The Darnell Cookman School in Jacksonville, Florida, is the first medically-focused magnet high school in the country. The sixth through twelfth grade school was already a magnet school when it started its medical program in 2007. Now it promises to turn out kids who are so far ahead of the pre-med game that university curriculum may have to be shifted to accommodate them.
As Tony Hansberry, 15, told ABC News: “I’ve had four years of medicine already. We [Darnell Cookman students] will be entering medical school with a vast knowledge that no other freshman will have. They’ll have to change the curriculum to fit us in,” he says.
Even for Darnell Cookman, Tony is special. For his high school science project he developed a simpler way to stitch up patients after a hysterectomy that could reduce possible complications. His technique has since been used at least once by a certified gynecologist and, on Thursday, the tenth-grader demonstrated the procedure on a mannequin for doctors at Northside Hospital in Atlanta.
Hansberry is a part of what will be the first graduating class of the Darnell Cook medical program, but success seems to be in the air for the school, and the program. The question of whether this much work, and this much stress, should be put on children as young as sixth grade hasn’t been forgotten.
Carolyn Landis, psychologist and assistant professor of pediatrics at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, tells ABC News that it’s all about balance:
“You have to have your time to get through the developmental tasks of childhood, and part of that is unstructured time spent with peers. They’re not mini-adults and I think it’s up to parents and administrators to make sure that kids are achieving a balance between that work load and free time with same-aged peers.”
