What is it about High School?

Review by Mike Gange

High School Confidential: Secrets of an Undercover Student

by Jeremy Iversen

Atria Books (2006), 368 pages, $25 (US) $34.50 (CAN)

It is a rare thing to find a book or a movie that allows high school students to be completely candid and express themselves in their own voice.  In the 1980’s, filmmaker John Hughes revealed teen’s realistic and believable high school experiences in movies such as Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. However, even Hughes’ top grossing movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off falls short in plausibility because the main character is a bit too cheeky and worldly wise for a 17-year old, and could hardly be considered to speak for a generation.   

The task, it seems, is just as hard in print. There are very few authors whose work has allowed the rawness and complexity of a teen generation to come through without it being filtered by an adult voice. Cameron Crowe, who went undercover for a term at a San Diego high school, captured the primitiveness of teens in his expose Fast Times in Ridgemont High in 1981. (And yes, the book is better than the movie.) Bob Greene, who retrieved his high school diaries on a return trip to his parents’ home in Ohio, showed the poignancy and earnestness of teens when he published Be True To Your School, about growing up in the 1960’s.

Now we can add to that list Jeremy Iversen’s High School Confidential: Secrets of an Undercover Student, which bluntly captures the rawness and intensity of what high school teens are doing, saying and feeling, without sifting his findings through an adult filter of morals and principles. Iversen’s experience describes a single California high school, but it likely represents the experiences of a whole generation of North American teens. 

As a 24-year old university graduate, the young-looking Iversen somehow managed to convince a southern California high school administration to let him attend for a semester, where he could pose as a transfer student for his research. He attended classes, did assignments, got detentions, and went to dances and parties with the students. Only the principal knew that he was not who his student ID card said. As a tribute to filmmaker John Hughes, Iversen adopted the name Jeremy Hughes for his research.

As Iversen/Hughes gets to witness events in the daily lives of the students, he describes them, without colouring his observations from an adult viewpoint. However, he often extrapolates from a specific event to a national trend by adding footnotes that shed light on the incident.  For example, one girl’s sexual proclivities at a house party are mentioned in the storyline, and Iversen footnotes a study showing that 66% of 17-year-old girls are likely to have had sex with multiple partners.

Iversen’s findings are very disturbing. He documents students going to parties and consuming vast quantities of alcohol and illegal drugs. Grade 9 girls are often sexual toys for boys in older grades. Athletes on high school teams easily acquire performance-enhancing steroids. Cheating on tests and activities is rampant; one method is to use the ubiquitous cell phone to send the correct answer via a text message to a friend who might be sitting in the same class. Fights are fairly common, and bullying, intimidation and cruelty are regular facts of life.

The school system gets a scathing indictment too. Iversen reports that many teachers can’t teach, or won’t teach and prefer to show videos to their classes, pretending they are somehow related to the lesson. Some teachers want students to be their buddies, while others take such a hard line that students feel intimidated and unwelcome. The school administration is painted as being uncaring and more concerned about meeting Department of Education outcomes than in helping students to acquire an education.

Iversen’s work is troubling, but not because of the lost innocence of youth, nor because no one seems to be crusading for a change. The real concern is this: if this is California, can the rest of us be far behind?  Those teen voices need to be heard, and their parents’ generation better be prepared to listen.