Monday, December 13, 2010
Pressure in high school
The New York Times, prompted by the documentary "Race to Nowhere," looks at the mounting pressure high school students face to accomplish more in order to achieve "academic" success and recognition. In their section Room for Debate, they have invited a number of people to weigh in on the issue. Please link to their section Stress and the High School Student and read at least two of the essays presented. When done, please choose one to post a comment to. When finished we will discuss in class.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
CHELSEA SAYS:
ReplyDeleteReading this made me relax. It also reminds me of my dad, who has convinced me that if I dont get an A in English honors, then I won't make it into an exeptional college. I disagree with the idea to limit after school activites. These hobbies prove to colleges that we are well rounded, and it also lets us express ourselves in different ways. Art is an area that many students choose to share their personality.
These are all wonderful sounding solutions. The idea of shortening the days and having free blocks sounds very profitable to students yet it has many problems as well. Not every student can take those free blocks and with after school activities, the day really is not that much shorter. There are so many things teachers are trying to do to decrease student stress, but there has to be something more we could do. Small schools like the one I attend, cannot turn around all the basic teaching styles we have followed since the 60's. It would take a lot of work to create a completely well-rounded school where all students well comfortable and stress free.
ReplyDeleteEven though homework has had some recent degradations, it is still a very important aspect of schooling. As a high school student I have 4 classes a day which are each an hour long. At the end of the day I often find it difficult to remember the days lesson. However after going through homework the memory remains fresh and is extended into the next day. But when a teacher assigns an overload the focus is not on learning the material, but just doing the "busywork". This shift of focus from learning to busywork prevents the student from actually learning effectively and still remember the material later. Since most teachers still adhere to the outdated principle of homework teaches better than the teacher students of America are falling behind faster than ever. The focus needs to shift back to learning of the material from the actual teacher and not the book. When this happens students of America will not only see the applicability of their education but also develop an urge to excel.
ReplyDeleteI was home-schooled for the first eight years of my life, until freshman year, where I then attended a public school. Speaking from experience, I feel that I got a better education, with less stress. I would get up at nine, eat breakfast, and start at ten. I'd work for three or four hours, and be done for the day. I had no stress, and learned at a lot higher rate. In my freshman year of public school, I was relearning what I had learned in 7th grade as a home-schooler. If you can learn more, without the stress, and in less time, perhaps we should re-examine our educational system and how "effective" it really is.
ReplyDelete"Race to Nowhere."
ReplyDeleteI like that... I feel like this is true, students who really care about their future are taking the fun out of high school. The most time involved kids spend at home with family is to do homework and sleep for maybe 8 hours.Yes education and being involved is important, but if students don't go experience the world and do things that they really enjoy hat kind of life are they establishing for themselves? What's the old saying? Character over content.
On "Stress and the High School Student":
ReplyDeleteMy thought is this: High schoolers know the pressure they are under to complete college applications, take the right classes, and perform well in their courses. Most students know this without immense pressure from their parents. With the teen's already stress-ridden calendar, parents should involve themselves less in their child's college decisions. They have done all they can to prepare their child for the time when they must push them out of the nest. If the child hasn't realized the importance of higher education by the age of 17/18 and have made the decision not to try as hard as they could, then the parents shouldn't be adding on stress to a kid who has checked out a long time ago. Rather, a parent should be encouraging and informative.
"What Happened to Childhood?"
ReplyDeleteOur society today basically tells kids that they either have to get good grades and high scores on SAT/ACT or they will end up working at a fast food restaraunt, but there are also other options. Kids don't have to go to college to be successful. They can choose to go to classes to be an electrician or work in a retail store. Sure they may find better jobs easier if they have a college degree but that does not mean that in order to be successful every kid must be a straight A student and top of their class in high school. Also, this article says that parents should limit the after school activities that their child is involved in, but for me these activities relax me. It gives me an opportunity to not have to do homework or anything and not feel bad about it because I am required to be at practice to show I am dedicated to my team. These activities also provide quality time with old friends and opportunities to make new friends.
It seems to me that there are many hours every school year that are essentially wasted on worthless material that does nothing to further student learning (ex. worksheets that students rush through, movies, etc.). Instead of assigning hours of homework each night, it would seem more logical for teachers to allow students to do their work in class, allowing students to be guided by the teacher in their work and to ask questions.
ReplyDeleteIn extending the students' school day into their leisure time at home, we are developing a generation of workaholics who allow their career to wholly consume their lives.
Well, basically, yes I think that homework is important only if it promotes higher thinking and creativity. From young ages we are given busy work and taught to simply read and regurgitate. This of course ultimately coming back to haunt us when we come across a class that actually challenges us (that is of course if we do come across a class like that). In the end, my point is that homework (from a young age) should be either thought provoking and promoting creativity or not given at all.
ReplyDelete"Reconsider Attitudes about Success"
ReplyDeleteAs a student, I understand the amount of stress that is put upon by teachers. I, however, do not feel this pressure from my parents. They never pushed me to go one way or another; they let me choose what I want to do with the rest of my life. I feel that this benefited me because I was allowed freedom. I do have stress from teachers though. I had a teacher last year that constantly gave us busy work. There was not one night that I did not have homework. I came to the end of that class and I had not learned a thing; it had actually been detrimental to me. This year, I had a teacher that understood a student can learn without having the pressures of a lot of homework. I have learned significantly more in this class than the previous one. Too many teachers today are worried about getting the good grades and test scores. They think quantity is quality.
If society bases student's knowledge on grades, is it a big surprise many student's just focus on grades? Standardized tests and grades run the schools. More money is given to the schools with the higher test scores, so how can schools not focus on the tests? This is a skewed view placing a need for high grades and test scores above a hunger for learning.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really difficult issue to find a solution. On one hand, like previous comments state, our educations are falling behind other countries so rapidly, so decreasing the stress on education may hinder us. But on the other hand, childhood is the only time we have to be free without the worries of paying our electric bill or getting our rent paid in time. Children are having this freedom taken away from them by the ridiculous demands that they must meet in order to have what is defined as a successful, prosperous future.
ReplyDeleteI found it really interesting how some colleges have eliminated the requirement of ACT and SAT scores during the admission process. I believe that they should factor in life experience and character a lot more into their reviews. Obviously, the students must have adequate academics but that shouldn't be the only thing that determines their acceptance. This will help give children their childhoods back.
As a current high school student, I strongly agree with this essay. The idea that giving equally rigorous classes, but fewer for shorter periods is a brilliant idea. At my school, this is already happening to a certain extent, which I find to be very effective. This year, the school calender has been changed in order to have finals before Christmas break, which has been a problem in recent years. Although it forced the first semester to be a reasonable amount shorter than the second, I think it was overall a good idea.
ReplyDelete"The Home School Advantage"
ReplyDeleteI am sure there are merits to home-schooling. More may be accomplished, and the learning experience may be more regulated. Yet I feel that you lose much more than you gain when home-schooled. As an only child, I value my friends greatly. And when home-schooled, you lose the many interactions with your friends that may shape your life. Further, you may lose the ability to interact with other adults in your life (namely teachers). This, in the end, is too detrimental to our development as people to miss out on.
I believe that homework can be completely beneficial if the right amount is assigned. As a current high school student, I understand first hand the amount of pressure that comes with balancing extra-curricular activities, sleep, and homework. Assigning homework keeps the student's mind working and thinking about the content while outside of school, which can help the student achieve a higher level of learning and better understanding of the subject. However, this only contributes if I have two hours or homework or less. After I receive a larger amount of homework, let's say two hours or more, the quality of my work steadily decreases due to my average teenage attention span and inability to focus on a school related matter for such a great period of time. Homework is necessary but only to a certain extent; too much homework decreases the work quality, and too little homework can cause the student to forget the subject they are learning about before the next school day.
ReplyDelete"Homework Assignments"
ReplyDeleteThe amount of homework should depend purely on the class itself and it's students' abilities. As a student, I am constantly bombarded with homework that feels like simply "busy work." Many of the assignments that were given to me did have their benefits and got me thinking at night and I feel as though they have helped me excel in my classes. I feel like if the teacher are going to give me homework, they should make sure that their assignment is relevant to what we discussed that day. I also would enjoy more assignments that promote critical thinking. Some classes, on the other hand, such as exploratory classes should in no way have any homework. I feel like they, such as art classes and yearbook classes, are a way for students to have fun and relieve their stress from school by doing a class of their choice.
As a high school student, pushing myself to take honors classes and advancing in math classes, there becomes a line where I questions how will this help me in the future? I am riding that line between painfully demanding school and one in which the demands are too low. Do I choose to give up and take classes below me or suffer though the difficult ones and wind up disliking school.
ReplyDeleteAs a high school student taking honors classes I can relate to all of this. I am often frustrated when I am too swamped by homework to do anything worthwhile. It is hard for me to find time to research colleges, practice the piano, and even eat. Frequently I forget that I have not eaten dinner because I have been working on a project all afternoon, then wake up starving with no time to eat breakfast because I have to go to school. Unfortunately, at times we are forced to "cheat" or collaborate on our work just to get it done. I hate doing it, but there is no other way to get it all done sometime other than to have your friends do a part of it each and hope it all gets done. I have friends who play sports all afternoon, then do homework until midnight, then practice music until 1:00 am. It's disgusting how sleep deprived we all are. For all of you who think we can just suck it up and do it, I'd like to see you try it. Kids in China and Japan are not us. If we actually cared about what we did, if we were given something meaningful to work on that makes us thing, rather than 100 geometry problems (I am not exagerating) we would be able to compete with the Chinese much better.
ReplyDeleteYesterday I worked on one Chemistry assignment for seven and a half hours. This is not a joke.
From a high school student's point of view, homework for all classes should not take more than one hour to complete. Between the stress of school and extracurricular activities, students have a very small attention span for their classwork, when the classwork is outside of the classroom. Most homework given to students is busywork that after fifteen or twenty minutes provides no benefit in the understanding of the subject. This is because a student will either understand the subject or they won't. Hours upon hours of homework with no assistance from an instructor just leaves students more confused and frustrated, not miraculously enlightened on a subject.
ReplyDeleteThere's a need for competition and then there's the obserd excess of such that kids are pushed to now a days by parents and peers. Most often we are told that if we don't win we will end up in our parents basement or on the streets.
ReplyDeleteI believe that schools are fine just the way they are. I'm a junior at Manitou Springs High School in Colorado. We have 4 Blocks a day about an hour and half each, after the first two blocks we have this thing called Prime Time where we have 30 minutes of free time. After the Third block we have lunch for about 45 minutes. We also have about 10 minutes to get in between classes, and its perfect. My grades are pretty good and i dont feel any stress at all. So i dont see what the big deal is. The school system's free time is fine to me.
ReplyDeleteNigel Davenport-
ReplyDeleteI remember as a child having a very large amount of homework and just never enough play time. It didn't get better as i grew up either. the homework and class load just got bigger in middle school. I think this may have really burned me out on school.
I defiantly agree with this article. our current system just isn't working, stress and pressure aren't what we need to make us learn better. Instating things like physical education, art and health classes i think would really promote more learning and less destructive stress.
I agree 100%. I do believe that being home schooled takes off a lot of pressure and helps kids succeed. One of my friends used to be home schooled and he was so ahead of all of us and one of the most lied back kids I know. He had absolutely no stress!! It was great cause he could help me with all the new material I was working on because he already knew how to do it. Sp Uh, yeahhhhh. Ha.
ReplyDeleteI read a change the pace of the school day, I strongly agreed with the topic! When I'm comfortable with a teacher and I feel that they are actually there to teach me because they care not just for a pay check I am more likely to respond to what they have taught me! I am more willing to learn and do my work!
ReplyDeletehomeschool takes the stress of of kids what they are in their own environment less likely to do things and get in trouble. they learn quicker and faster. they learn the world but also dont get the reality of school either.
ReplyDeleteI think that parents should encourage kids to what they love. They should not push there kids to do what the kids do not want to do. Parents should keep there kids being kids as long as they can, because as everyone knows who is older, childhood does not last. Stress starts coming as soon as you hit middle school. Stressful classes, more homework, and peer pressure. Trying to keep school life, family life, and social life all separate and have it all work out is one of the most stressful things in life. Parents put much un-needed pressure to get straight As in school because they wont there kids to be doctors and lawyers and not have there kids working at Mcdonalds for the rest of there life. I think it is very un-needed to add all this pressure on little kids. Also one of my friends parents is one of the wealthiest people I have ever known in my life and never went to college and just got this way without college. So kids need to stay kids and have as much fun as they possibly can without the pressures of having to get good grades. Sorry it was a lot of ranting haha
ReplyDeleteI need childhood, and i think everyone needs childhood too. So it is a good point. And the childhood must not be stressful. The children will have time when they will be grown up to be stressful. That one of the good solutions to limit school activities after school time. That time should be free. The children need free time. They want to enjoy that until they.
ReplyDeleteMario Martinez
ReplyDeleteI go to Manitou Springs High School and they run a block schedule. I am in AVP; which means I'm enrolled in Pikes Peak Community College. I am only taking two classes and have very high grades in both of them. I have no homework which really keeps my stress level down, especially since I have a job.
Justin Burr- The fact that there is a number put on how much homework a student is given before they take the class is ridiculous. Homework should only be given for any grade level if the material sill needs to be learned. It is an insult that teachers send work home for us to do. What they are saying is hey I'm sorry we have to send this work home because we think you can learn more there than here. The fact that homework is graded is also wrong. When you look at your report card you want to see the percentage of material you have LEARNED that quarter. If home work is given when it is already learned then it should not be given. That's not what homework is for homework is to practice what is not learned. Test and quizzes are the only thing s that graded.
ReplyDelete