Academic Pressure maddy elsner
What is stress?
All humans experience some level of stress. A small amount of stress can actually be beneficial. It helps a person learn how to cope with life, experience failure and success, and survive in society. However, stress can easily escalate from a one to a ten, and it's often hard for people to find a favorable balance between healthy stress and stress that can tear a person apart. Although teens are young, they can still experience a high amount of stress, with the biggest attributor to that stress being academic pressure. Over the years, academic pressure has escalated immensely. True, it's important that students experience as much as they can when they are younger so they can learn their strengths and talents, but it's often easy for an individual to burn themselves out. Parents and schools can work against the student without realizing it and make it harder for the student to cope during their school years. As Academic pressure rises, students lose focus of their beliefs and goals and who they really are.
The Wrong Focus
It's often difficult for a parent to realize when their student has too many activities going on. Parents generally want the best for their kids, and that means putting them in the most advanced classes to get ahead, introducing them to any and every sport available, and allowing them to be in clubs and organizations in order to broaden their horizon's. However, by giving their kids too many options, their child may soon find themselves unhappy, and not realize why. One family therapist and author, Carleton Kendrick, says, “The phenomenon of parents over scheduling their kids' lives and stealing their childhood is all too real. Many parents fill up their kids' lives with one enrichment activity after another, starting in the early preschool years, all in an effort to help them get a leg up so that they will eventually gain admittance to a top-ranked college” (qtd. in Harmon 19). There is already an immense amount of pressure to have a career figured out by the time one is in high school. Many young adults rush into something, only to find out that they can’t stand it. Most college students will change their majors at least once, others will change it more than that. Parents only add to the pressure because most adolescents look up to their parents and want to please them. If parents don't let their students have a say in what they want to do, then they are making the way for an especially depressed generation. Parents aren’t the only ones to blame; society has slowly began to support a wrong idea of academic success. Author Mason Harper was quoted saying, “They almost directly call students ‘investments.’ We are never expected to learn for its own sake anymore, or our own personal betterment. We are expected to learn in order to get a choice job and make a lot of money and revitalize the economy" (Harper 24). Tragically, society teaches kids at a young age that being the best in school or having more money makes a person happy. The focus is on all the wrong points, and it's often hard to change that focus after a person has been taught that their whole life.
Negative Effects
When a student becomes overly stressed, negative effects swoop in. Stress from school and too many extracurricular activities causes teens to lose sleep. Teens need more sleep than grown adults do, but they are sacrificing that for their busy lives. On average, Teens need about 8-10 hours of sleep per night. However, one study showed that only 15% of high school students are actually getting the 8 hours of sleep required on a regular basis (Daniali). Rena Fitzgerald, a Crisis Care program manager said, “They never get a break anymore. These kids are up at 6 a.m. and don’t go to bed until 11 p.m. because of all the activities they are doing. They are being programmed to believe that what they do in school will determine the fate of their income in the future" (qtd. in Daniali). Today’s young generation is expected to be involved in clubs and extracurricular activities; to have a life outside of school, all while keeping up with school work. In addition to losing sleep, students also lose sight of what really matters in the course of their life. Author Richard Weissbourd, an American child and family psychologist and a graduate from Harvard, has gathered many psychological and behavioral research. One of the studies conducted that shocked Weissbourd the most was a survey on student goals. Weissbourd recalled, “In a study that my research team conducted at an independent school, more than one-third of the 40 juniors surveyed identified ‘getting into a good college’ as more important than ‘being a good person,’ and nearly one-half of students said that it was more important to their parents that they get into a good college than that they be good people”(Weissbourd 68). Most Parents don’t realize that by putting so much pressure on their kid, it makes them sacrifice their beliefs and morals.
Negative Effects Continued
Another problem that has developed has been the decline in free time and relaxation in young children and teens lives. When students aren't allowed freedom and relaxation when they are younger, they can live stressed, tense lives. Author Mason Harper talks about the problem and how academic pressure has taken over summer vacation. He states, “No longer faced with three carefree months of relaxation, students now sit in a classroom for 70 days of summer vacation. Personally, I always thought tutors and classes were there to help you catch up on a course, but now they are to help you get ahead" (Harper 24). It's no secret that the tables have been turned over the years. The students that really struggle in academics or don’t care about their school work don’t receive the tutoring. As of late, the majority of students getting the help are students in advanced classes. Tutoring is supposed to be for the kids who really need it, not for those who maintain A’s and B’s on their report card. (Harmon 16 – 18). Short term side effects, sleep loss and anxiety, are nothing compared to the long term effects, which can be life threatening. Peggy Parks, renowned author and speaker confirms, “Teens who are under a great deal of stress are at risk for many health problems; high stress has been linked to depression, self-injurious behavior (such as cutting), and suicide" (Parks 61). Often these negative effects are the ones that people cannot see until it's too late. It's difficult for a parent to see if their kid is seriously depressed until it's too late, and that is the scariest quality of academic pressure; that it can cause life threatening effects to a student.
Research Conducted
Much research has been conducted over the past few years on this growing epidemic and it has helped researchers understand why the problem is occurring, and what can be done to stop it. Research done by two Columbia University Psychologists, Luthar and Becker, suggest that even though kids from harsh backgrounds and the lower class have many struggles and hardships, kids from the wealthy classes and affluent families go through emotional and moral problems just the same. Luthar and Becker clarify, “Yet affluent children suffer high rates of behavioral problems; delinquency; drug use (including hard drugs); anxiety; and depression” (qtd. in Weissbourd). Money can’t buy happiness, and in this case with some of the wealthier, upper class Americans, parents are pushing their kids so hard that the kids and teens can’t deal with the pressure anymore, and can easily slip into depression. Luthar and Becker also stated, “Children with ‘very high perfectionist strivings -- those who saw achievement failures as personal failures’ are more at risk, as are children whose parents value their accomplishments more than aspects of their character. Ironically, this pressure is not even likely to achieve what it's intended to achieve” (qtd. in Weissbourd). The article goes on to say that teens who are introduced to this extreme academic pressure are not even performing better than other students (Weissbourd). This pressure, adding extra stress, stopping them from achieving goals, preventing them from discovering who they are, is an enemy that must be eradicated. If a parent tries to discover who their child is for them, that child is likely to struggle later on in life.
Image source: Adobe Slate
Image Caption: If parents try to control their students future, they may be eliminating their child's happiness
Temporary Solutions
Many trusted researchers and psychologists have found different ways for people to relieve stress. It will always be a battle to maintain having a healthy level of stress and not have too much of the unhealthy stress. Author Daniel Harmon lists different ways people enjoy escaping their current stress. He says, "Exercise, rest, read, and communicate leisurely with friends and family. Many teenagers spend practically no time with the people they live with. That can be fairly simple to remedy" (Harmon 51). Many options are given for trying to relieve stress: exercise, reading, music or even yoga can do the trick for some people. However, this only pushes away the stress for the time being. The next day, the stress and pressure are at it again, trying to make life impossible.
Image Source: Adobe Slate
Image Caption: Spending time with friends and family is a simple way to take a person's mind off stress, and is a very beneficial solution to that person in the long run
Proposed Solution
Most students try extremely hard to handle everything that is thrown at them, however this can’t always be done. Teens, overwhelmed from the avalanche of stress, explode abruptly when it becomes too much. It’s important that the schools and parents work together to set standards and realize when they may have gone too far. Author Richard Weissbourd explains why this problem is difficult to to keep under control, insisting, “It is, in a sense, a public health problem. That means it's hard for any one parent or school to act solo. Parents and schools need to regulate and police one another” (Weissbourd). There should be classes offered to parents on how to adequately handle this issue. No parent is perfect, and if parents can sit down and talk to professionals about it, they can learn how to motivate their kid to follow their goals and dreams, without pushing them too hard or in the wrong direction. Parents also need to work with the schools to help keep Academic pressure down. Here at Valley Center, there is no study hall time where students can work on homework. This can help students to lower their academic pressure if they have more time during a school day to get work done. If parents can catch stress early on in their student’s life, they can lessen the pressure before it impacts them in a negative way. By taking classes on academic pressure, parents can be prepared to stop the long term effects their students may attain. The only way a solution can really come about is if the parents and the school work together. Author Richard Weissbourd stresses this point by saying, “Parents in a community could, for instance, make a pact that they won't hire SAT tutors until their children are in high school.” (Weissbourd). The solutions are endless that parents and the schools could come up with if only they took the time to do so.
Image Source: Adobe Slate
Image Caption: Bonds between families are the strongest, and it's important to keep them strong by having honest conversations with family members.
Taking The Next Step
In conclusion, as academic pressure rises, so does the student’s stress level. This stress can cause sleep loss, as well as a loss of freedom and relaxation, and can eventually cause long term effects, such as depression which can result in suicide. At one point or another, a student will break from all the stress they have acquired. How inspiring would it be if the parents were the ones that acted first? Sometimes all it takes is sitting down and having an honest conversation with a child or teen to see what the problem is. Most parents want their kid to have more opportunities and a better life than they did, and they can give their child that chance by asking them what they want and allowing them to speak their opinion.
Image Source: Adobe Slate
Image Caption: Every child looks up to their parents, so it's vital that parents take the first step to end academic pressure