Another Planet

by Elinor Burkett

Published by HarperCollins Publishers
New York, NY  2001

Review by John Maher, PhD

Do you want to know the real, inside story of a representative American, largely white, suburban high school? If so, read Elinor Burkett's Another Planet. Like the skillful investigator she is, Burkett overcame the bureaucratic barriers to attend classes, faculty meetings, student parties. She deservedly gained the confidence of individual students, faculty and administrators and writes about them candidly.

She names names which has caused great turmoil in Prior Lake, Minnesota, and in Prior Lake High School (PLHS) where a few parents and students take exception to many of her intimate portraits of students who drink, use drugs, and are sexually active. As a conscientious writer, she was careful to get signed permissions for statements attributed to named students.

The book is in some ways like a charming play. The first page, "Cast of Characters," lists by name the key students and faculty whose stories she will tell. Chapters are titled with just a date as the story progresses through time and through intensely developed plot and characters to graduation in June 2000. The structure of the book is a remarkable accomplishment.

The author reveals the students' and parents' bias towards market valuations in the way they view education. There is an economic cost/benefit analysis in the selection of courses. Is it worthwhile to take a course in biology where few grades of A are awarded when a B can be effortlessly gained in aerobics? At the same time, promoting self-esteem trumps the acquisition of knowledge in the way some teachers teach and award grades. Parents' contacts with school personnel seem limited to pressing for Johnny to get higher grades than his teachers think he deserves. Mara Corey, a first-year English teacher wondered " ... what made the kids lazy and bratty, the parents obnoxious and the teachers entirely too lax." It is noted that Corey, under pressure, resigned at year's end.

I can attest to the accuracy of many of Burkett's insights. I have fought the policies of Superintendent Sonnebend and his rubber-stamp school board, attended many board meetings, served on one of the board's committees, and have had a few episodes of substitute teaching at PLHS.

Consider historical knowledge. My questions to students confirm the author's inferences. Asked when the Civil War was fought, students gave answers ranging from 1778 to 1976. When were slaves first brought to America (1619, to Jamestown)? Answers: As long ago as 1650 and as recently as 1918. The Great Depression of 1929-1933 was given dates ranging from the eighteenth century to the 1970s.

As a parallel to ignorance of American history, Burkett writes about the gaps in knowledge of geography:

...During a Geography Bee, I listened as teenagers from privileged families identified Jamaica as an island in the Pacific and the mountain range separating India from China as the Indus Mountains—then to their teachers defend that ignorance by arguing, "We don’t waste time on simple memorization. We'd rather spend it on 'higher orders' of thinking." But the next afternoon I watched Katie Hallberg's Calculus students perform mathematical feats that were dazzling to even the most educated members of my generation.

Parents have shown little interest in anything except their children's grades as Burkett reports except, I would add, when a minority is mobilized by the political skills of the central administration to vote for an increase in school taxes. At the dozens of school board meetings I attended, I saw few if any parents and those who did attend made no contribution to discussion. Perhaps they can be forgiven because the board itself seems only to deal with tedious, mundane matters. They are a bricks-and-mortar collective, uninterested in what is taught but deeply concerned with equipment, especially computers and new buildings. My attempts to get my questions answered were usually in vain. Indeed, the Superintendent wrote to me questioning my practice of "arriving unannounced" at board meetings and expecting answers.

I dismissed his message little knowing that his board would later approve his proposal that questions must be submitted in advance of board meetings with, I assume, the same old time limit of five minutes. This procedure is part of the so-called "democratic centralism" characteristic of government in Beijing, China. Burkett captures this authoritarian atmosphere in her splendid analysis.

I recall one question that was quickly answered by the board. I once asked who was in charge of following the many reports on research into what worked and what did not work in the education of students. I was told that it was everybody's job to follow the research. We all know that what is everybody's responsibility is, in fact, no one's responsibility.

Our author is aware that up to 90 percent of the average student's academic achievement depends on the family's income and education. While schooling makes a difference, the difference can be negligible. Unfortunately, parents themselves do not know this and so are easily gulled into supporting hare-brained educational policies. Moreover, they are unaware of the fact that there is no correlation between student achievement and the amount of money spent per student. Public ignorance also accounts for measly increases in teachers' salaries contrasted with the larger advances in the salaries of administrators.

The author praises the efforts of dedicated teachers and a few students but notes more generally, "[Students] were vulgar in their language, informal in their demeanor and disrespectful to authority in a way that would have won most members of earlier generations permanent detention." (As a substitute teacher, I sent ten members of a middle school class to the principal's office for such bad behavior as throwing wads of paper at one another and at me, talking incessantly out of turn, and leaving the classroom without proper authorization. It was my fifth and final appearance as a substitute. I was never called again to teach. I think it was mostly because I called a particularly disruptive student an "asshole," though I apologized before the class and turned myself in to the principal.)

Another Planet is a true account of a largely white and affluent suburban high school with lessons for hundreds of similar schools and millions of parents and students. It is written with fluent grace and impressive style. Elinor Burkett deserves the thanks of all of us who care about the substance of public education in America.