The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth by Alexandra Robbins

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth by Alexandra Robbins
Published by Hyperion

Alexandra Robbins follows seven high school students in seven different cities for one year in order to examine the psychology behind popularity. She shows how the characteristics that make people outcasts in high school are the exact same characteristics that cause them to be successful and interesting later in life. Halfway through the year, she surprises each student with a challenge that will force them to go outside of their comfort zones and challenge the status quo of their schools. Throughout the book, Robbins deftly weaves the narratives of these students with essays exploring many of the issues they deal with.

THIS is the type of nonfiction I go crazy for. I absolutely love these kinds of books, exploring the psychology or sociology of a particular issue, especially one I personally care about. In high school, I wasn’t an outcast by any means but I certainly wasn’t “popular” either. So I totally get how bullying and that type of behavior are serious problems in our schools, and Robbins not only goes in detail about how this affects high school students, but also gives actual solutions that parents, students, and schools can put into place.

Just as in Robbins’ two previous books (The Overachievers and Pledged – both of which I enjoyed tremendously) she does a fantastic job in this book balancing the stories from the people she’s following with facts and essays to prove the point she’s making. As a result, the book is extremely easy to read, not heavy at all. The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth would be a great choice for those who don’t typically read nonfiction for that reason. I have to say, also, that these seven people she followed made their way into my heart. Just like when reading a novel, I cared about these characters and truly hoped that things would work out in their favor – only they aren’t characters, they are real people, and that makes caring about them even more emotional. I connected to these students in a way that is very hard to do with nonfiction.

I have to say that Robbins makes some very poignant observations and important findings in this book. I would have to agree with her initial belief that many of the most successful and interesting people in the world today were outcasts in high school. I appreciate the fact that she explored the why behind this but also that she provided some ways for parents, students, and schools to fix this. Nobody should feel as horrible about themselves as some of these students did, and while parents can certainly play a part in remedying this, schools have a lot of power to fix this too. For that reason, I think The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is an important book for parents and educators to read. I would even go so far as to say that every person who works in a high school should pick up this book.

The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is an incredibly readable, interesting, and most of all important book that I highly recommend. Alexandra Robbins is truly fantastic at what she does and with this book she has impressed me once again.

College Girl by Patricia Weitz

Title:  College Girl

Author:  Patricia Weitz

Release date:  December 6, 2008

Publisher:  Riverhead Trade

Pages:  336

Genre:  Fiction

Source:  Publisher

Natalie Bloom is an extremely intelligent twenty-year-old who comes from a working-class family, and is the first in her family of seven kids to attend college.  Because of her lack of confidence in herself, her abilities, and her right to be at UConn, she spends 90% of her time studying and has few friends and even fewer boyfriends.  When she meets the gorgeous and super-smart Patrick, and discovers he actually likes her, she finds herself falling for him and cannot figure out a way to stop.  Her infatuation with Patrick combined with her inexperience with relationships causes her grades to slip, her friendships to dwindle, and what little self-esteem she has plummet.  As their relationship spirals from not good to just about as horrific as it can get, Natalie must gain some confidence in herself or she is in danger of losing herself completely.

I’m not sure what I was expecting when I picked up College Girl, but I have to say that it surprised me, in a good way.  The novel is told in first person point of view, and I found the voice to be so authentic.  I honestly forgot for a few moments that I was reading a novel and not a memoir, as I felt as though Natalie was talking to me.  She really came across as someone I knew, someone I understood, and I saw a lot of myself in her as well.

Everything about Natalie’s relationship with Patrick infuriated me.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve been involved in a similar situation myself, but it made me so very angry how Patrick treated her because I felt for her so deeply.  It broke my heart to see how dysfunctional their relationship was – basically, she loved him and he took advantage of her.  In every way you can imagine.  Nothing I can say about this part of the book will adequately describe how upset Patrick’s actions made me.  Which I suppose is the mark of a good book, that it made me feel this intensely about the situation.

Besides Natalie’s relationship with Patrick, I have to say that I really did like the book.  I literally flew through it – reading it in just a couple of sittings.  I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Natalie’s story – something about her personality really resonated with me, and I couldn’t help but root for her and hope things would turn out well for her in the end.  I just really felt for her, as no one in her life seemed to understand her, especially her own family.  It made me sad that she was so different from her own family – she didn’t even have close relationships with them, let alone the other people in her life.  But she really blossomed over the course of the novel, really came into her own, and I loved reading about that journey she went on.

I really enjoyed College Girl and would highly recommend the novel for those who enjoy coming of age type stories.

Review – Savage Inequalities

Savage Inequalities:  Children in America’s Schools – Jonathan Kozol

published: 1991, 233 pages

From Kirkus Reviews -

Kozol again turns a floodlight on a dark corner of the nation’s soul, the classrooms of the minority poor. Here, Kozol returns to the public schools where he began a career as spokesman for the powerless and conscience of the privileged 25 years ago (Death at an Early Age). Reports of schools in black and Hispanic communities from New York to California– where not only books, crayons, and lab equipment but also toilet paper are rationed–are painful to read. School buildings turn into swamps when it rains or must be closed (or, worse yet, are kept open) when sewage backs up into kitchens and cafeterias. A school in the South Bronx is set up in a windowless skating rink next to a mortuary, with class sizes up to 35, lunch in three shifts, a library of 700 books, and no playground. The school population is 90-percent black and Hispanic. Yet it is only a few minutes north to a more affluent part of the Bronx and a public school surrounded by flowering trees, two playing fields, and a playground, with a planetarium and an 8,000-book library. There, the population is overwhelmingly white and Asian. More horrifying stories follow–but it’s Kozol’s intention to horrify, in order to make the point that these vast disparities in quality of education are caused by racism. Nearly 40 years after Brown v. Board of Education, many US schools are still separate but no longer even remotely equal. Critics will argue that these sad case histories are isolated or rare and are situated in communities whose economies have collapsed. Partly true, but Kozol’s point is that justice and decency call for sharing resources in times of trouble, not abandoning children (and their teachers) to degradation and ignorance. A powerful appeal to save children by redistributing the wealth. It will cause angry, but perhaps fruitful, debate.

My thoughts -

First of all, I realize this book is slightly dated, in that it was published 17 years ago.  The unfortunate thing is that I don’t believe much has changed since Kozol wrote it… if there have been major changes, he wouldn’t have found it necessary to write his second book, Shame of the Nation, or continue to push for equal-opportunity education like he is still doing today.  So, although this book was researched and written awhile ago, I do believe it is still relevant for discussion today.

This book is sad.  Plain and simple, it made me very sad to read about the way these kids have to “learn” every single day.  Children who live in poverty every single day of their lives, who struggle just to get a decent meal and a good night’s sleep, who cannot count on safety, a clean environment, or even love from their families, should absolutely, 100% have one place they can call their sanctuary – their school.  Unfortunately, this book showed that is simply not the case.  Children who live in these horrifying conditions of dire poverty are going to “schools” (and I say that loosely because some of the schools Kozol describes simply are not places to learn) that are decrepit, dirty, disgusting, with not enough space, not enough teachers, not enough books, no computers, and sometimes not even enough working toilets.  There isn’t another way to describe this book other than horrifying.  Pure and simple, we should not be allowing any child to spend a minute in these conditions, let alone every day for eight hours a day.  This book is heartbreaking to read, but it needs to be read, because I truly do not think that conditions have changed since the book was published in 1991.  This is something that, as a country, we need to improve, big time.  Our future literally depends on it.

Review – The Overachievers

The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids  by Alexandra Robbins

From the jacket flap -

High school isn’t what it used to be.  With record numbers of students competing fiercely to get into college, schools are no longer primarily places of learning.  They’re dog-eat-dog battlegrounds in which kids must set aside interests and passions in order to strategize over how to game the system.  In this increasingly stressful environment, kids are defined not by their character or hunger for knowledge, but by often arbitrary scores and statistics.

In The Overachievers, journalist Alexandra Robbins delivers a poignant, funny, riveting narrative that explores how our high-stakes educational culture has spiraled out of control.  During the year of her ten-year reunion, Robbins returns to her high school, where she follows students including:

• Julie, a track and academic star who is terrified she’s making the wrong choices,
• “AP” Frank, who grapples with horrifying parental pressures to succeed,
• Taylor, a soccer and lacrosse captain whose ambition threatens her popular-girl status,
• Sam, who worries his years of overachieving will be wasted if he doesn’t attend a name-brand college,
• Audrey, who struggles with perfectionism, and
• The Stealth Overachiever, a mystery junior who flies under the radar.

Robbins tackles hard-hitting issues such as the student and teacher cheating epidemic, over testing, sports rage, the black market for study drugs, and a college admissions process so cutthroat that some students are driven to depression and suicide because of a B.  Even the earliest years of schooling have become insanely competitive, as Robbins learned when she gained unprecedented access into the inner workings of a prestigious Manhattan kindergarten admissions office.

A compelling mix of fast-paced storytelling and engrossing investigative journalism, The Overachievers aims both to calm the admissions frenzy and to expose its escalating dangers.

My thoughts -

There is a LOT of truth to the issues presented in a book, and honestly, I’m glad someone decided to write about this stuff.  I experienced much of these issues myself while in high school; I did not go to an elite private school like the kids in this book, but I did go to a pretty tough public high school in a nice neighborhood where many students went on to really great, Ivy-type colleges.  I can’t say that I bought into the pressure nearly as much as most of these kids did, but I knew many students that did.  I also knew many of those students felt intense pressure from themselves, and also from their parents, to be perfect and successful in every single class and activity they did.  Robbins did some really great research for this book, she told the story in an almost novel-like way, and she really got to the heart of what most of these kids were going through.  All while exposing something that I believe will really cripple students once they get out into the “real world” and realize that perfection simply doesn’t exist.

So overall, an excellent book, and one I definitely think every parent should read.  No matter how old your kids are, either they’ll go to high school one day, or they’ve already been there, and either way, this book helps to understand a little bit better the kinds of pressures teens face on a daily basis.

The one problem I do have with this book is there’s virtually no discussion of class whatsoever.  There’s a good reason I didn’t get as crazy about grades and activities and getting into the perfect college in high school as some of my peers did:  I simply could not afford to.  I had to work 30+ hours a week in HS just to pay for everyday expenses, and I knew from day one that I was going to be paying for my college education myself, which meant a state school for sure, no matter what my grades and SAT scores said about me.  Furthermore, I wasn’t able to prep for the rat race in the years leading up to HS like other kids; no gymnastics classes, violin lessons, soccer practice, or math tutors for me – there simply wasn’t any money for extra stuff like that.  A key point that Robbins missed is what an incredible disadvantage there is for kids with lower socioeconomic status.  If the kids in this book, who had every advantage in the world, were terrified of not getting into the right college, and spent half their lives worrying and competing their brains out, where does that leave the kids like me, who simply do not have the time or money to compete in this way?  This is a critical discussion that I think would really have improved Robbins’ arguments, and I’m disappointed that she missed it.

Even so, I enjoyed the book, and highly recommend it, especially for those of you with children.

8 stars.

 

Pledged

Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities by Alexandra Robbin

Summary: Despite the provocative subtitle, most of the information gathered by the author as she went undercover as a sorority girl is nothing especially new. After all, everyone knows sororities can be exclusive, conformist, and superficial organizations. But Robbins’ account of life inside the sorority house still makes for fascinating reading. Following four sorority sisters through their first year in the house, a world of sex, drugs, eating disorders, and insecurity is revealed. One wonders, though, if these experiences are that different from the experiences of those students not affiliated with Greek societies. What is arguably different, though, is the extreme pressure brought to bear on these young women to repress their own natural instincts, desires, and inclinations in order to fit in with an amazingly shallow and often unworthy group of friends. Where the author really scores is in her analysis of why otherwise intelligent and sensitive women would sacrifice their independence, and often self-respect, for the sake of an artificially engineered secret society.

My thoughts:

This book definitely hooked me from the beginning. Robbins followed four girls, from two different sororities at two different campuses, through the course of an entire year – the girls’ first full year as sorority sisters in their prospective sororities. The idea of being in a sorority has never interested me personally – I just don’t connect with the idea of complete exclusivity, especially when you are required to live, eat, take classes, and party with only the girls who are your “sisters”. Add that to the fact that I’ve never exactly been the “cool” kid, and it’s pretty obvious why I wouldn’t feel like I’d belong in this type of group. Having said that, this first hand account of what really goes on in sororities was absolutely fascinating to me. The weird thing was, even with all the negative stuff (most of which I already knew or could have assumed anyway) Robbins “exposed”, I found myself sort of wishing I had thought about rushing when some of the better things about sororities were talked about in the book. Some of the girls were just so in love with their sisters and so close to all the girls in the house that it made me feel like it might be fun to have 150 girls who would do anything for me. But obviously, the things about sororities that make them so foreign and weird to me came to light and I quickly realized how ridiculous it would be for me to have even thought about that when I was in college.

Robbins did a really good job, in the last chapter, of being pretty fair-minded and non judgmental in her analysis of her year of observation. She made some really good points about the potential benefits of sororities to college women, but then spent the majority of her analysis on everything that sororities need to do to clean up the lifestyle and the idea of the organization as a whole. Overall it was a very interesting read, especially if you have had little to no exposure to sorority life like myself.