Atlanta magazine publishes a guide to Atlanta area schools every January – always interesting to see. I am skeptical of any approach that tries to rate schools through analysis of numbers and statistics (U.S. News and World Report college rankings, for one), but on the whole, I have to say that I am pretty impressed with Atlanta magazine’s coverage. Sure, they list things like “most AP courses offered” and “average SAT score” and other dumb stats that parents tend to overemphasize, but they also try to give parents an idea of special strengths or programs at certain schools. Good stuff.
So I had picked up the magazine for that part, but I was actually most impressed with the article that followed about the high anxiety and pressure of schools today. Many, many parts of this article that are fascinating–I’ll just throw out a few observations.
- Sure, this article takes place at Walton High School in Cobb County, but the setting here is really affluent suburbia anywhere in America.
- So does this exist at my school? Hard for me to say — unfortunately I teach almost all freshmen and underclassmen, so I don’t teach any of these high-achiever upperclassmen. I wouldn’t doubt it though.
- My one small critique of the article — this is definitely a subculture within the school. Not all students try to take 6 AP classes, play 2 sports, and work a part-time job.
”Can kids go out and play and run around and shoot hoops? Yeah, as long as they don’t feel their whole life rests on performance. Parents have to understand why that’s so damaging. If a kid feels his parents’ love is conditional on performance, that means he’s always anxious, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. You lose creativity when you’re constantly evaluated; if all your energy is going into pleasing everyone around you, nothing’s happening inside of you. These kids come in with pills, with razors; they come in crying, in all kinds of disrepair, because of their parents’ disappointment.”
- My last point on the quote above: how do some young people develop self-confidence and inner direction so early, and others seem never to have it throughout their lives? This psychologist seems to be placing the burden on the parents. Meanwhile, Ayn Rand’s characters in The Fountainhead seem to either have it (the egotists) or not (the second-handers), as if they were born that way or can’t change.
This question interests me because I’ve always felt self-confident and self-reliant. Could I have been admitted to a “better” college? Maybe, though I never applied to the ivy league schools. Emory helped me grow in so many ways. Could I have done “better” in my career choice (i.e. med school)? Hell no, I want to teach.
Some of those thoughts are ultimately why some of this article seems so familiar (the hard classes, the extracurricular activities) and yet so unfamiliar (the drugs, competitive fashions, cars, the student discussion about money).
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January 21, 2007 at 4:28 pm
srmencken
A few offhand comments here:
1) At my own school, we would be popping champagne if our students applied themselves this hard to their schoolwork. Articles such as these (and they pop up fairly frequently) disingenously disseminate the impression that every high school student is horrendously overworked, as though they were migrant workers laboring for practically non-existant wages. The fact of the matter is, there have always been, and always will be, a portion of the population that runs itself ragged at work and school. Why? Because they have AMBITION, that great, noble impulse that, though neglected and maligned today, forged the once vast and unconquered wilderness into a global superpower with unequaled wealth and security. If you want to make it to the top, you have to work hard, harder than seems prudent or perhaps even healthy. There’s a thousand Wall Street stock brokers with ulcers who can testify to that fact.
However, for every student who is well on his way to developing his own ulcer, there is a gaggle of others content to coast by. I say this not with contempt, but with the hard-earned insight of experience. And it would be good to note that there is nothing wrong with lacking ambition- not every child desires to be president or ceo; for that matter, not every child can realistically aspire to such things (American idealism notwithstanding).
2) I daresay that a great many students feel overworked because they feel the need to do absolutely EVERYTHING- Student Government, NHS, Debate Club, Drama Club, etc… many youngsters lack the judgement (or the parental involvement, it would seem) to realize that one often has to make difficult choices in life. My wife, even as a grown woman, tends to take on far more than she can handle without getting considerably stressed. I can appreciate the dilemma- I often feel pangs of regret when I think of the opportunities I missed- but it is an important lesson of life: you can’t have it all.
January 22, 2007 at 11:01 am
Rebekah
Interestingly enough, Time magazine has an article relating to this exact topic. The Overscheduled Child Myth (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1580388,00.html?cnn=yes) They talk about how a very limited number of students (I believe 6% is the number they quote) are involved in 20 hours or more of organized extra-curricular activities- what they qualify as “over scheduled.” Maybe the problem is not that all students are over scheduled, but that the children and parents who are over scheduled are in a position to make a lot of noise.
I think my concern for high school students who are running themselves ragged is- where is the pressure coming from? If it is their own internal ambition, or a desire to participate in something, then let them run around like crazy. They will have to learn the lessons of time-management, stress management and balance some time, why not early. If a student has aims to enter politics, by all means, let them do Student Government, Model UN, NHS, Future Leaders of America, while they take AP Government and AP History. Heck, let them to play a sport too, to keep them in fighting shape for the campaign trail. If it is the child striving towards a top spot in the class, wishing and hoping to get into Harvard, driven by their ambition for the future, I say more power to them.
However, if it is Mom and Dad who are eager for Jr. to become a future Senator and insist on his/her taking all those classes, joining all those clubs and playing football too, then we enter a problem area (in my opinion,) especially if Jr. wants to act in the school play or take AP French instead (all things French being a notorious death trap for politicians.)
I was one of the former students- I was involved in multiple organizations and activities, including being a student director in our high school musical, which from November to March took up nearly 30 hours a week of my time (ha, beat that you over achievers). In fact, I was involved in theater against my parents wishes- my mother was convinced that my future would be better served if I got a paying job rather than a volunteer position. I do think, however, that it was the glowing recommendation of the show’s director that helped me get into college, more than anything else on my resume. (In time, my mother came to agree, by the way.) I did, however, deal with a number of students in the theater production whose parents were pushing them to be performers- singers, actors, dancers etc. For some, the show was almost a punishment, especially when they weren’t awarded the lead.
One more thing in my long comment here. There seems to be a sharp divide between the overachievers and the average achievers; there was a definite dividing line in my high school. Why is that? Are the overachievers too busy to be friends with anyone not in all of their clubs and organizations with them? Are average achievers exhausted by the thought of running as ragged as their more ambitious peers? Or is the divide caused by other forces- honors classes, different treatment from school officials, parents, community members? It often felt that the “average” kids disliked the “honors” kids in my high school. Was it because teachers spoke so highly of their honors classes? Was it because they wished they had the ambition and drive? Or maybe they felt sorry for us, because our priorities were out of order. I did often envy the “average” kids in our senior class- they got to hang out and play Frisbee on the front lawn during morning activity period, lunch and after school, while I was running from club to club, or trying to finish my AP English reading.