Another Planet: A Year in the Life of a Suburban High School – Investigative Journalism on the Teen Experience in Post-Columbine America

by Elinor Burkett

In the wake of school shootings across the country, one question haunted America: What is going wrong inside our nation's schools? To find out, award-winning journalist Elinor Burkett spent nine months -- from the opening pep rally to graduation day -- in a suburban Minneapolis high school. She attended classes, hung out with students, listened to parents, and joined teachers on the front lines. She soon discovered that, post-Columbine, fears about loners and misfits, "Smoker's New Year" (a pot holiday), "Zero Tolerance" policies, and school lockdowns have become as much a part of a teen's high school experience as dating and Clearasil. But Burkett goes even deeper and makes some startling conclusions in this poignant exposé of the real problems facing educators, parents, and the children they try to teach.

Genres: Nonfiction, Education, Sociology, Teen, School, Journalism

352 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2001

About the author

Elinor Burkett is an American journalist, author, film producer, and documentary director known for her incisive reporting, scholarly work, and filmmaking. A film she produced, Music by Prudence, won the 2009 Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject). Burkett earned a doctorate in Latin American History from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s in journalism from Columbia University. She taught history at Frostburg State University for thirteen years before transitioning to journalism, contributing to The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, and Harper's Bazaar, and serving as chair of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks Department of Journalism. She has held Fulbright professorships in Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe, where she continues to train journalists. Burkett is the author of numerous books, including A Gospel of Shame, The Gravest Show on Earth, and Golda Meir: A Biography. She has also directed documentaries, including Is It True What They Say About Ann. Burkett divides her time between New York and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, pursuing journalism, filmmaking, and writing.

Reviews

[Cj · Rating 2 out of 5]

I myself attended Prior Lake High and Ellie's interpretations were very off par. The teachers she so bashed were some of the most liked and kind ones. They did their jobs perfectly and many of the portrayals (especially Strege's) are way off kilter. Also many of her stereotypes (like the only black kid in school) were very wrong. My friend's sister was featured in this book and even she agrees that her high school years here were nothing like how Ellie wrote it. She hung out with the crowd that genuinely hated school and never applied themselves, leaving room for disapproval. Not to mention her 'favorite' teacher that had just started no longer works in the district, and not by said teachers choice. She was very unfair in some of her accusations and assumptions, ultimately writing from her own perceptions and opinions rather than fact. It's a good cliche book to read on your spare time, but still very inaccurate and down right wrong on most of the scenarios.

[Uncle Tootie · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

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...

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Honestly, if you've been to high school in the last 10 years, this book is incredibly boring. At least, the first 3 chapters are. That's the most I could read before moving on.

[Richard Koerner · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

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?

[Katy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author, a journalist, spent a year embedded with a "typical" American high school in the wake of Columbine, to figure out what really goes on inside the walls. Especially intriguing because she chose Prior Lake High School in the Twin Cities, where I live, so it had some local appeal.

Really interesting, but while I don't doubt that she genuinely spent a ton of time in the school and getting to know both kids and teachers, she seems to have latched on to some of the more extreme personalities in both camps. Based on her writing, the school seems extremely dysfunctional and filled with apathetic partiers. There have to have been more "average" kids in school, who are just trying hard and doing their best, but one senses that they wouldn't have made as good a story.

[Barb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Depressing look at public schools

[JD Waggy · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Sneha Srinivasan · Rating 3 out of 5]

High school. The first word that comes to mind? Homework. Loads and loads of homework. Assignments based on research in which the handy dandy computer comes in hand. But what else? High school is such a broad topic and there isn't much to writing about it than crude teachers and disciples running sweat down their backs because of ( gasp) a 99%. The author of Another Planet, takes a new twist on high school life without all the excessive drama with boys or the little knot of girls crowded over the bathroom mirrors with different types of makeup. On the contrary, Elinor Burkett focuses on those whose frame of minds are different than most others and opinions of many students. She takes a topic in each chapter that she recognizes in most high schools. One was drugs and tobacco, which there are always several students in each school; no matter the standards, that decide to take up this deterring attitude. She recognizes how each student makes up the student body and doesn't go with the well-known people. She seeks out the hidden answers from those that barely wish to speak.

A plethora of characters are mentioned but only several come back up to the surface again. More than a "storybook" of some student's high school, it is of different changes in different types of people and if those changes meant something significant. Some of the characters, do indeed change later on in the story but most rather stay stuck to their opinion and thoughts and their personality qualify them as such. For example, to avoid spoilers I won't use anything from the book but rather make something up; Sophia Fuzzbuckets was the girl who liked to smoke and chew gum in the teacher's class because she just wanted to get the school year over with. Their personality may not reflect their characterization and etc, but it does show their thoughts and their stand on a topic.

With the pace, she, is jumpy to say the least. At some points, she comes back to discuss what she had talked about in previous chapters and most of the time these are the teachers and their opinions and thoughts as the plot moves forward. However, more often than not, in each chapter a new character is introduced giving them a specific role, minor or major, comes to play with this Prior Lake High School.

Overall, the book was interesting but not something I would read over and over again. The jumpy pace threw me off as well as the overabundance of new characters and their changes. It was hard to keep track of who was who and they just kept coming. The thoughts and opinions of such an exuberant amount of people was starting to give me second doubts of reading the book but it was unevenly balanced with other interesting research facts that i still manage to ponder about. What "Another Planet" it is.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book that had been on my shelf for several years, and I had never gotten around to reading it. However, this is also a book with a quickly expiring timeliness factor, so I finally picked it up for a read. It's a nice book, with a cute look into a suburban, middle-income, white-bred, mid-western community. But that's really all it can claim. There's distressing information, mostly concerning the reduction of actual knowledge taught and the degradation of our youth of America. However, considering the privileges and accessibility of this specific community's denizens, we're not talking about gangs, violence, teen pregnancy, or other school scandals. It seems that the faults within the specific school examined in this book come from the suburban climate itself; they are quickly politicizing themselves to death.

But again, as intriguing as this is, and as unfortunate as this promotion of sloth and ignorance is for our future leaders, it's pretty small potatoes compared to the more inner-city environments. Also, unfortunately, "Another Planet" is not entirely revelatory to those of us who stay updated on the news or have had any recent experience in the American school system. As such, Elinor Burkett's book reads much like reality TV, focusing on major events (first day, prom, graduation, etc.), and specific stock characters (the first teacher, the homecoming king, the troubled intellectual, etc.). For a light read, and for those tacitly interested in the downfall of the iGeneration, this is interesting. For those seeking broader knowledge or looking for problem solving, I'm sure there are other reads available.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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 · Rating 1 out of 5]

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 · Rating 2 out of 5]

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 · Rating 5 out of 5]

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

[Ritarose · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interesting because it's about a local high school, but the author seems to have come in with an agenda - no one appears useful in this book, from the the teachers, to the kids, to the parents.

[Gary Braham · Rating 4 out of 5]

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