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A Class Apart: Prodigies, Pressure, and Passion Inside One of America's Best High Schools | 
 enlarge | Author: Alec Klein
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 112633
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0743299450
Dewey Decimal Number: 370
EAN: 9780743299459
ASIN: 0743299450
Publication Date: August 12, 2008
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Product Description
Enter Stuyvesant High, one of the most extraordinary schools in America, a place where the brainiacs prevail and jocks are embarrassed to admit they play on the woeful football team. Academic competition is so intense that students say they can have only two of these three things: good grades, a social life, or sleep. About one in four Stuyvesant students gains admission to the Ivy League. And the school's alumni include several Nobel laureates, Academy Award winners, and luminaries in the arts, business, and public service.A Class Apart follows the lives of Stuyvesant's remarkable students, such asRomeo, the football team captain who teaches himself calculus and strives to make it into Harvard; Jane, a world-weary poet at seventeen, battling the demon of drug addiction; Milo, a ten-year-old prodigy trying to fit in among high-school students who are literally twice his size; Mariya, a first-generation American beginning to resist parental pressure for ever-higher grades so that she can enjoy her sophomore year. And then there is the faculty, such as math chairman Mr. Jaye, who is determined not to let bureaucratic red tape stop him from helping his teachers. He even finds a job for a depressed math genius who lacks a college degree but possesses the gift of teaching. This is the story of the American dream, a New York City school that inspires immigrants to come to these shores so that their children can attend Stuyvesant in the first step to a better life. It's also the controversial story of elitism in education. Stuyvesant is a public school, but children must pass a rigorous entrance exam to get in. Only about 3 percent do so, which, Stuyvesant students and faculty point out, makes admission to their high school tougher than to Harvard. On the eve of the hundredth anniversary of Stuyvesant's first graduating class, reporter Alec Klein, an alumnus, was given unfettered access to the school and the students and faculty who inhabit it. What emerges is a book filled with stunning, raw, and heartrending personalities, whose stories are hilarious, sad, and powerfully moving.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
 great book, a lot of interesting issues July 28, 2008
I don't have much to say except that this book was very informative and sparked a lot of interesting discussion on the state of our public school system.
A Truly Great School January 19, 2008
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
mrwarten@uci.edu
 Through Journalistically Biased Lens December 8, 2007
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
In "A Class Apart," Alec Klein purportedly presents an insider's perspective into Stuyvesant - one of the nation's most prestigious high schools - with the apparent goal of objective journalism. Regrettably, the author elects to tell the Stuyvesant story by featuring the lives of 4 students whom he trailed during his observation period who are distinguished by their eccentricities, but are not prototypical. A sample size of 4 is simply not meaningful. While Klein does a good job of documenting the school's historic past and the unique life stories of his 4 subjects, the students he chose to feature do not fairly represent the characteristics of the entire student body. The vast majority of Stuyvesant students are disciplined, hardworking, and ambitious, working in pursuit of the American Dream. Oddly, Klein chose to feature a young Asian American woman who is a drug addict on the verge of dropping out and on suicide watch as one of his 4 subjects. By no means does her life story represent the lives of the 58.5% Asian Americans that comprise of the Stuyvesant student population, yet she is the only Asian American student featured. He opted to portray the irresponsible sexual conduct of a few deviant, immature students who hardly represent the norm in Chapter 4, entitled, "Cuddle, Puddle, Muddle," rather than the thousands of students who forego an active social life to study in hopes of gaining admissions into a coveted Ivy League university. Stirring up sensationalism may be an effective tactic for selling books, but represents a slanting of the facts. Readers without a Stuyvesant background may extrapolate from these anecdotes and unknowingly reach false conclusions about the character of its students. Stuyvesant and its faculty have played a pivotal role in educating America's best and brightest throughout the past century. They deserve better, as do its students and alumni.
 Uplifting, Devastating, Honest October 16, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A Class Apart is uplifting, devastating, honest. It reminds me not only of striving for excellence, but the painful truth that adolescence is a transition that many of us barely survive can't be ignored. The book is real, yet it reads like a story book, drawing us into the lives of the characters, while anchoring us in the reality of the plight of gifted students. I picked up the book seeking answers to today's pressure to succeed, yet found myself pierced by very raw human emotions. In the end, I turned each page no longer looking for the Stuyvesant High School of my youth, but immersed in the tragedy of the talented heroin-addicted poet. But what happened to Jane? I kept asking myself. Each drama documented by Klein crescendoed in the readers' frantic worry about Jane's absences, digressions, regressions, self-destructive behavior. Klein's masterful weaving of school documentary with personal narrative, casting the story in the lives of its students and teachers, sets the book apart.
Lauren Eisenberg Davis
Coordinator, Maryland Writers' Association Creative Nonfiction Critique Group
Stuyvesant `75
100% Realistic Portrayal October 15, 2007
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
As one of the *characters* in this book, I was amazed to read the book and relive the exciting moments that the author portrayed so accurately. Alec Klein did his homework and brought to life the issues that confront all students, teachers, parents, and communities in dealing with pressures of learning in a gifted and talented environment. The book has the passion of a romance novel, the politics of the Village Voice and National Observer, and the tongue and cheek humor of the Onion. It is refreshing and fast paced; the intertwining of events is done in a exhilarating fashion, reminiscent of a Tom Clancy novel. Alec Klein has done the impossible.........he has tackled the issues of gifted education and packaged it into a spellbinding thriller. Go figure, he is another amazing Stuyvesant Alumnus!
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