Education |
Sociology |
Psychology |
Nonfiction |
Summary
Summary
These intertwining narratives "beautifully demonstrate . . . that the people who are excluded and bullied for their offbeat passions and refusal to conform are often the ones who are embraced and lauded for those very qualities in college and beyond" (The New York Times).
In a smart, entertaining, reassuring book that reads like fiction, Alexandra Robbins manages to cross Gossip Girl with Freaks and Geeks and explain the fascinating psychology and science behind popularity and outcasthood. She reveals that the things that set students apart in high school are the things that help them stand out later in life.
Robbins follows seven real people grappling with the uncertainties of high school social life, including:
The Loner, who has withdrawn from classmates since they persuaded her to unwittingly join her own hate club
The Popular Bitch, a cheerleading captain both seduced by and trapped within her clique's perceived prestige
The Nerd, whose differences cause students to laugh at him and his mother to needle him for not being "normal"
The New Girl, determined to stay positive as classmates harass her for her mannerisms and target her because of her race
The Gamer, an underachiever in danger of not graduating, despite his intellect and his yearning to connect with other students
The Weird Girl, who battles discrimination and gossipy politics in school but leads a joyous life outside of it
The Band Geek, who is alternately branded too serious and too emo, yet annually runs for class president
In the middle of the year, Robbins surprises her subjects with a secret challenge -- experiments that force them to change how classmates see them.
Robbins intertwines these narratives -- often triumphant, occasionally heartbreaking, and always captivating -- with essays exploring subjects like the secrets of popularity, being excluded doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, why outsiders succeed, how schools make the social scene worse -- and how to fix it.
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth is not just essential reading for students, teachers, parents, and anyone who deals with teenagers, but for all of us, because at some point in our lives we've all been on the outside looking in.
Author Notes
Alexandra Robbins is on the staff of The New Yorker and has written for numerous magazines and newspapers. A Yale graduate, she lives in the Washington, D.C. area.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Robbins follows her previous book, The Overachievers: The Secret Life of Driven Kids, with this insightful and timely look at the current state of America's teenage wasteland commonly known as "high school." Robbins follows the lives of seven students across the nation with very different and unique personalities-from "the gamer" and "the band geek" to "the popular bitch" and "the new girl"-as well as interviewing hundreds of other students, teachers, and counselors from a range of public, private, urban, rural, technical, college prep, and arts schools to prove what she calls her "Quirk Theory:" that "Many of the differences that cause a student to be excluded in school are the identical traits or real-world skills that others will value, love, respect, or find compelling about that person in adulthood and outside of the school setting." Robbins's keen eye shows us how the eternal adolescent struggle between individuality and inclusion lures many students-and teachers-into a mindless "groupthink" about what is conventionally popular and acceptable behavior. At the same time, she shows how the qualities that set her subjects apart from their classmates are the same qualities that make them stand out in positive ways. She ends with an effective list of tips for parents, teachers, students, and schools on how to support and encourage students who value "original thought and expression." (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Already known for providing readers a new angle on a familiar subjecte.g., college sororities (Pledged, 2004), obsessive students (The Overachievers, 2006)Robbins now applies that same incisive inside scoop to the lives of high-schoolers who feel...different.In schools across the country, thousands of students often feel "trapped, despairing that in today's educational landscape, they either have to conform to the popular crowd's arbitrary standardsforcing them to hide their true selvesor face dismissive treatment that batters relentlessly at their soul." The author introduces what she calls "quirk theory," the idea that outsiders thrive after high school for many of the same reasons that they were misfits in high school. Fully immersing herself in the lives of a wide variety of "outsider" studentsincluding the "band geek," the "artsy indie," the "loner" and the "gamer"Robbins demonstrates the ways in which their "quirk" is a good thing. This likely won't be news for many readers who have long survived high school, but it's a useful reminder to all of us to discover and encourage the quirks that make certain students exceptional. Robbins offers real hope to adolescents who must realize that "it gets better" is far more than wishful thinking.The author has a gift for writing fact like fictionshe reminds us what it was like to be in high school and helps us relive all the anxiety and angstand the students and their stories are thoroughly engaging. The author also includes a helpful appendix, "31 Tips for Students, Parents, Teachers, and Schools."These stories are not just entertaining but important, reminding us to celebrate our quirks and those which we see in others as well.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
In this follow-up to titles such as Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities (2004) and The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids (2006), Robbins once again examines the lives of contemporary young people, focusing this time o. the cafeteria fringe. or teens who don't fit easily into groups. As in her previous works, Robbins doesn't break new ground here, and he. quirk theor. is familiar from both academic studies and age-old parental consolation. The differences that cause a student to be excluded in school are the identical traits or real-world skills that others will value, love, respect, or find compelling about that person in adulthood and outside of the school setting. This time, though, Robbins interacts directly with her subjects, following individual teens (and one young teacher) through an academic year, issuing challenges to each to stretch beyond his or her role a. the loner. th. band geek. and so on. Grouped loosely into chronological chapters, the personal stories alternate with sections with titles such a. Why School Uniforms Don't Erase Clique. an. Why Groups Don't Get Along. which discuss research about teen physiology, psychology, and group dynamics. While the mix creates a sometimes repetitive, unfocused whole and Robbins' thesis feels almost like common knowledge, the individuals' stories she shares are both sobering and inspiring, and readers will come away with a deeper appreciation for individuality and the courage and resilience it takes to survive the current high-school jungle. A final resource section offers valuable tips for both teachers and parents to confront their own biases about popularity and help nurture creative, confident teens.--Engberg, Gillia. Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
FOR the modern adult, nothing signifies self-confidence, street credibility and authenticity like one simple confession: "I was such a nerd in high school." (Emphasize "such" with a dramatic sigh. Then roll your eyes.) It's pretty easy now to gaze upon the past with rose-colored - and thick-framed - glasses. It's popular to have been unpopular. A new world order has unfolded, with nerds ascendant. But someone forgot to post the memo in high school cafeterias and locker rooms across America, where the shift has barely dented teenagers' rigid social hierarchies. The results are disjunctive: while adolescent geekiness is something to brag about in hindsight, it's much harder to embrace when you're living through it, day after day, in the crucible of high school. As Alexandra Robbins writes in "The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth," "there have been surprisingly few trickle-down effects from the adult Age of the Nerd to the student world." Bullying and exclusion are rampant. Pressure is building in schools to standardize not just testing, but students as well. When students buckle under that weight, tragedies happen (the Columbine shootings; the recent spate of suicides among gay teenagers). Instead of inspiring redoubled efforts for tolerance and inclusion, such outcomes may narrow social norms even further, making classmates and teachers hyperaware of students who are "different." Robbins's mission is noble. She wants to push back against the marginalization of nonconformists, whom she calls the "cafeteria fringe." She writes, "It is unacceptable that the system we rely on to develop children into well-adjusted, learned, cultured adults allows drones to dominate and increasingly devalues freethinkers." Her fundamental argument is simple. Many of the traits that correlate with "outsider" status among high school students - originality, self-awareness, courage, resilience, integrity and passion - reveal themselves as assets later in life. (If you're geeky enough to know the definition of "schadenfreude" as an underclassman, you'll probably get to experience that very feeling at a high school reunion one day.) The teen-to-adult turnabout theme isn't particularly novel. One of its latest incarnations is a forthcoming Warner Brothers film, "Revenge of the Jocks," about middle-aged former athletes struggling under the yoke of the nerds, their onetime victims. Robbins articulates the concept crisply, however. She also gives a name to the phenomenon that points to the geeks' eventual triumph: "quirk theory." (As coinages go, this phrase and "cafeteria fringe" feel a bit spurious; both plant the author's flag in old ideas rather than elucidating truly new ones.) Her narrative follows seven young "outsiders" at different high schools over the course of a year. They are defined by labels that could be the major arcana in a tarot deck of awkwardness: the Band Geek, the New Girl, the Loner, the Gamer, the Nerd; the group also includes a popular girl and a young lesbian teacher, whose perspectives are an interesting addition, even if their inclusion feels somewhat maladroit. (Robbins outlines a clear premise for her project - introducing readers to "students who are overlooked, disparaged or completely dismissed" - so it's a bit whiplash-inducing when she changes the rules to include these two.) Her characters transmit often heart-rending dispatches from the front lines of adolescence. Mark, an alienated gamer nicknamed Blue, ditches his schoolwork to build a wildly successful club for video game players, only to see his efforts incinerated by ill-informed school administrators and dismissive peers. Danielle, a loner and former mascot of her classmates' "I Hate Danielle Club," ends up on her school's summer reading committee, where she tries, and fails, to sell teachers on books more challenging than "Twilight." Eli, a nerd, is worn down by pleas from his haranguing mother to be more "normal." He can't wait to escape to a college far, far away. Educators aren't immune to all the social ugliness, either. Regan, a free-spirited teacher who is well loved by her students, is tormented by cliquish colleagues who bad-mouth her and thwart her plans to form a gay-straight alliance. She's finally driven to abandon the public school system altogether. It's disturbing to see teachers exhibiting the same nasty, damaging habits that are so endemic among high school students. The frame of "Geeks" is similar to that of Robbins's 2006 book "The Overachievers," which profiles students facing precollege pressure. Both books follow a handful of main characters, interlacing their narratives with interviews from additional students and teachers, and providing nuggets of insight from social science and behavioral research. Each ends with a set of prescriptions, advice for creating healthier mental environments. In "Geeks," this information is remarkably well organized, but it still feels dizzying. At times the characters are tough to track, since their relationships unfold across the social ecosystems at seven different schools. (The central characters in "The Overachievers" were all in one place, Robbins's alma mater in Bethesda, Md.) Robbins's reporting here seems to be largely secondhand. She writes scenes full of dialogue and detail that could only have been recounted to her by the students themselves. Yet she tells these stories omnisciently, as if she had witnessed each moment. Would one of Mark's tormenters be self-aware enough to say, "Blue, I think I'm going to stop making fun of you"? Perhaps. But readers can't know for sure. Even when sources mean well, self-reporting carries the risk of bias. The microscope of adolescence also inflicts perceptual distortions. Robbins acknowledges as much, writing, "In the minds of their peers, too often students become caricatures of themselves." But it's not clear whether she has corroborated her characters' recollections with accounts from the other people involved, and nowhere does she pull back the veil to explain her story-building process. It's impossible to tell what will happen to the main characters of "Geeks." Will they inherit the earth, or just a lump of coal? We can hope for the best, of course, but this isn't a longitudinal study. To close this gap, Robbins relies primarily on accounts from celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie and Ryan Seacrest, who have told Us magazine, People and other media outlets what outcasts they were in high school. (For the record, it's just as easy to find celebrities who used to be cheerleaders, including Halle Berry, Paula Abdul, Sandra Bullock, Jamie Lee Curtis and Madonna - not to mention Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.) Holding up celebrities as templates for success seems to reinforce the same "magazine-celebrity-worshipping, creativity-stifling society" that Robbins rightly derides in her conclusion. None of this, however, dampens the urgency of her broader message. "Adults tell students that it gets better, that the world changes after school, that being 'different' will pay off sometime after graduation," she writes. "But no one explains to them why." Beyond the bromides, she's dead on: teenagers need to hear that adolescence ends. And more than that, they need to believe it. Anthony Edwards, left, and Robert Carradine in "Revenge of the Nerds" (1984). Robbins followed 'outsiders' at different schools for over a year: the Band Geek, the Loner, the Gamer, the Nerd. Jessica Bruder teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is the author of "Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man."
Library Journal Review
High school is perhaps one of the toughest social environments American teenagers experience. A student can be considered an outcast for the slightest deviation from the norm set by popular kids, parents, and even teachers. Robbins (The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids) here explores how and why students divide one another into groups. She considers the different groups to which students are assigned by their peers and, shockingly, by teachers and how these labels affect them, and she issues challenges to the seven main subjects of the book (six students and one teacher) to get them out of their comfort zones, out of the "cafeteria fringe," and on to meaningful and rewarding experiences. Robbins follows her subjects for a school year, tracks their progress with her challenges, and shows how the very traits that marginalize students in high school often lead to success after graduation. VERDICT An excellent overview of the complex social environment of high school, told in an accessible and often humorous and touching manner. High school students as well as adults, especially those who are or were part of the "cafeteria fringe," will enjoy this book. Very highly recommended.-Mark Bay, Univ. of the Cumberlands Lib., Williamsburg, KY (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.