When The Washingtonian decided to profile Thomas Jefferson High School in their October issue, it was no surprise to anyone who knows the school, which U.S. News & World Report has ranked America’s top high school for two years running. What was surprising was the cover photo that accompanied the generally positive profile: a picture of four female students under the heading “Why You Should Hate This School.”
This cover was crude, offensive and inaccurate, and The Washingtonian should apologize to the school community.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology is not your average high school. The Northern Virginia magnet school has its own four-hour standardized test for admission (complete with a 55-page test prep packet) and turns down approximately 2,000 applicants per year. Students must maintain a 3.0 GPA to avoid being expelled from the school. It’s easy to see why the school is far more appealing from a journalistic standpoint than most.
The title clearly attempted to be clever: their students are so smart and talented that we can’t help but be jealous. But when splayed across the cover in harsh block letters, the title’s wittiness falls flat. The Washingtonian is telling its readers to hate teenagers for their intelligence, and there’s nothing funny about that. The article deserved a more postive title to honestly and accurately reflect its content.
The irony of this situation is that the actual article on Thomas Jefferson was mostly positive. Detractors and supporters were quoted, and the article praised students’s motivation, school spirit and original ideas. Unfortunately, the cover single-handedly created a negative portrait of the school. People who merely glance at the cover but don’t read the article will walk away assuming the article criticizes Thomas Jefferson. The irresponsible wording of the title ruined the well-written article by turning the focus away from the positive view of the school in the piece.
This title is symptomatic of a greater issue in today’s high schools. Anti-intellectualism is fervently practiced throughout the nation, even to a certain extent in the hallways of Whitman. It’s not “cool” to translate Latin after school, build robots or design science projects that help the environment (all activities that go on at Thomas Jefferson.) This cover adds to the popular hostility towards intelligence in high school, which should never be mocked or discouraged. As it’s often said, 10 years from now, the high school student who couldn’t get enough of AP Physics is probably going to be making more meaningful contributions to society than the prom queen with the 2.1 GPA who was glorified in high school.
The Whitman community is uniquely suited to view this issue. The Washingtonian could have just as easily written a piece about Walt Whitman, the 44th-best high school in the nation according to U.S. News, and ran the same cover. Fortunately, that didn’t happen, and students don’t have to deal with seeing their academic achievements downgraded by a professional magazine. Thomas Jefferson students shouldn’t have to deal with this either, and The Washingtonian owes them an apology.
