"17 and all burned out": Really? (#191, Topic E)

U.S. News & World Report, 8/7/06, under a headline shown as the title of this entry, carries an interview with the authoress of The Overachievers (2006), a Yale graduate out of Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda. Since this is the same combination our daughter has experienced, the story has more than passing interest to me. In 1972, on leave from the University of Washington to accept a position as an Associate Director of the Cost Accounting Standards Board, a government agency, I learned that the best high school in this area was/is Whitman. We decided to look for housing in that school district, even though I did not expect either our son (in junior high) or our daughter (in elementary school) to attend Whitman during my planned 2-year leave of absence. Finding a house for rent near Whitman was impossible -- there were simply no listings. Perforce, we bought a house a block and half from Whitman, with our son going to Pyle Junior High and our daughter to Whittier Woods Elementary, both within walking distance from our house. As CASB wanted me to remain after 2 years, I resigned my professorship to remain in Washington. That we bought, instead of rented, a house saved us not only a lot of headache (no need to find permanent housing) but also, in time, a handsome capital gain -- for all these, we must thank Whitman: Whitman forced us to buy, and Whitman allowed us to profit from it. (Jim Cramer, in his daily "Mad Money" TV program, talks about the best of the breed. In schooling, Whitman is clearly it.) Whitman, when our children were students, had a dedicated principal, Dr. Marcos. There were many open houses, allowing parents to visit their children's classes. And there were PTA meetings, which we attended with regularity. Whitman parents seemed to take a keen interest in their children's schooling; in one instance, I saw Don Rumsfeld, a cabinet member then as now, sitting awkwardly in a small chair intended for students. Was/is Whitman as competitive as our authoress describes it? -- she said: "Education is no longer about a learning experience; it's a game of Survivor where kids are strategizing to work against each other and beat the system" (emphasis original). I don't think so. Our children's fellow students we met were all friendly and courteous. Were/are they drinkers? That is news to me, since the school had/has strict rules. In any case, since both my wife and I are teetotallers, our children did not seem to deviate from the example we set. Did/do they have a lot of family pressure? We certainly did not. We were confident that our children are not only college material, but postgraduate material as well (after Whitman, our son went to another Ivy League school, Penn; they both earned MBA from Penn's Wharton school, voted as the world's best business school). When in school, we wanted them to focus on studying and on related extracurricular activities. Except for serving as library pages in Montgomery County library system on occasional Saturdays, we did not want them to divert their attention and energy to money-making activities. Perhaps, with the passage of time, things have changed? I doubt it.