Op-Ed on the Correlation Between Stress and Education

If you type “how to survive” in to a Google, Yahoo, or Bing search engine, the most common suggested endings to the phrase are: a zombie apocalypse, the plague, a tornado, unemployment, and… high school. Which one of these things is not like the others, and why does the list make it seem synonymous with life-threatening situations? The answer is simple. Modern-day education systems create an unhealthy environment where high levels of stress and anxiety are commonalities due to unrealistic expectations of teenagers. Personal health and personal goals seem to be set aside in order to achieve a high standard of academics that sometimes are unattainable. Kids resort to cheating, cramming, and overall dishonesty in a desperate need for points. We are taught to memorize and recite theorems and theories but rarely taught values such as honesty, kindness, and loyalty.

As a freshman two years ago, I walked in to OPRF’s Huskie Kick-Off day for freshman extremely nervous. I dug my nails in to my palms as I walked through the cheerleaders and drum line, then into the school and through the mass of mentors decked out in orange, blue, beads, and pom poms. I remember although I was nervous, I was excited. After hours of playing get-to-know-me and name games we were finishing up with one final game. A game where a leader calls out a number, and you have to get in a group of people with that number. Although the moral of the game is teach kids that it is good to make a lot of friends, so you can be able to adapt into any situation because you are welcome in many different groups, us freshman took it very differently. I remember a mentor asking, “So why do you think we play this game? What’s the point?” and immediately a few kids raised their hands confident in their unanimous answers which were, “High school is full of cliques.”

years later, and this summer I was one of many mentors leading the same game. While I had changed, and my position had changed, it seemed that the freshmen’s viewpoint on high school had stayed the same. When we asked the same question, “So why do you think we play this game? What’s the point?” the freshmen had the same answers: high school is full of cliques, your friends will leave you or you will get kicked out, you’ll get excluded. A couple hours later when they have time to ask mentors questions, they are almost all concerning workload and how much time is spent on homework. What does that say about high school, that before kids walk in to their first real day of high school, they already have preconceived notions of how terrible it will be?

The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950’s. This is due to that fact that school is an environment where fear of being just average motivates us, and where mistakes are sometimes seen as failures. Our society puts so much emphasis on teenagers to be perfect, they are expected to: be present and engaged during school, take part in numerous extra curriculars, and do hours of homework which often includes studying for multiple tests in one day. While this is not a crazy long list, the things that go into each of those things is where the time needs to be put in. Homework can include essays, worksheets, math problems, all on top of studying for multiple tests in one day. Students feel pressure to be in AP classes, and some even take all AP classes which is an extremely unhealthy workload. After all of this, we are told “You need to get at least 9 hours of sleep every night when you are a teenager!” which is a joke because the same people who say things like this are the ones who are assigning the work that forces many students to only get 5 or 6.

With so much work to do, there is very little free time in a busy student’s life. At a time when kids are supposed to be finding themselves and exploring and seeing what their passions are, we are learning, sometimes pointless, equations in math class. We are not taught to think for ourselves. If you really think about it, we are never actually thinking. We are trying to catch up on notes, get our things out, explain what we wrote. How many time a day are we asked to just sit for 5 minutes, take a breath and really think?

All of this work and stress is said to be expected of students so that they can get in to the college they desire. So when they are applying for college, they can have good ACT/SAT scores as well as an above average GPA. Teens are constantly being tested, and after a while kids see their worth as the grades they are getting. Students get grades back every single day, saying how good or not you are. For many students, Junior year marks the year that they have to take the ACT/SAT standardized testing. Many kids suffer from test anxiety, and are not good test takers. For many four-year universities, the first process they complete in order to weed out applications is to simply look at numbers. Students are judged by test scores and GPAs, which doesn’t fully allow them to grasp the character and abilities of a person. It is no wonder that these tests are taken so seriously, and provoke so much stress. This process teaches kids at a young at that their personality is less worth than how well they can take a test.

Education and learning shouldn’t be seen by students as time away from their life and away from exploring the world, it should instead be a part of their life that they enjoy. Public school systems should not be a source of anxiety and unnecessary stress for teenagers at a time when their brain, perceptions, and outlooks are at the most malleable point they will ever be at. Every year, teen’s depression, anxiety, and social phobias increase. This is because every day they spend 7 hours sitting in a desk, in a high pressure and judgmental environment that is not healthy.