Adolescent willing and desiring is pervasive in mainstream American culture. The result is that America's youth is drowning in itself, in the immaturity, impulsiveness, and pastlessness of our dominant culture. Listening to the voices of youth caught in this crisis, and drawing from the observations of thinkers such as Nietzsche, Erikson, Baldwin, and West, this essay turns to the part that schools should play in the developmental adolescent world. Schools cannot reform our society, but schools can make a difference in the lives of youth. And for some teenagers, it is only in a good school that they will find some semblance of sound mooring during their typically troubled adolescence in our atypically troubled America.