Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School by Elinor Burkett

Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School Reviews

• 
  Uncle Tootie

  In 1999, a journalist embedded herself in a typical suburban high school to find out what was really going on between the brick walls. It's a year after Columbine and society is struggling to distinguish teen angst from teen terrorism. The book was extra intriguing to me because I graduated high school in 1998 and the late 90s seem like a distant memory of somebody else's life. As a prospective teacher, this book is a reminder that high school kids are equally fascinating as they are terrifying. It would be interesting to install this text into an 8th or 9th grade classroom to see if and how students would be effected by reading a true story about a high school that reflects their own. Maybe it would help teachers gain more respect in the classroom if students could see them as something other than just grade dispensers. Probably not; nonetheless, a worthwhile and quick read.
• 
  Sara

  Very disturbing take on life in an American high school, made even more interesting to me because my husband is from this town, graduated years back from this same high school, and has relatives in the book. A devastating critique of what our kids graduate NOT knowing.
  
  In a strange aside, author Elinor Burkett's the woman who hijacked a speech at the 2010 Oscars after she and Roger Ross Williams won the award for best documentary (short subject) for "Music By Prudence," which she produced.
  
  See if you remember this awkward acceptance speech moment:
  
  
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv86n...
  
  
  
  http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/03/09/bur...
• 
  Richard Koerner

  I guess that there is an inherent danger when you write a book that is supposed to unearth answers to what goes on in a suburban high school and you try to make it as representative as possible. Unfortunately, my experience as a teacher (and being married to a teacher) in a very affluent high school on the North Shore of Chicago was totally unlike what I read about in this book. Many of the experiences I could relate to, but I guess my biggest complaint is the feeling that the students were not learning. One of the dangers of teaching is that we have a tendency to rate everything according to our own experiences. We often feel that we learned so much more. In some respects, that is true, but you have to take into consideration that times, practices, and needs change. What may seem like they are not learning may well be that they are learning less of a certain concept and more of another. I was also displeased with the way that teachers were 'thrown' into classrooms and pretty much left untended, to do their own thing, and often without direction. I saw a bit of that when I started teaching but the administration was very involved in my preparation and before I knew it, I was a mentor and mentoring new teachers. Also, some of the situations seemed unreal to me. For example, the principal talked to a girl who wanted to do something and he said he would only allow her to do it (change her schedule) was if she got a letter from her employer (Victoria's Secret) that she was totally indispensable to the operations. Of course she did get the letter and she was allowed to get her schedule change. In my experience, that would never have happened. I guess what I am saying here is that there should have been a clearer statement that yes, these things happened at this school, but that they could in no way be totally representative of the reality of the situation.
• 
  Lisa Faye

  An interesting in depth look at a high school in America the year after the Columbine shootings. The author spent a year embedded in a "typical" American high school to see what the culture of high schools in America looks and feels like at that time. If this is a true reflection of a "typical" American high school (which I somehow doubt it is) then it is a bit frightening!
  
  In terms of the writing, the author never really got me into the characters and I had to go back to the list at the front of the book again and again to remember who was who. So that wasn't cool. I also found it hard to trust her - like she wanted to find out that education in the States was bad and so that is what she found.
  
  Overall, an interesting, but not great read. Maybe teachers or people with kids in high schools in the States would find it interesting?
• 
  JJ W.

  Spurred by the backlash after the Columbine shootings about how high schools were managed, Elinor Burkett settles in for a school year to find out what, exactly, was going on. The book is far less about Columbine and shootings and such than it is about the impossible standards asked of students and educators alike and man, was it spot on. I was in high school right around the time this book was written, so much of what Burkett noted was very true to my experience. The frustrating infantilization of students pushed against expecting them to know how to be adults when needed; the demand that teachers fix everything and train students to be champions at everything while giving them no emotional, professional, or financial support; the weird and very skewed visions of parents of what it was like to be in school--Burkett nails the manic nature of school in the late 90s/early 00s.
  
  I give it three stars because, while very true and well-written (it's in a first-person novel style which gives it the feel of an op ed rather than a journalistic deep dive), I had a really hard time latching on to the specific people involved. I don't know whether it was because there were a lot of them or whether I wasn't paying enough attention while I read or what, but I have the feeling that if I didn't have the connection of this being so familiar that I wouldn't have been as appreciative of what it was pointing out. Also, through no fault of its own, the book is pretty dated: the incredible pace of technology has deeply changed a lot of the ways students interact with each other and the world, making some of the rituals described here obsolete. Also, the fact that school shootings have become commonplace horrors in the U.S. while no one does anything about weapon regulation makes the fear after Columbine seem almost quaint and the school described here weirdly idyllic in its comparative safety.
  
  I liked it and I do recommend it because a lot of the issues and dynamics described here are still true in public schools, but I won't be hanging on to it for future reference.
• 
  Allison

  One year in an excellent, suburban Minnesota high school in the immediate post-Columbine era. Why can't American teenagers compete with their peers around the world? Burkett hopes her research can provide some answers.
  You sense that Burkett really knows and understands the people (students and staff) with whom she spent 1999-2000. The writing is engaging. The book is framed as a post-Columbine profile and it is interesting to consider that nearly all the famous school shootings have been in "good" suburban high schools. There is no examination of bullying, ADHD, or any of the other supposed hallmarks of the suburban experience.
  For me, the must-read section of this book is an afterword reflecting on September 11, 2001. In the post 9-11 era, Burkett argues, the structure and content of American high-school education (with its emphasis on values and emotions and effort over rigorous content) is dangerously self-indulgent: "Certainly, we cannot be indifferent to the emotional and moral development of our children. But we've expended so much energy debating how schools should train them to feel, how much patriotism they should learn, how much tolerance they must be taught, how sensitive they should be to our diversity, that we've ignored how terrifyingly little they know. It is knowledge they need."
• 
  Tess Mertens-Johnson

  I graduated from Prior Lake High School in the 1970s. What I can say about this book?
  Looks like things have really improved since the 1970s.
  When I was in HS blatant injustices were swept under the carpet. Many of the teachers participated in student activities that were unethical and illegal. There was no reporting system as they students were told they made it up and they all had each other’s backs.
  This book could have been written about any upper middle class society.
  This book brought more of the caste system out. The difference between that haves and have nots, with a very low emphasis on the have nots. The activities of the upper middle class and popular, with a very low emphasis on the have nots. It highlighted the beautiful and privileged. This has not changed since the 1970s.
• 
  Joyce

  Although a bit dated in reason for being written (the fall after Columbine), it is an interesting look at a year in the life of a typical public suburban high school. The scary part is that there doesn't seem to be a lot of education happening. The smart kids are pretty much learning on their own. Everyone else — teachers and students — seem to be stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare. Many of the students don't see any real reason to learn and openly defy their teachers and this is the behavior of the good kids. The teachers are defensive about all the regulations the state is imposing. The whole thing is pretty frightening.
• 
  Staci Martin

  Read this just before my student teaching....should have run screaming from education after putting it down but no, I "had to make a difference"! Great book to read even if you are not "in" education. Although, I feel that we are all "in" education since in our country everyone is entitled to a public education and "public" should not equate shotty, and insignificant!
• 
  Brenda

  I stopped reading this book about 50 pages into it. I felt the author tried to portray the book as a journalist documenting life in a high school, but it was evident early on that the text was filled with personal opinions and the author's perceptions of what others were thinking rather than their actual thoughts. Disappointed!
• 
  PRINCESS

  Breaking with energy, Burkett's statement is a good measure of high school for those who have been away for a while, confused, unbalanced, and unpredictable, with a group of survivors shine as graduates.
• 
  Greg

  I read this many years ago in college. All I really remember is that I loved it! Very real insight into the lives of high school students.
• 
  Carrie

  education
• 
  Gary Braham

  I wrote a review, and it was a good review, but for whatever reason would not save.
  
  Edit: Of course this one saved no problem