus on the pressure on these highly dedicated students, admittedly much of it self generated, rather than college pressure as in Alexandra Robbins’ Overachievers. There is also a lot on the school politics. Even this special exam school still has to struggle with districtwide rules requiring teachers to punch cards and identification cards and scanners to prevent school violence, that never happens at Stuyvesant. The school does suffer from drugs and inappropriate displays of affection — the cuddle puddle even made it into the newspapers.
All in all, this is a very interesting look at a special set of students. The reader has to wonder, however, what here applies to more normal schools, where the students are not hand-picked and teachers struggle just to get students to pay attention.
