Raw Thought

by Aaron Swartz

iz r childrens lrnng?

High School Confidential
by Jeremy Iversen
Atria, 464 pp., $25.00

My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student
by Rebekah Nathan
Penguin, 208 pp., $14.00 (paper reprint)

Some of our most formative years are spent in schools, odd places whose ostensible goal is adult-directed education but in reality are controlled by student-culture peer groups of which adults have little actual understanding. Adults run examinations and programs, try to be “hip” to teen culture, but ultimately, we must admit, we have little idea what really goes on, making it easy for rumors to run wild.

Jeremy Iversen and Rebekah Nathan decided to see for themselves what school life was really like, by going undercover and experiencing it themselves. While they went to different places, in different guises, in entirely different situations (Iversen was a senior in high school, while Nathan was a freshman in college), the pictures they draw are startlingly similar: a world where genuine education is absolutely the last thing on everyone’s mind.


Jeremy Iversen grew up in New York, attended a prestigious boarding school, and went to college at Stanford. But, he says, life after school didn’t have the same appeal. So he decided to go back and get the typical high school education he never had. The result — High School Confidential — is a gripping memoir of what life is actually like for the cool kids in a southern California high school.

The general outlines are perhaps less than shocking to those who have been paying attention. High school kids routinely have casual sex with each other, for example. (“There’s nothing else to do in this town,” one student comments, “except start drama with everybody.”) They take drugs — marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, speed — right under their parents noses. (In one scene, Travis, the class’s drug dealer, and Alexis, his sister, are confronted by their father. “I’m going to give you a drug test,” he warns them. “But I’ve been clean since nursery!” Travis replies. “Oh, it’s only your sister I’m worried about,” explains the father.) The kids cheat, not just by copying on tests, but by taking copious steroids and human growth hormone to compete in sports. (“I read an article about high school steroid use in Sports Illustrated”, comments the team coach, as the kids who are using look away. “Good thing that’s not a problem in our school.”)

Despite living in a very diverse community, many of the kids are full of casual racism and right-wing politics (white people need to stand up for their heritage, nuke all the Arabs), although they’re far more liberal in practice (doing drugs with their Middle Eastern friends). When they get mad at each other, they aren’t afraid to take it out in violent brawls. And when the school throws parties, everybody gets totally hammered. (There’s a brilliant scene where some kids throw up on Richard Nixon’s grave.)

However, the novel is gripping in its details, with more amusing characters and fascinating stories than any television show imitation of high school life. The teachers are such characters that were this fiction you might accuse them of being overwritten. School events are so lavish (a band performs every day at lunch, large coordinated dance-and-light shows are done for spirit rallies) that they seem like TV exaggerations. School assignments are so inane (cut apart this cat) that you might think the kid telling you this was exaggerating. But Iversen was there, the dialogue in the book is copied down verbatim, the description of events was taken first-hand.1

And, indeed, the most shocking components are not the tales of the kids, but of the schools. Iversen draws a picture of an institution that is not just failing at learning, but antithetical to it. Thea, the only girl in the book with any academic passion, is routinely discouraged by the actions of both peers and adults. But no other student even gets that far. The school’s student culture makes caring about class unthinkable; the school’s classes make learning near-impossible.

But the grandest component of Iversen’s tale is how he dismantles our previous methods for trying to understand how schools operate. First, there is Derrick, the school board’s secret weapon. Derrick is an articulate and popular student, admired by all, and elected class president. But it slowly becomes clear that student government, including him, is nothing but the administration’s pawn. The regulations are designed to make genuine complaints impossible to bring before the administration, while the administration uses Derrick at every opportunity as a mouthpiece for their lies about what the children really think. Thus the only student representative most outside adults see is no representative at all.

Then there are the standards regulations, around which the curriculum is supposedly organized. The state school accreditation team is coming to verify that it is, and the adults worry that they’re quite likely to fail. So the principal goes all-out, bribing, threatening, and faking the school into appearing good. Any kid who ever caused a problem is locked away in a hidden trailer for the duration of the inspector’s visit, every class is replaced with fake, scripted, standards-compliant material. Every child puts on fake happy faces under severe duress. And the school passes with flying colors. “I wish every kid in the state could have an education this good”, insists the lead inspector.

The reality is that between adult and student, there is a vast gulf in mentality. Iversen’s genius is that he can get us inside the heads of both sides.


Around the same time, Rebekah Nathan, an anthropology professor at AnyU (both psuedonyms), was sitting in on some classes herself. She noticed that simply by acting like a student — sitting in class, taking notes, etc. — her fellow students began treating her like one, sharing gossip and trading facts she never got to see as a professor. Eager to cross that same mental gulf, she decided to spend her sabbatical the following year doing an undercover anthropological study of her own university.

Nathan enrolled as a freshman, lived in a dorm, and took a full load of courses. Despite looking like a mom, the other students accepted her as their own. She probably couldn’t get involved in the party scene and didn’t try — she stuck to studying the academic and intellectual side of college life — but pretty much everything she says fits with my impressions as a freshman Stanford student around the same time and I can even confirm a couple of her more surprising specific points.

After confining her focus to the intellectual, Nathan discovers that there simply isn’t much there. Students have their own culture with regard to class, a language known as “Undergraduate Cynical”, where actually caring about the material is deeply frowned upon, and the only questions you’re permitted to ask of a teacher are about the details of grading and assignments:

A good question, I learned, is one that voices a concern shared by other students or that asks for clarifications of upcoming work. “Will there be more questions on the test from the text or the lecture?” “Should the paper be double- or single- spaced?” […]

[…] “What does that mean?” is, incredibly, just not the kind of question that an American college student would ask.

This isn’t just show; students genuinely aren’t engaged in classes. They don’t do the required reading, they dash off assignments, they ditch classes, they cheat on tests. Some go up and talk to the teacher about things, but they do so with ulterior motives in mind. Signs and talks geared to incoming students explain that one must “work the teachers” by talking to them, getting them to recognize you so they will give you hints about tests and go easy on you when you need exceptions. “I take the information I need from the professor”, one highly-successful student tells Nathan, explaining what that consists of: “how they’re going to grade you and what they think is important”. Everything is seen as part of the game, not worthwhile for its own sake.

But it’s all too easy to lament this sad state of student affairs, perhaps complain about the laziness of modern students. But Nathan goes one step further: she shows why it is happening. For even she, a professor with a Ph.D, finds herself doing the exact same things. “We don’t need to study those things, they won’t be on the test”, she tells her study partner Rob. It takes Rob, a fellow student, to ask her whether she just cares about learning for its own sake.

The culture of Undergraduate Cynical, you see, is not created by student laziness or a lack of concern for intellectual life. It’s created by the necessities of the schedule. Students simply don’t have time to care. They take three to five classes, each with separate sections and lab assignments, each with its own schedule of papers and readings and adults to suck up to. That alone is enough to drive Rebekah crazy, despite her thinking she had pretty good time management skills juggling all her commitments as a professor. But on top of that most students go to activities and clubs, work an on- or off-campus job, party in the evenings, and try to maintain relationships. When you run the math, there just isn’t enough time to care.

So students instead focus on doing what’s required of them: just scraping by. Anything that won’t impact their grade much is tossed and a desire to learn becomes a desire to pass. It’s hard to imagine any sincere desire to learn surviving such a harried schedule. As soon as you get engrossed or a book or topic, you have to dash off to your next meeting.

Again, this is all something completely invisible to the professors. They spend their days worrying about tomorrow’s lecture and are shocked when students don’t do the same. But the students haven’t had time: they’ve had two more classes and who knows how many assignments in the interim. And, anyway, they only picked this course because it filled a convenient hole in their schedule, they’re not even sure what it’s about.

So the students simply don’t get engrossed, student discussion groups don’t actually discuss things, but instead each student simply makes up a point of view and shares it so they don’t get a zero on their in-class participation grade. There is no “meeting of the minds” on any subject; there are hardly any minds.


Both books, their research being conducted undercover, will no doubt lead some to raise ethical questions. Jeremy Iversen had to deceive and mislead his fellow students — including creating a fake backstory — in order to experience life with them. Rebekah Nathan, while not explicitly lying, led students to believe she was just an older woman going back to school, and certainly not one of their professors.

But deception alone is not an ethical violation. Psychology studies routinely deceive subjects into thinking the experiment is about X, when actually it is about Y. (I myself have been so deceived.) The key difference, and in my opinion the only possible ethical lapse on Iversen and Nathan’s part, is that after the study is over, the psychologists explain what was really going on. Neither Nathan nor Iversen told their friends afterwards, leaving them only to discover it after the project had gone public.

(By contrast, Barbara Ehrenreich, in Nickeled and Dimed, her study of low-wage work, told her fellow workers at the end that she was working on a book about the experience. They were “remarkably blasé” about it, she found.)

But more generally, important scientific projects like these might have to step on a few ethical toes. Some of the greatest experiments in psychology — the Milgram experiments on obedience to authority and Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment — were easy fodder for armchair ethicists. But while people may have their feelings ruffled, in all of these experiments there was little lasting hurt to the participants, while the educational consequences of the studies themselves have been immense.


The real ethical question is how we can justify forcing our children into such institutions of anti-intellectualism. Iversen found that high school students were quite conservative politically, even more so than their parents, and perhaps it’s not surprising that Bush’s anti-intellectual charm appeals to kids who daily experience education as a form of torture.

Perhaps students learn something by going through the necessary motions required to get a degree, but I defy anyone to read both of these accounts and continue to insist that schools are teaching kids to be “critical thinkers” with a “life-long love of learning”. If anything, the real education is in the opposite.

Instead of critical thinkers, we have kids willing to accept any requirement, no matter how absurd, without question. “If you write what you want to that prof,” explains a successful senior, “you’re gonna end up with a bad grade. Whereas, if you write to them, you win—you can still have your own mindset and say, hell, I know this isn’t the way I feel, but I’ll give them what they want.” But, as experiments in cognitive dissonance have shown us, if one continues saying what one doesn’t feel, one begins feeling it before too long. It’s easy to see how this is effective training for professionalism, which actually means doing what you’re told, despite what you believe. But it’s hard to see how this system is going to generate students who will buck a trend.

Instead of life-long learners, we have kids who learn that genuine learning is a joke. “Education” becomes that stupid thing in classrooms that you have to do to get a decent job, an entirely mercenary perspective that’s unhelpfully encouraged by the mercenary pressures of student loans. If the only education you’ve ever experienced is doing what’s necessary to get a good grade, why would you do it when the grades weren’t around?

Our public high schools were supposed to make every child a good citizen of the democracy. Our great universities were supposed to show young people our grandest achievements. One could say that these institutions are failing at their jobs, but it might be more accurate to say that they’re being all too successful.

Notes


  1. Some of the more verbal students at the school, upset at being hoodwinked by an undercover writer and disappointed at their portrayal, have taken to posting nasty comments on web sites and in the school paper suggesting that Iversen’s book is fictionalized. But, as far as I can see, everything they claim that he left out, he actually included (with a single exception: one person on the Internet claimed kids called him “Plasticface”) and they have failed to dispute any details he included. So, while no doubt Iversen’s book contains errors (every book does, especially one as difficult to write as this), I’m compelled to believe it is largely accurate. 

You should follow me on twitter here.

October 11, 2006

Comments

Bwahahahah!

Aaron, I’m disappointed in your gullibility.

The guy Iverson “went undercover” at my high school, Claremont High School in Claremont CA. His book is a load of bullshit, and I’m amazed that anyone finds it believable. You should read a more skeptical (which in this case implies reasonable) review in the LA Times, or b better still, check out the CHS Wolfpacket’s reporting

Iverson, a guy in his mid twenties, came in pretending to be just a dumb student (how many 24 year-old high school students do you know?). He didn’t do any of the homework that was assigned in any classes, including when he was assigned to groups working on substantial projects. Then he asked everyone he could find what kind of drugs they did, what parties they were throwing on the weekend, and whether the endless sex they were having was all they expected. It’s kind of unsurprising that the other students figured out something was fishy (Most decided he was a “Narc”), and decided to lead him on.

The real scandal you are missing if you only read Iverson’s book, is the local shock at finding out this random adult was allowed to attend classes for an extended period without anyone knowing about it. The [school district][cusd]’s new superintendent, a standardized testing nut (I’d call her an education Nazi), was the only person Iverson could find to let him into a public high school for his project. Amazingly, the superintendent didn’t tell anyone else about this, including the principal or other administrators at the high school.

plasticface

Anyway, statements like these:

And, indeed, the most shocking components are not the tales of the kids, but of the schools. Iversen draws a picture of an institution that is not just failing at learning, but antithetical to it. Thea, the only girl in the book with any academic passion, is routinely discouraged by the actions of both peers and adults. But no other student even gets that far. The school’s student culture makes caring about class unthinkable; the school’s classes make learning near-impossible.

Just honestly have nothing to do with reality, and though I haven’t read Iverson’s book myself, I can tell you with great certainty that this ‘derrick’ character you speak of:

The regulations are designed to make genuine complaints impossible to bring before the administration, while the administration uses Derrick at every opportunity as a mouthpiece for their lies about what the children really think. Thus the only student representative most outside adults see is no representative at all.

Is just made up, and though the school did indeed do some absurd things before the accreditation (e.g. for the first time ever all of the bathroom soap dispensers actually had soap!), and though the school administrators did indeed make sure to tell us all ad nauseam about how important it was that we looked sharp, this is just fantasy:

Any kid who ever caused a problem is locked away in a hidden trailer for the duration of the inspector’s visit, every class is replaced with fake, scripted, standards-compliant material. Every child puts on fake happy faces under severe duress.


Most of all, however, I’m quite disappointed in this statement in your footnote:

Some of the more verbal students at the school, upset at being hoodwinked by an undercover writer and disappointed at their portrayal, have taken to posting nasty comments on web sites and in the school paper suggesting that Iversen’s book is fictionalized.

Most of said “verbal students” are friends of mine, and to suggest that they are “posting nasty comments” out of some sort of disappointment and shame at the grand truth being revealed, is just ludicrous. Indeed we should all be upset at being hoodwinked: you Aaron just as much as any of the students at CHS.

-Jacob Rus

posted by Jacob Rus on October 11, 2006 #

Whoops. I guess I messed up my link for narc in the above comment.

While I’m posting again, I might as well add that “cognitive dissonance”:

But, as experiments in cognitive dissonance have shown us, if one continues saying what one doesn’t feel, one begins feeling it before too long. It’s easy to see how this is effective training for professionalism, which actually means doing what you’re told, despite what you believe. But it’s hard to see how this system is going to generate students who will buck a trend.

is alive and well in all of us. Despite a story that seems quite unbelievable if you’ve ever been to any public high school, you swallowed it whole, without pausing to consider that though it may advance the agenda you’ve recently been pushing (all organized education is bad, &c.), it could also just be made up. Buck the trend, Aaron. Buck the trend. :)

posted by Jacob Rus on October 11, 2006 #

I read all the articles you cite and addressed them in my footnote; they’re entirely unconvincing. If you have a specific dispute with the book, I’d like to hear it, but these angry insults seem like exactly the kind of being upset that I referred to.

posted by Aaron Swartz on October 11, 2006 #

Well, I don’t really have much interest in reading the book (I can get quite an idea of its flavor from your review, and from the comments of those I trust who did take the time to read it), but I can tell you that nothing you describe has anything to do with my personal experience. The specific disputes are the following:

  1. The characters described, for instance, the class president, are either entirely fictional, or completely exaggerated from their real-life inspirations.

  2. The culture of the school described has very little in common with my personal experience.

    • The implication that all the teachers are “such characters” or are somehow crazy is way overblown. Most of my teachers at CHS were extremely dedicated to their students, and sure, while not every assignment is the most amazing thing ever, it’s impossible to say that they actively discouraged learning

    • The suggestion that “The school’s student culture makes caring about class unthinkable; the school’s classes make learning near-impossible.” is equally silly. Claremont, in the same small city with 5 small liberal arts colleges, is filled to the brim with the children of academics and intellectuals.

      But it’s hardly surprising that a 24 year-old, trying to act like a dunce, whose main interactions with most students involved him asking them which drugs he could get, and what parties to go to, who never spent any time hanging out with the more academically-minded students, never saw that side of things.

    • The claim that Claremont is full of racism and right-wing politics is quite exaggerated. For the most part, students are sadly rather disinterested in politics (this is true all over the country). But Claremont is probably the most ethnically diverse community I’ve ever been in (certainly far more diverse than Cambridge), and everyone gets along exceedingly well. My friends came from all over the world, and the amount of racial stigma in Claremont is arguably less than just about anywhere else in the world.

      Sure, students can form ethnic cliques, sticking together through shared culture, language, and values. But this happens everywhere I’ve ever been or heard about.

It is truly clear that in this case, “The reality is that between adult and student, there is a vast gulf in mentality.” Mr. Iverson was unable to appreciate the student mentality, because he came in with some preconceived notion of what he wanted to write about, and arranged his stay in such a way that his evidence backed up that thesis. I don’t know a single student who would characterize Claremont High School in the way that Mr. Iverson does. Not one.

Now Aaron, you are welcome to dismiss the opinions of everyone in the community—students, parents, teachers, and administrators—instead believing the tripe fed you by one sensationalist Stanford grad, trying to sell his book. You are welcome to imply that I, or Ellie Wolf, or anyone you like, is being disingenuous. I can’t stop you from believing whatever you want. But to suggest that Mr. Iverson was in any way scientific; to compare his experience and conclusions to famous psychology studies; and to pretend that it supports your thesis that public education is broken beyond repair: that’s just silly.

I hope I don’t sound upset in all this rambling. That isn’t at all the tone in which I write my comments, which is much more one of amusement. If I was funnier, I would crack some jokes, but instead, I’ve tried to stick to rational argument.

I challenge you however to be more skeptical. If you have no evidence beyond Mr. Iverson’s book itself, you should stop and ponder, before making sweeping generalizations about either the particular high school described, or the education system in general. And if you truly feel insulted by my comments, I’m quite sorry. You have been taken in by a harlequin, but we all succumb to our preconceptions sometimes. I mean no disrespect.

posted by Jacob Rus on October 11, 2006 #

Hi, Aaron —

You were thoroughly, one-hundred percent, and completely right to support Jeremy Iversen’s HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL.

I’m writing in response to Jacob Rus’s pseudo-“critique.” I’m writing anonymously, because, let us say, I have an intimate knowledge of this project, and I have legal concerns that severely tie my hands publically. But I’m sick of this utter Claremont BS, and it’s time to respond.

First of all, Rus, CHS ‘04, never actually read the book. This guy is actually trying to critique something he never even read. That should say it all, now shouldn’t it?

Second, none of the people from CHS who shared their oh-so-valuable negative opinions on this project either a) ever read the book, or b) ever met Jeremy. This is an utter and verifiable fact. Include Ellie Wolf, include Trilo Kidambi, include the other two or three posters.

The genesis of their lie is as such: Jeremy announced on national TV he had gone back to HS undercover. A handful of shocked CHS students writing an editorial for the school paper claimed that “students” (never precisely identified) had made up drugs and sex, and in fact none such existed.

This then became the party line to such an extent that students in subsequent years had no actual clue what really happened, and just repeated it ad infinitum ad nauseum.

Of the media quotes, Joe Kelly was the only person who actually met Jeremy and actually read the book, and he supported it totally.

So it’s kind of silly to “discuss” a book with someone who never actually read it, like Rus, but here we go anyway.

didn’t do any of the homework that was assigned in any classes

Lie. Jeremy has a box filled with all the work he did. He maintained a C+/B- average in every class. He got a B in third-year second-semester French, which is shocking and sad for the school considering he never took a day of French before in his life.

including when he was assigned to groups working on substantial projects

Lie. Ask Val Sedig in English class, Alyssa Deville in bio class, Ken Shinozaki in video class, or anybody—say—who actually worked with him on a group project.

Then he asked everyone he could find what kind of drugs they did

Lie. Point to one person. I want a name.

what parties they were throwing on the weekend

Lie. He was simply invited. Unlike you, Rus.

and whether the endless sex they were having was all they expected.

Lie. Oh, come on. Like anyone would actually say that. Name a name.

It’s kind of unsurprising that the other students figured out something was fishy (Most decided he was a “[Narc]”), and decided to lead him on.

Lie. Who? Who “led Jeremy on?” Name a name. As if a 24-year-old Phi Beta Kappa Stanford graduate had been so abysmally stupid as to be tricked by a band of giggling 15-year-olds. The two weeks of attempts to trick and narcdom are humorously chronicled in the book.

I can tell you with great certainty that this ‘derrick’ character you speak of is just made up. The characters described, for instance, the class president, are either entirely fictional, or completely exaggerated from their real-life inspirations.

Well, Jacob, you’re either totally ignorant or just lying. Any way you slice it, you’re dead wrong. Derrick equals Billy Geiger plus Alex Reike plus Otis Holt IV. Point to a single thing Derrick says or does, and I will tell you on precisely which day of which month and which hour Geiger, Reike, or Otis said or did that thing.

The implication that all the teachers are “such characters” or are somehow crazy is way overblown. Most of my teachers at CHS were extremely dedicated to their students, and sure, while not every assignment is the most amazing thing ever, it’s impossible to say that they actively discouraged learning

Rus, you poor naive Ivy Leaguer, you really didn’t know what was going on in your own school, did you? You took what we like to call “AP classes,” which at CHS consist of 45 seniors out of a class of 558. That’s 8%. Those are the classes where the teachers and students actually care. That’s all you know.

What about the other 92%? Yeah. Exactly. Mainstream America. That’s what the book’s about. Again, of course, it’s ludicrously easy to say precisely which CHS teacher said or did which thing on which day in which class period. Call it out, Rus. Point to a single quote, a single incident, and the hard evidence will answer you, stripping away all the protections in place to shield identities.

Is it Ms. Evans getting asked to prom? Mr. Gorule screaming and beating his desk? Mr. Walker molesting girls? You get to decide what dirty laundry gets aired, Rus. It’s all on your head.

The claim that Claremont is full of racism and right-wing politics is quite exaggerated.

Lie. It’s not a “claim,” winner, it’s just a transcription of first-period government class. Point to a single quote, and I’ll tell you the day and precisely who said it.

Yeah, Rus, not AP Government class. Government class.

But Claremont is probably the most ethnically diverse community I’ve ever been in… and everyone gets along exceedingly well

To quote you, Rus, “Bwahahahah!” If you actually believe this about your community, it’s just sad. Just open up the newspaper.

main interactions with most students involved him asking them which drugs he could get, and what parties to go to

This is throughly untrue, and you should know far better than this, Jacob. Don’t just repeat Ellie Wolf. Find a single person who Jeremy asked what drugs he could get. Oh, wait, oh, you can’t? Then shut the hell up.

In fact, Rus, you make a cameo on page 238. You were the tall, gangly senior with pants too short wearing the Yale sweatshirt that all the girls laugh at. Of course, we know it was actually your Harvard sweatshirt you dragged to school everyday. Oh, gosh, maybe anonymity was nice, huh? Maybe that doesn’t make anything untrue, maybe it, gasp, protects people?

The only harlequin here is Jacob Rus and any of his lying, self-deluded, ignorant ilk. You go, Math Pimp!

Rus, I dare you to read the whole thing and say what isn’t true. Bring it, kid. You can be the one who reveals the true identities of your classmates and teachers for the entire world to see.

Until that point, until you even marginally inform yourself instead of regurgitating total libelous drivel, please be so good as to shut the hell up and leave Aaron alone.

And “Iversen” is spelled with an “e.” I guess that says a lot about your rigor and accuracy. :-)

posted by Anonymous on October 11, 2006 #

Dear Mr. Anonymous,

I am sorry that I have obviously touched a nerve. Indeed, you are correct, that I had no direct contact with Mr. Iversen (thank you for the spelling correction: no wonder I wasn’t getting any google results before), and in fact, don’t even really know the students who did. Therefore, my comments about what transpired are drawn from students quoted in the press after-the-fact, including for instance the LA Times column “Creepy Times at Claremont High” linked earlier, and from hearsay (i.e. every comment I ever heard a fellow student make about the saga).

Perhaps I, the gangly, sheltered math nerd, am simply trying to rationalize my surprise at the debaucheries of the masses; maybe my disbelief stems from some tragic shame that “all the girls laugh at” me; perhaps I just can’t believe that school administrators are bureaucratic and often childish. Except, oh wait, I’m not surprised, I’m not embarrassed, and I certainly do believe it.

Yes, high school students drink, take drugs, have sex. This should be very unsurprising to anyone. Yes, high school administrators often lose sight of what their jobs are about, and enact weird bureaucratic barriers. Yes, there are a few crazy teachers, and a few bored teachers. There are classes with inane assignments. There are students who have no interest in school, and others who are bigoted ass-holes.

No one is disputes any of those things. But let us take pause, and take a deep breath, and step back for some perspective. Peel back the layers on any organization, sit in wait for an extended period of time. Gather the juiciest, most absurd, most terrible looking tidbits together into a compendium of the most ridiculous things you witnessed. I guarantee that there’s at least one soap opera lurking in there somewhere. It doesn’t matter whether the organization is a preschool or a non-profit activist group or a fortune 500 company (Dilbert anyone?), or the US Congress, or the Catholic Church. Any organization has its share of “dirty laundry.”

Heck, take a single 8-10 hour date, and put the juiciest 20 minutes on a TV show, and the two people involved, however clever or intelligent or endearing they might be in real life, will come off looking like total jerks. There are several long-running television programs based around precisely this premise.

My point in all this is not that Claremont HS is some sort of idealistic bastion of harmony and intellectualism. That would be absurd in the extreme. It’s just an average public high school, with a mix of teachers—some average, some excellent, a few crackpots—and a fairly diverse (ethnically, monetarily, academically, etc.) student body. Rather, my point is that the whole thing is overblown, excessive, exaggerated, taken out of context. This may because I’ve only read Aaron’s characterization of the book (apparently a praiseworthy review whose goal is “thoroughly, one-hundred percent, and completely right”), seen Mr. Iversen’s set of sound-byte interviews in the press, and on Good Morning America, and elsewhere, and heard of the story second- or third-hand.

This overarching pessimism about life, about social systems, about humanity, is too much. Can we do better, in many ways, in all aspects of our lives? Undoubtedly. Maybe you, Mr. Anonymous, will decide to become a school-teacher, so you can share your love of learning with generations of students. Or maybe you’ll become a missionary, or a social worker, so that you can help bring comfort to many lives. Any of these is better the job of inventing a controversy for controversy’s sake. There are plenty of real problems to be solved, and I’ll be the first to sign up when you petition to raise teachers’ salaries, or to pay for teacher training, or to hire more counselors, or to fund more extracurricular activities, or, or…

I completely agree with those who say that our increasing use of standardized tests in eduction is a waste of time. I agree with those who say that we should emphasize writing and critical analysis, and real mathematics instead of memorization of formulas, and that education should be participatory and exploratory, rather than a suppository. We should hire more teachers, so they can spend more time 1-1 with students. Our focus as a society should be to make sure that every student has the capability to exercise her curiosity. That every student can find joy in literature and history.

But this current discussion isn’t about that. This current discussion is oversimplified, over-dramatized absurdity.

posted by Jacob Rus on October 12, 2006 #

I wonder if Mr Iversen took his inspiration from Fast Times at Ridgement High. The author of that work claimed to do the same thing: go undercover for a year at a high school. People in my age group might remember the movie which was adapted from the book.

posted by Gordon on October 12, 2006 #

When are you going to start writing about software again? I’m really bored of these inane attempts to justify your own rejection of academia. Yes, there are entirely too many college students who don’t give a fuck about actually learning anything—that’s why I transferred away from my first school. And, zomgwtf, high school is not rigorous? Please, someone, stop the presses.

As the exchange between Anonymous and Rus above aptly illustrates, your education is what you make of it. Motivated high schoolers will take away all the education they can from the place, which in most schools these days is quite a bit (AP classes are hard, yo). For the rest of students, high school is a great place to meet people, form cliques, get high, organize keggers, fuck around on the student council, and so on. This is not a bad thing.

At the college level, it does seem to be a net negative that college is becoming just “what you do after high school” these days. Most people have neither the need nor the interest to go to college, and when they do, it’s quite a bring-down for them and the rest of us. (Few things rile me more than a college kid who honestly doesn’t want to be in college: if that’s so, you should get the hell out, you’re pissing on the parade.) (On the flip side, it does seem to be unfortunately true that society in general and people in specific just don’t place much actual value on a liberal arts education. It would probably be a net win if more people valued such learning-for-the-sake-of-it.)

I’m sorry, Aaron, that you don’t seem to have been able to find peers that shared your educational goals during your time in school. I assure you that they were and are there (at every college, to varying degrees). It’s odd that you seem to have discovered the truism that education is an internal affair—by dropping out of school—while not recognizing that, for a properly motivated child, public schools and colleges (even the bad ones!) provide a rich set of opportunities to pursue one’s own education. Who really gives a christgoddamn if your fellow students are in it for a resume-padding bachelor’s? Access to professional thinkers in any field you could care to name, the impetus to broaden your knowledge, the opportunity to meet peers with similar interests and drives: all of these are an unmitigated intellectual good.

An education isn’t something that can be given to you: it must be pursued. That’s just the nature of the game. Some people enjoy the pursuit; they will learn all they can no matter where they are. Some have to fake it, to get a job or a diploma or whatever, and that’s alright, too. Most people just seem to realize that being smart or knowledgeable is neither necessary nor sufficient for being happy. They should not be looked down on for this; what’s more, it is not a failure of our educational system that it cannot transmogrify them unwillingly into miniature Russells or Gausses.

I just wish you would stop all this inexplicable, inane bloviating on/faux exploration of organized education. You don’t need to prove anything to us, Aaron—Steve Jobs dropped out of school, too! We get it, you didn’t like the scene. But judging from your recent writings on the subject, that seems to be not so much the fault of that scene as your own cynicism.

posted by dc on October 12, 2006 #

I want to add that the picture Jacob posted is my property. I’m the one who took the shot at Prom and also the one who added plastic face because of his profuse sweating. If anyone wants to use it in the discussion make sure to include the credits.

Cheers, Derek “Derrick” Jones

posted by Derek Jones on October 12, 2006 #

Hi, Jacob —

I hope you’re aware you did a 180 between your first postings and your later posting.

At first, you claimed the book was lies, more lies, and damned lies. You were quick to sneer at Aaron’s “gullibility.” Acting as though you were privy to some sort of inside information, you knew “with great certainty” that Derrick “was just made up.” The ESLR Carnival and Wylie’s threats of jail time on the PA system were “just fantasy.” And poor, foolish Aaron “swallowed it whole.”

You scorned. You gloated. You thought you were untouchable. But then, owing to one of those rare moments of grace that the universe delivers, there appeared on this board precisely the one individual who could answer every single lie and piece of misinformation you dribbled, and take it straight back to you, Jacob Rus.

Whoops! Didn’t calculate that on the TI-84.

In a supreme irony of life, you, of course, were the ill-informed and gullible one. Aaron looked at both sides of the story and reached a correct independent conclusion. You swallowed hook, line, and sinker—and then vomited back—an incoherent mishmash of innuendo cooked up by snickering 16-year-olds in a high school newspaper office after sixth period. You didn’t even bother to check the source, because you “knew.”

Lacking all the critical thinking skills you call for in your oh-so-enlightened second post, you were condemned by the exact same error for which you sought to condemn.

The stupidity dies now. I’m glad we have an audience. CCCP forever, Derek. Maybe Ellie can show up too, and pound out another editorial about how there’s no sex or drugs at CHS, and then we can discuss what—and the names of precisely whom—she’s done when she unhinges her jaw, and what fun she’s had as a proud member of the Claremont Blunt Crew.

So here the 180 turnaround in your later posting. When faced with the tip of an ominous and infinite iceberg of evidence that—gosh—the book is actually true, you decided to “elevate” the conversation to moralizing platitudes.

Suddenly, you are admitting that the students are drinking, using drugs, having sex, that there are bad teachers, that the administration did some truly warped things, that some students are bigoted, &c.

Then you add:

No one is disputes any of those things.

Well, actually, Rus, you disputed all of those things in your first posts. Sigh.

So next, you suggest although all these things do, in fact, happen, the problem is that they appear in concentrated form in the book:

Peel back the layers on any organization, sit in wait for an extended period of time. Gather the juiciest, most absurd, most terrible looking tidbits together into a compendium of the most ridiculous things you witnessed. I guarantee that there’s at least one soap opera lurking in there somewhere.

Well, yes, obviously, Rus, this is simply the editorial principle. Rather than wade through a nineteen-volume blow-by-blow narrative of every word uttered during every passing period for six months, the editor has to fit as much valuable and poignant text into 464 pages as possible. How else are you suggesting that one cut down six months into 464 pages? This non-point is tautological and absurd.

Okay, now you attempt another tactic:

Rather, my point is that the whole thing is overblown, excessive, exaggerated, taken out of context.

Well, no, not at all. Certainly not in the legal “is this true?” sense. Obviously Jeremy, Simon & Schuster, and the CBS Corporation all stand absolutely behind the truth of the book, and none of them are idiots or take the issue of truth lightly.

So “exaggerated” or “overblown,” absolutely not. Name a point and I’ll strip away the protection of your classmates’ and teachers’ identities for you, Rus. “Context,” you can hardly comment on, not having read it.

But, God yes, it is excessive. The truth is shocking.

With your other points half-formed or lying in shreds, here comes the best part: the hand-wringing. Grinding all our gears on the transition, we now learn that the great problem is “the overarching pessimism about humanity.” Hah hah, you actually wrote that! About a book you’ve never read, and about which it’s kind to say you’ve been batting zero as far as accuracy is concerned. It’s not Dostoyevsky, it’s a report of what happened in your high school.

All of our sequiturs lost, we then learn that one should be a teacher, a missionary, or a social-worker. Touching sentiments, Rus. But there are many ways to help the world. Bringing difficult truth to public light after a vast and grueling process is chief among them.

You’re right: you’re not funny, but you’re not logical either.

Any of these is better the job of inventing a controversy for controversy’s sake

I’m confused what you’re referring to here. You’ve agreed the drugs and alcohol and sex happen, that a number of teachers are terrible, a lot of people are racist, a lot of people aren’t learning, and so on. Now you claim these issues aren’t worthy of America’s attention?

Seniors in Jeremy’s government class believed that Spain was in the Middle East and that slavery ended in 1920. Nationally, 70% of seniors drink, 33% drink at school, and two-thirds can’t find Iraq on a map. So—although the education’s crap and people get wasted on Tuesday afternoon—everything’s all right?

No, Rus, it’s all right for YOU. You were the one kid out of the entire class of ‘04 to attend Harvard. You will get your prestigious degree and go on to, well, actually, probably to code in a cubicle at Google, but that’s likely what you dream of. You have options. You are the top .001% of the population.

We are talking about the mainstream people, the vast majority of Americans who will find themselves working service jobs with “some education” in a world of dwindling service jobs. Their issues in high school are the issues this book is advocating for, attempting to bring attention to, attempting to ameliorate. It’s tragic that you—who have been so privileged—would attempt to silence that voice, much less through the blind and arrogant repetition of a pabulum of flimsy lies.

Your actions have consequence. As a direct consequence of your reckless Derrick challenge, whom you knew “with great certainty…had just been made up,” the identities of three of your innocent classmates—carefully protected for over two years—have today been lain bare.

In repentance for your errors and gratitude for your fortune, you should apologize sincerely to Aaron for your ignorance and condescension.

Go your way and attempt to improve your world.

Gottes Mühlen mahlen langsam, mahlen aber trefflich klein. — Friedrich von Logau

posted by Anonymous on October 12, 2006 #

Or, for the mainstream readers:

Friedrich von Logau: Gottes Mühlen mahlen langsam, mahlen aber trefflich klein / Ob aus Langmut Er sich säumet, bringt mit Schärf’ Er alles ein.

Longfellow: Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all.

Winston Churchill: The mill of justice grinds very slow, but it grinds exceedingly fine.

posted by Reg Aubry on October 12, 2006 #

Well, without getting into this vitriolic debate about Iversen’s journalistic integrity (which I also consider suspect), let me just say that the generalizations you’ve attributed to these authors are a bit too loose.

I went to a public high school and then a third-tier university. In both places, there were some subjects that I actually gave a crap about, and found genuinely interesting. Most of my teachers actually wanted to teach, even if they weren’t good at it.

At college, I even made friends who were genuinely interested in having an active intellectual life. They got a lot out of their classes, just as I got a lot out of mine, and we spent many hung-over saturday mornings in debate about philosophy, politics, or whatever else.

Yes, we were in a minority, yes, most people didn’t give a crap about what they were studying. I avoided those people because they bored me. I’m surprised you weren’t able to find anybody at stanford who didn’t conform to the caricatures put forth by these two authors.

posted by Mark on October 12, 2006 #

I think Anonymous expressed this far better than I ever could have, but I’ll give it another try. The issue isn’t whether the handful of people who, by chance and wealth, have managed to acquire a taste for academics and the desire to succeed. Those people will do well no matter what. The issue is whether we can make things better for everybody else.

posted by Aaron Swartz on October 13, 2006 #

I’ve often heard it said that the public education system was designed, intentionally or de-facto, to produce good workers for factories.

My experiences ecertainly do not lead me to disagree and these books would appear to support that.

It seems to me that the “higher education” system has simply succombed to the same purpose in our “information age”. The true purpose of university is not the enrichment of the individual but the preparation for becoing a “knowledge worker”.

The great irony is that in a few short years all jobs will be most likely be contract based and require intense creativity. A lot of people are going to have re-learn to how to learn…

Joe

posted by Joe Harris on October 13, 2006 #

I read the book ($1 for the hardcover at Dollar Tree!) and popped on line to see the reaction. I stumbled across this site, and enjoyed the debate between Jacob Rus and Anonymous. First, Jacob, as a fellow Ivy Leaguer, I have to say that you were smacked around by Anonymous. He/she dismantled your arguments, skewered your logic, and basically made you look like a smart alec high-school student who needs about 8 years of post-secondary education, maturity, and seasoning before venturing out into the real world. A word to the wise: Next time, read the book. I’m not saying that it was a work of art, but, sheesh, try READING it before you critique it.

But enough about Jacob Rus. I’m more curious about Anonymous. From my read, Anonymous is smart and educated, and familiar with the Claremont High School scene. The writing style is too polished to be that of a high-school student — sorry, Jacob — and suggests a graduate-level education. I have no reason to doubt Anonymous’s claim that he/she is in a precarious legal position. So, who exactly is Anonymous? Teacher? I doubt it. The writing is too good and the logic too strong. Administrator? That’s my guess. An administrator with a doctorate. Anyone care to guess?

posted by Also Anonymous on September 20, 2008 #

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