Anne Applebaum in Slate this morning has a discussion of the pressure we put on high school seniors to get into the top universities, and whether that’s anything new.
American parents, she says, are caught between wanting to prepare their kids for a super-competitive world, and a misty-eyed nostalgia for the bike-riding and kegger parties of their own youth. She suggests that this nostalgia is a curiously American phenomenon, and that parents in Britain and Korea expect their kids to work their butts off without fretting over the vanishing notion of childhood. She also implies that today’s high school students aren’t, in fact, working any harder than their parents did.
But maybe the perception that each successive generation of high school students is working harder isn’t entirely based in a rose-tinted view of our own past. I left school six years ago (albeit in Britain) and there were only about two weeks of my four years at university where I worked as hard as I did for most of my big exam year at school.
Maybe we should start worrying a little bit about the pressure on teenagers to succeed. Is it so wrong to want to ride a bike?
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four comments
I think that article is full of it when it comes to Britain - the news is constantly full of reports and whingings about the death of childhood, how we're examining our children into narrowness and nothingness, how we have the unhappiest children in Europe, etc. But, SAT stupidity (no one even cares how you do on them) aside, we're not getting any worse and my perception is that the USA is getting worse. With the 11-plus experience on the way out, and A-Levels soon to follow, Britain is arguably loosening up. I feel for your rosy glasses - I've a friend who says she still has nightmares about being at the end of upper-sixth; she's now in her 50s. Our torments are longstanding ones. I too hardly ever had to work as hard at university as I did most of the time when I was in upper-sixth - though having left my difficult family helped me out there. I suspect that'll always be the hardest, dreariest year of my life.
Posted by Thene
May 27, 2008, 3:26 PM
Having never been to Britain I can't really speak to the European experience, but I can speak to the larger issue of pressure on teens to succeed.
I think it's interesting how we "conditionalize" success and how we construct merit systems. Doing well in school for me was not about getting a nice trip or going to a party, it was about SURVIVING and for many around me it was about the will to make it to school to begin with.
It has not been that long since I was in high school so I have not seen a substantial change in anything really, but I do work with several youth who would like to and should be recognized for the small, every day achievements and might be inspired to do more if more of these opportunities existed (and be given the chance to create them!)
And is university the answer for everyone? If you asked me, we need to do a revamp on all our educational systems, so that it is the many, not the few, who succeed without having to first question whether it's them that is the problem.
Posted by Jessica
May 27, 2008, 4:29 PM
I should point out in advance that the opinions expressed below are mine, and not Shameless Magazine's...
I went to high school primarily in Singapore but spent a year in a Canadian high school, and memories of that year still upset me - b/c the expectations of kids' brains, based on what we were expected to learn, were so low. The Singaporean system (from my point of view) had problems and the stress levels are far too high to be healthy - I can attest to that as a high school dropout - but they do push students to be able to understand concepts that are quite challenging.
I did not find the same at all in Canadian schools - in fact, it seemed like people were simply taught the same thing every year, esp in math class. It really seemed to waste kids' time, and there is a definite mixed message in how you're supposed to do really well, but also have the time of your life - or else you're a weiner. I think that confusion trickles into the school system, where you're expected to work really hard at work that is not challenging, and often pointless.
To speak to what Jessica says, I used to work with a youth org that encouraged kids to be successful in whatever way they defined success for themselves. This was interesting in that the org did not define success as "staying in school." If kids decided that their idea of success was to leave school to work on a farm (or something like that), they simply tried to support kids in that endeavour.
There was a big emphasis on recognising that kids know what is the best path for them - and that school isn't always that path. That approach respected the natural resourcefulness and intelligence of teenagers (and really, people) far more than the slice of the Canadian system I experienced did.
Posted by Thea
May 27, 2008, 6:04 PM
i am definitely not going to speak for my experience when i was in high school. i mean i took the bare bones of what i needed to graduate and was still successful and am going to grad school. but this is beside the point.
the point is that i think there is a difference (even if it's somewhat marginal) between expectations in Canadian high schools and American high schools. America has set up its youth to ALL attend university. University in the US is an industry of epic cultural, economical, and social proportions. the pressures i hear of in "real" life and on american tv shows or books situated in America are not the same. even getting into highschools is a problem in the u.s. i mean, if you want your kid to go to university they cannot attend public school (that's the fear anyway). and trades training doesn't exist down there like it does here. every single student is groomed (if all the stars align) to go to university. kids in elementary school are doing tests that will affect their educational situations in high school, etc. it's crazy. xo.
Posted by diandra
May 27, 2008, 10:04 PM
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