Many of the posts have to do with the expectations of business, society, etc. Maybe we parents have something to do with it too.<p>I should be happy. I'm educated, have interesting and rewarding work to do, have a roof over my head, and get to play music on the side. I've got two great kids, who are both smarter than me. What's wrong with that? Why should I be neurotic about success? Why should push myself and my kids harder than I was pushed? And make no mistake, I was pushed.<p>Because I can see that my class -- the middle class -- is vanishing, so the expectations of my generation are no longer valid. Get an OK degree in <i>something worthwhile</i> and work hard. Gone. I literally followed exactly the same education and career path as my father. That's gone.<p>We don't know what the future expectations will be, so we aim as high as possible. I don't know if this is a good thing, but it seems like what's happening. Not to mention, I grew up in a family culture that held education to be one of the highest values, so we were inclined to be demanding about education even before all hell broke loose.<p>Another thing I've noticed is that the school curriculum is more intensive and consuming, but not necessarily more advanced. My kids are ahead of where I was at the same age, in terms of simplistic milestones like Algebra. They have perfect GPA's. I sure as hell didn't. But the curriculum is more superficial and more based on drill work, worksheets, and computer busywork. They write more papers. That's good. Their papers are written to fill out a thing called a <i>rubric</i>, which is a glorified worksheet. That's bad. I recently found a copy of my 12th grade public school math textbook. More than half of the problems are proofs. Today there are no proofs. The proliferation of homework merely gives the <i>illusion</i> of a rigorous curriculum, and robs kids of the time that they could spend learning interesting things or just having fun. I learned things like programming and electronics while in high school, <i>during the time when I was not doing homework.</i><p></rant>
<i>Expectations surrounding education have spun out of control. On top of a seven-hour school day, our kids march through hours of nightly homework, daily sports practices and band rehearsals, and weekend-consuming assignments and tournaments. Each activity is seen as a step on the ladder to a top college, an enviable job and a successful life.</i><p>Small-print: Successful life not guaranteed. Neither is happiness but we didn't specifically mention that.<p>For me the depression stemmed from existential nihilism paired with a lack of control of what I had to participate in. It taught me, once I was fully in control of my own time and energy, to be careful with who I spent time with and what I was doing with my time. Not in the <i>Get-Shit-Done</i> sense, more in the <i>Will This Shit Affect My Zen-State</i>. Often the answer is <i>Yes</i> so instead I play games, drink beer, read, hang out with my partner and friends and occasionally make cool things.<p>I won't be remembered in 200 years, few people will, but at least my time was mine.
I can't help but feel like this is the inevitable conclusion for a society that's obsessed with working and financial success. It could be an interesting premise to explore.<p>When a number of employers and the government don't value ensuring a healthy work/life balance, or even employee's health, how do you keep that same behavior out of the minds of people running school systems and classrooms? How do you ensure you create a school environment where children and adolescents don't experience burn out when the working world they are prepped for embraces and/or encourages it?<p>It seems to me that the more we ask employees to work long hours or in crunch mode, the more we're asking our children to do the same... just indirectly.
Based on experiences with highschool reunions and with hard-drug dealers, I feel like children whose lives are "optimized for success" often end up pissing away their "potential," while the second-tier/nice-but-dull children end up having personally fulfilling, materially successful lives. Probably this observation reflects nothing more than a bunch of named fallacies.
It is not just the drive for success; it is the entire culture in general. The system is built to reduce happiness, because a happy and content person has less impetus to contribute to the economy. This is actually very intentional; see for example Alan Greenspan's speech to Congress: when he was questioned about job insecurity among the population, he replied that it was a good thing because it made people work harder.<p>On the other hand, the ideal person for the economy (on average, forgetting outliers like inventors) is a psychopath with a penchant for conspicuous consumption. Such a person is geographically mobile, able to dedicate his life to attaining wealth and power, and is also incapable of happiness. The normal among us, unfortunately, have to try live up to that ideal. Therefore, you see people spending very little time with their families, trying to earn more and more just to satisfy their need to consume. That is stressful! This is a form of mental sickness.<p>YES. The system we live in is sick.
Well, gee, I don't know! What part of "sit in this room for 8 hours a day until we cut the umbilical cord, then get a job and contribute to society so that you can afford to live and maybe retire one day. because otherwise you are human garbage." sounds like it supports mental health? How many people will quickly blame social media, or <i>adults paying too much attention to children's emotional needs</i> for ruining our children when it's our toxic social structures that are doing it?<p>Oh, oh! I know. These kids are just <i>too coddled</i> these days. If they would just grow <i>thicker skin</i> they wouldn't be so <i>severely depressed and constantly anxious</i>. It's not as if what ails society hurts the most vulnerable and malleable of us first and most.<p>The way society treats children like raw materials pushed through a factory until they can be extruded as adults is horrifying.
I've been reading these sorts of articles for nearly 10 or 11 years now, and it's always been from the same people - the NBC, NPR, NYTimes reading upper-middle class LAC graduates who send their kids to top universities. These sorts of attitudes were unheard of when I was in middle and elementary school, and existed but shunned in my high school. Granted, I did not go to the most competitive high school in the state, but I do often wonder how well these sorts of articles actually translate to the vast majority of students and families who go to places like NC State, where you do not need any real extracurricular involvement to get in.
The word "Asian" does not appear in the article.<p>The subtext is that the elite is concerned that traditional selection measures like grades & test scores have become totally game-able via a combination of sheer hourly input & collusion / cheating amongst certain subpopulations. This causes their kids to be outcompeted for very limited slots at elite institutions (even more limited due to massive subsidies to push people into the higher ed system, general population growth, and a desire to limit enrolment to preserve the social capital benefits of truly elite institutions).<p>Naturally there is pressure for those measures to be changed. Whether their characterisation of what's happening is correct is debatable, but that's where a good amount the pressure comes from.
I'm late to the discussion, but my kids go/went to Irvington.<p>What the article does not mention, which I feel is material to the content, is that 70% of the students at Irvington are Asian, and most of those have immigrant parents. The majority of those parents work in technical fields and have advanced degrees in science and technology. This is material in my opinion, because the demographics of Irvington do not represent the demographics of the US, which readers may not realize.
Notions of "success" often include no consideration whatsoever of happiness or general contentment with life.<p>We moved to one of the top ISDs in Texas years ago, ended up pulling our kids out and home-schooling. It was a hyper competitive, near-toxic environment. No thanks.<p>I have found the recipe for well-being to be pretty simple: good health, work I enjoy, good relationships, community, time to be quiet. Don't need much else, imo.
I wonder if this is as causal as people might think.<p>The Scandinavian countries are known for their extremely lax culture especially when it comes to child education, yet same discussions are present there.<p>Being poor is also making you sick. I wonder if it's more to do with our interpretation of sickness than with any actual change. I would still expect our kids to grow older than we ever where, but sure it doesn't mean they will be happy.
Success can mean different things to different people. Nowadays, most of us just implicitly default to career as being the source of success. We should be encouraging students to practice more self-reflection on their personal values and what it means to be successful. Maybe it's rare that a high school student would have that level of self-awareness, but I think relaxing the workload is only a stop gap solution.<p>There will always be ways for students to stress and work hard to get a leg up in the admission process. I think much of the stress is not from the workload, but from comparison with peers. Most of us are taught not to compare ourselves to others, but in todays competitive world, how can you not? I think if we help students spend genuine time in meditation and reflecting on what's meaningful to them, it would greatly help reduce social comparison and consequently stress. Of course, a course like this would be difficult to standardize...
"hours of nightly homework, daily sports practice and band rehearsal..."<p>Maybe adults should stop telling teenagers that their performance in these things matters that much? Sports / Music are great if you enjoy them, and learning the high school curriculum is important, but outside of the top 1%, there's little reason to compete in these tournaments.
It makes adults sick doesn't it? Why not children?<p>I wonder what a society without that "drive for success" would look like. My first thought, maybe a little sad, is if everyone else didn't have that drive I might actually succeed.
I am not a doctor but I suspect that it has a lot to do with our physical limitations.<p>I think a big impacting factor from the adjustments made to the program is the fact they created study groups.<p>Many students are socially isolated, that is by itself something that creates anxiety and depression. Being in a competitive environment without social supports doesn't help.<p>Human beings are social animals, we need physical touch and proximity to survive. Even just having a conversation with friends and family is something that generally relaxes people. Sure, it may not always be the case but if you ask me, human beings have evolved in a way that we have become very dependent on eachother's physical presence for our mental/physical well being.
HA.<p>How could school not be stressful.<p>Same rooms. Every Day. Same kids. Same motivations. Same tapping-of-the-foot. Same stagnation. Same restlessness. Same mockery. Same shame.<p>'Stupid fucking faggot retard loser fatty useless cunt.'<p>Try living with that cacophonous litany for 8 hours daily and not coming out a little fucked.<p>Absolutely a first world problem but I would have 100% more enjoyed an apprenticeship or something similar.<p>I hated myself all throughout high-school. Hated. Cogitated on my own self termination regularly.<p>Today, working on my own, I feel so much better; not having to actively think about the various groups I have to conform to or rules I have to follow... Extremely liberating.<p>I just want to freelance, actively contribute, subsist, and die.<p>I'm not a piece of shit for wanting that.
I'm a little late to this discussion, but i'm a senior at irvington right now, and this article is bs. No teacher gives only 20 min of homework a night, and all of my non-ap teachers have still given me homework on the weekends this year.
I'd take all this as less of an opportunity to complain about our own growth, and more of an opportunity for everyone who has or will choose to procreate to think deeply about raising your own children, and to do better for them than has been done for yourself.
I wonder how this conflicts with the fact that the difficulty of studies especially in exact science in primary education has been steadily declining even math teachers have difficulties solving highschool math problems from the 70s these days.