I was prepared to dislike The Class . Andy Bramante, high school science teacher extraordinaire in Greenwich, CT, accepts four dozen students a year into his research class. They enter a dozen different science fairs and academic competitions, bringing home tens of thousands in prize money. They win admission to America’s most elite colleges. Along the way, they also go to prom. It’s not that I don’t like Greenwich, despite its reputation for snooty rich people. It’s not that I dislike elite universities; holding degrees from two of the top institutions in the United States, that would just be hypocrisy on my part. It’s not that I begrudge the students and the school the prize money. It’s that I hate the competification of everything. At some point in the twentieth century, schools took a cue from sports. If the opportunity to compete made student athletes do their best, why not turn all academic subjects into competitions as well? My high school years coincided with that