This is a powerful and very disturbing article about the teenagers who crack under the pressure to succeed.
Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?
Read this and ask yourself, why are we putting young people into pressure cookers?
Isn’t it possible to recognize many ways to succeed?
The current obsession with standardized testing guarantees winners and losers. Whose child should be sacrificed at the alter of high-stakes testing? Which will crack because they are fearful of being losers?
“Over the last decade, anxiety has overtaken depression as the most common reason college students seek counseling services. In its annual survey of students, the American College Health Association found a significant increase — to 62 percent in 2016 from 50 percent in 2011 — of undergraduates reporting “overwhelming anxiety” in the previous year. Surveys that look at symptoms related to anxiety are also telling. In 1985, the Higher Education Research Institute at U.C.L.A. began asking incoming college freshmen if they “felt overwhelmed by all I had to do” during the previous year. In 1985, 18 percent said they did. By 2010, that number had increased to 29 percent. Last year, it surged to 41 percent.
“Those numbers — combined with a doubling of hospital admissions for suicidal teenagers over the last 10 years, with the highest rates occurring soon after they return to school each fall — come as little surprise to high school administrators across the country, who increasingly report a glut of anxious, overwhelmed students. While it’s difficult to tease apart how much of the apparent spike in anxiety is related to an increase in awareness and diagnosis of the disorder, many of those who work with young people suspect that what they’re seeing can’t easily be explained away. “We’ve always had kids who didn’t want to come in the door or who were worried about things,” says Laurie Farkas, who was until recently director of student services for the Northampton public schools in Massachusetts. “But there’s just been a steady increase of severely anxious students.”
How important are test scores as compared to mental health?
Are they more important than life itself?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Link isn’t working for me.
Why Are More American Teenagers Than Ever Suffering From Severe Anxiety?
Thanks!
Thanks. Fixed the link. Shocking story.
“standardized testing guarantees winners and losers”
No surprise there. All “norm referenced” tests divide winners and losers.
The really interesting thing is that the “winners” class includes a disproportionate number of sociopaths and psychopaths.
What does that tell you about the tests?
Capitalism, especially in its unrestrained neo-liberal form, is all about separating a few “winners” from the mass of “losers” which the system must have.
Then, in order to win, or having already won, the winners devour the losers, whom, according to the ideology, deserve whatever they get.
So-called education reform is based on that very premise, which is why public education is anathema to it, since it creates at least the aspiration and possibility for something different and better.
That “something different and better” is a dangerous thing, to be eliminated if possible, because as Margaret Thatcher famously said,. There Is No Alternative
“Inundate a teenager with the soul-defying criteria of the corporate/consumer state, with its overbearing, pre-careerist pressures, its paucity of communal eros, its demands, overt and implicit, to conform to a shallow, manic, nebulously defined yet oppressive societal order, and insist that those who cannot adapt, much less excel, are “losers” who are fated to become “basement dwellers” in their parents’ homes or, for those who lack the privilege, be cast into homelessness, then the minds of the young or old alike are apt to be inundated with feelings of angst and dread.
Worse, if teenagers are culturally conditioned to believe said feelings and responses are exclusively experienced by weaklings, parasites, and losers then their suffering might fester to the point of emotional paralysis and suicidal inclinations.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/17/human-anxiety-in-late-stage-capitalism/
Capitalism on steroids, which is what we have in our corporatist culture, is hard on families as well as children. As a fan of “International House Hunters,” I see many families moving overseas stating “quality of life” issues as the main reason for the decision to leave. The poor are about to see most of the social safety nets cut which most likely will be accompanied by an increase in crime and substance abuse. The children, elderly and infirm will be collateral damage.
Yes, and the increased substance abuse will be made possible by Big Pharma, crooked doctors and Congress, as we saw on the latest 60 Minutes.
Selling our country down the river for a quick buck. The idea is to get in and get out before the whole thing implodes.
The linked article literally doesn’t say a single word about standardized testing as a cause for childhood anxiety.
It mostly focuses on the role that smart phones and social media have played in amplifying and accelerating anxiety issues.
It also focuses on the idea that teens are trying to assemble the perfect portfolio of coursework and extracurriculars that will win them admission to the “right” college. This is a much larger and vastly more expensive and time-consuming effort than a standardized test.
It is a worthwhile read for any parent or anyone who works with kids, so I am guessing that most of your readers have already encountered it or will click through to read it. Those who don’t are not getting an accurate summary of the piece.
The focus of the article, a boy named Jake, is suffering because of academic pressure.
But Tim, we can safely assume that has nothing to do with testing. Read Daniel Koretz’s new book: The Testing Charade: Pretending to Improve Education. On this Phony altar, we sacrifice children.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
I am not at all surprised. With our increasing obsession with micromanaging and “measuring” everything that students (and teachers) do, how could we not predict a surge in mental health issues? I think the anxiety is driven by society as a whole. Wages have been stagnant or declining for so long that people are scared. I think that is why they can push this “college and career ready” meme in kindergarten. As far as I can tell, 21st century learning requires the same engagement as 20th century learning did, but the competition for what is seen as decreasing access to opportunities is driving unhealthy responses to societal pressures, driving some to “freak out” while others “check out.”
They DO seem anxious or unhappy to me- my “limited sample”- my son’s friends and my friend’s children.
I don’t know why.
We were unhappy PLENTY when I was that age, but I don’t recall being as GRIM as they seem to be- so serious. Maybe it’s school or maybe it’s just not a great time to be young, I don’t know.
Chiara,
Maybe it’s school that’s leading to grim. In the 60s, junior and senior high school teachers could segue into stimulating discussions about current events. They weren’t teaching how to eliminate distractors on multiple-choice tests. Teens didn’t know the phrase “college application process”; we just researched & applied w/ SAT scores not enhanced by prep courses.
And maybe it’s not a great time to be young. 60s teens learned about monks immolating themselves at the UN during evening and 11 o’clock news reports. So newscasters had time to reflect. Today’s teens live in the 24/7 news cycle. News show hosts filling time until investigations complete. Pundits speculating.
Give those kids a hug from New Jersey.
The wacky solutions of the day to the stress problems showing up in children and young adults is to teach students that “success” it is all about: (a) understanding “brainology” and (b) getting into the right “mindset” https://www.mindsetworks.com/programs/applied-brainology
in tandem with (c) getting yourself enough “grit” through direct instruction in so-called social emotional learning—standardized by objectives, and now to be tested. Best of all you can have reports on the SEL status of each student in your data-dashboard. https://www.panoramaed.com/social-emotional-learning
If you detect some acerbity, it is because I am perhaps too conscious of the marketing of social-emotional learning as if a panacea for so much that is wrong-headed in test-em-til-they-drop policies, an unrelenting focus on “college and career readiness” beginning in Kindergarten if not before, and willingness to require SEL standards and curricula as if a substitute for school counselors, school social workers, and school programs free of the intimidations of tests and competitive pressures to perform and conform.
The Trump agenda includes cuts in Medicaid— a source of school-based funds for health services, including mental health. There is probably a double whammy hit on school counseling and related supports with Trump’s proposed cuts and redistribution of funds in the education budget. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/news/2017/03/24/429032/proposed-cuts-medicaid-mean-big-cuts-school-based-health-services/
I do not think that decades of policies that focus on stress-testing our students are the only reasons that signs of stress are being documented among students… and in suicides among children and teens—yes suicides. Although the percentages of suicides are small and have not increased dramatically at the national level, the social media have made knowledge of these events more public than ever.
Bullying appears to be out of hand, aided by the social media, and a not helped by a President who seems intent on making bullying perfectly normal, and exacerbated by members of Congress and legislators who seem indifferent to extreme violence —mass killings by “stressed out” gun owners.
It is no wonder that school protocols that now include not just fire drills but practice for immediate campus-wide lockdowns.
The causes of stress are hard to track, but there can be no doubt that schools are caught in the middle of trying to address that problem and to defend against the worst outcomes imaginable. What are those worst outcomes?
Some are documented in the 2012 book: The Bully Society, School Shootings and the Crisis of Bullying in America’s Schools, by Jessie Klein.
Right now and locally, the parents of an eight-year-old student whose death has been judged a suicide are suing the school district for negligence in addressing persistent bullying, some of that happening out of the plain sight adults—in the school bathroom. A You Tube video from the surveillance camera can be found on line, along with reports that show some serial misjudgments by adults, including medical personnel. Such tragedies have many parents worried about the mental health of their children and teens. SEL learning may help, but the idea that you can and SHOULD “standardize and test” for that strikes me as a crock.
Things have to change, our educational system, the mainstream media, and the ignorance of people as to why we are here.
This has been happening since the govt. gave SBAC and PARCC over $300 Million together for the so called standardized tests that have no meaning whatsoever.
Teachers anxious to get great scores create anxiety in students to perform well on the tests. CA has created a Data Dashboard with percentages of that cannot tell a parent what their child needs to do to Exceed the standards as noted on the dashboard.
Our children have been delegated to numbers on a chart.
And that in itself can cause tremendous angst because they want that higher number which is entirely meaningless.
I read the article with interest. Tim, above points to the fact that testing does not figure in the text of the article. It does, however, add to the toxic mix of comparative parenting that infects our families. When a child learns to read becomes important. My child is four and he is already reading. Oh my! Is my child behind? Is he destined for mediocrity because he failed to read at an early age? I find it impossible to avoid the idea that parental anxiety is not behind much of the rise in teenage anxiety.
It is easily believable that social media and the obsession with it are part of the problem. Still, they way they are part of the problem may be different from the way we think they are. Perhaps the social media make it less likely that young people feeling the need of support will reach out to their peers.
Few people I know faced the stress I did in my youth. My sophomore year, my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. In 1970, that was a death sentence. My father survived 16 years after that, a survival that altered my life considerably. But I never recall feeli even the slight bit anxious. Life was fun for me. My brother was a bit older and took more of the worry part of the situation, I guess. The point is that I was never pressed to be a smashing success at anything. My mother, a fine trained pianist, seemed more than content with her lot as the organist at our church with its dwindling congregation. She got really excited when I went off to her native North Carolina to teach. But there seemed no pressure.
Perhaps that is the key. We need to let up on the kids a bit. Maybe we will get more out of them. It’s like that when you use a crosscut saw. You have to get the saw sharp, then sort of relax and let it sing its way through the wood.
If, as Tim falsely claims (yet again), that standardized testing goes unmentioned in this article, why does the VERY FIRST SENTENCE report that this overwhelmed young man is taking three (count ’em, three!) Advanced Placement classes in one semester?
Last I heard, those classes culminate in standardized tests, which are seen as integral to college admissions, count among the millstones middle and upper-middle class high school students are forced to drag around, and add to the terrible pressures high school juniors and seniors undergo.
Schools – mine among them, where every student is an ELL and has been in this country three years or less – are pushing/forcing students into these classes, for the benefit of the David Coleman’s and College Board’s of the world, and because the schools themselves are rated on how many students take them. It’s an insidious and destructive, but very lucrative, negative feedback loop.
As for the kids, well, they’re just collateral damage.
Yeah, no, whether it’s AP, SAT, ACT, PARCC, NAEP, Iowa, CTP-IV, or any other standardized test, the piece doesn’t mention it at all, let alone support the assertions that we’re sacrificing children’s mental health for test scores and that the increase in anxiety is caused by an obsession with standardized testing.
It takes an awful lot of nerve to play the “collateral damage” card. You and your “union of professionals” fight charter schools in exactly the same fashion and for the exact same reason that law enforcement unions fight the elimination of mandatory minimums and the reform of drug laws—it’s simply terrible for business. Keep those poor black and brown kids confined to traditional neighborhood public schools with no other options, and who the hell cares if the classrooms are safe, if the kids’ll be taught by forced-placed basket cases and burnouts, if they’ll graduate, if they’re on an even remotely plausible trajectory toward being prepared for gainful employment or community college, or if their parents want other options—you need bodies in those seats for the jobs and the pensions!
(Salaries and pensions for people who look nothing at all like the kids, that is: https://newyork.edtrust.org/press_release/one-third-new-york-schools-no-latino-black-teachers-new-report-ed-trust-ny-reveals/)
Ah, Tim,
The alleged parent of alleged children in traditional public schools who never misses an opportunity to attack public schools, applaud charter schools and defend high-stakes testing.
Please read Daniel Koretz’s “The Testing Charade: Pretending to Improve schools.” High-stakes Testing, he says, is a sham. The scores are meaningless.
Try to inform yourself.
Straw men (yeah, right, teachers are like police unions and the drug war) and red herrings: you’re in fine form, Tim!
As currently used, Standardized tests rely on perverse incentives. If you reward Police for the number of arrests they make, people will be arrested for minor offenses, like jaywalking. If you reward them for booking more felonies, minor crimes will be converted to felonies. A study of the NYPD proved this.
Time for this insanity to end