DOMINIC W. MASSARO, editor
University of California, Santa Cruz

Excellence Inhaled

Permissible Advantage?: The Moral Consequences of Elite Schooling
By Alan Peshkin. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2001. 135 pp. Cloth, $39.50; paper, $16.50.

In Permissible Advantage? the late Alan Peshkin extended his studies of American schools to an elite, private institution that he called Edgewood Academy. Located in a suburb in the New Mexico high desert, Edgewood Academy is a college preparatory nonresidential school spanning grades 6 through 12. The school is extraordinarily rich in resources, and the experiences it affords its students are unusual even by private college prep standards. At Edgewood, students and faculty are immersed in a microculture that exalts excellence and pursues it relentlessly.