“Most Likely to Succeed” is a documentary film directed by Greg Whiteley, released in 2015. The film explores new perspectives to education including a relatively new approach from High Tech High School in San Diego, California. The school’s focus is heavily weighted on “soft-skills” like confidence, leadership, and group collaboration. While focusing on two Grade 9 classes, the film shows the process of their learning throughout the year. Each class works with two teachers, for example one physics teacher and one humanities teacher. The students would explore both subjects and at the end of their term, create a project to feature in the school’s showcase, open to the students’ families, friends, and community.
This approach fascinated me because this is not something that I had seen or considered before. In theory, the emphasis on entrepreneurship, leadership, confidence, and collaboration in a high school setting is a great idea, but like some of the parents of High Tech High students, I was a bit skeptical. The parents’ main concern is that their children won’t be able to succeed on standardized tests that will secure their way to a post-secondary institution.
In the film, they explain the reasoning behind High Tech High’s approach. Their rationale is that while students in standard secondary schools pass tests and get accepted to universities and colleges, they don’t retain any knowledge from their courses long-term or learn any useful skills for a world outside of school. So, High Tech High aims to teach kids those skills through an in-depth exploration of some subjects, rather than a surface level one of a wide breadth of subjects.
I do agree with their reasoning, but the unknown results fo this experiment made me nervous while watching the film. Ten years ago, when the film was released, High Tech High was still relatively new. So there wasn’t any information on their long-term success rates in the film. As I looked into the current success rate of the program on the High Tech High Website, I saw that 82% of their graduates in 2022 attended college and that 95% of their senior students “indicat[e] readiness for college-level coursework”.
The video above, is one that I found on youtube while exploring High Tech High. It shows a preview into a class at High Tech High creating video games and interactive art pieces inspired by their conversations about propaganda and social movements with their English teacher.
As I reflect more on the glimpse into High Tech High from the documentary and the youtube video, I keep thinking about how cool it would have been to do a project like that when I was in school. Projects like making a mechanism out of gears that represents a theory on the chute of civilizations, or the daunting task of writing and producing your own play on Ancient Greece seem very nerve-racking to me. However, I imagine that the students must feel so proud and accomplished when they present their projects at the showcase.
Even if the students at High Tech High do not follow a traditional school model, I have no doubt that they are learning useful skills for their adult life. I recognize their rationale and I’m curious to see the results of the school after a few more years. Overall, I think it’s great that they are trying something new that will hopefully inspire generations of innovators and leaders.
— Sofia 🎀
