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

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 [email protected]

This is an honest and well-written perspective on one of the highest-rated high schools in the country, Stuyvesant HS, with its long tradition of excellence and famous alumnae. Stuyvesant is a selective (based on an entrance exam) school for the gifted, particularly in math and science. I strongly recommend Mr. Klein's book. He is not only a talented writer, but also brings his intelligence, compassion and humanity to every page. His honesty (it also didn't hurt his credibility that he was an alumnus) enabled him to earn the trust of some very special youngsters in this school and this account is as much about them as it is about this hallowed institution. Mr. Klein's narrative is inspiring and presents a strong objective argument for demanding excellence and having the highest expectations for all our children. More than that, it reminds us that our nation cannot afford to overlook our best and brightest minds, who require challenge to reach their potential, not the cavalier attitude that they will succeed no matter what school they're in.

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.

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.

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