Oryx
CoquettishCat
- 13,184
- Posts
- 13
- Years
- Age 31
- Seen Jan 30, 2015
"Kids "do" school today. It's not about learning; it's piling up achievements that look good on the college app, and it's gotten way, way out of hand. And you know what we as a society get out of it? A nation of test-takers, club presidents and volleyball captains! But we're losing the innovators, the free thinkers, the dreamers. We lose our values: honesty, integrity, character. A bunch of outcome-oriented kids are being led by outcome-oriented teachers, who are pushed by goal-driven parents, and 20% of today's teenagers experience depression."
"But how do you get your kid to decompress when she feels that if she doesn't take four AP courses, if she doesn't succeed in sports, if she isn't involved in school government, then she can forget about going to a selective college? After all of her activities, she would come home from school at 9 or 10—only then to start her homework!"
"But how do you get your kid to decompress when she feels that if she doesn't take four AP courses, if she doesn't succeed in sports, if she isn't involved in school government, then she can forget about going to a selective college? After all of her activities, she would come home from school at 9 or 10—only then to start her homework!"
-Boston Legal, "Rescue Me"
Is the college admissions process too high-stress for children these days? Many students are taking classes they'll never care about again just because it will look good on an application to college, memorizing just what they need to get by, and then never remembering it again. Future engineers are in AP History classes, future authors are in AP Calculus, and everyone is running for student council in schools they care nothing about so they can put "President" on the piece of paper that could determine their futures.
Meanwhile parents are fighting every bad grade and pushing their children to be involved in more, study more, do more, be more. Harvard, Yale, Princeton are goals to be constantly striven towards; failure is not an option, especially with the job market the way it is.
Colleges themselves have begun to notice this. Princeton is in the process of testing a "gap year"; a year where you go to another country, relax, and do community service or get an easy job before your freshman year in college. Why? Because students are starting college burned out. They're so stressed in high school, striving for college, that once they get to college they have nothing left to give.
What's your opinion on this? Does this only apply to the very top students and no one else? Have you experienced the academic stress, or did you breeze through without even noticing that stress existed? Do you think that going to the best college is necessary for success in life?