Currciulum Or Competition?

Written by Jenell Inthavong.

Many teenagers feel pressured to complete homework, do good on tests, and get good grades. Because today’s society places immense significance on being intelligent and successful, this leads to teens feeling a need to do well in school. However, the way a typical teen defines ‘doing well in school’ is often dependent on what letter grades they have in each class. ‘A’ for average, ‘B’ for below average, and ‘C’ for can’t catch up. Doing well in school is no longer defined by how well someone understands a concept or how hard someone works to complete a project. It is instead defined by GPA and social status. Friends, parents, and teachers all contribute to the need to succeed in school. For some teens, nothing is ever enough for their parents. For others, they don’t want to let their parents down because they feel that their self worth is dependent on their grades. Many teens just want to belong somewhere, and it can be hard to feel like you fit in when all your friends are straight-A students. The pressure that surrounds students is crushing and all-consuming. Being at school for seven hours a day, five days a week, can lead to tunnel vision, or focusing on one goal- the goal of getting good grades. Students’ lives are centered around their grades and how well they did on that one test; that one paper. Teens want to succeed in school, especially because they’re told that to do good later in life, you have to graduate high school. The need for good grades affects all teens.

The competitive nature of high school also contributes highly to teen stress. Students have to do well to graduate, and then get into a good college, and they have to do well in college to land a good job, which they have keep to support their family, so that their family can do well and their children can graduate high school and go to a good college, and so on. The competition that exists between high school students combined with what society considers a ‘good life’ trap students in a vicious cycle. Students have to do well so their kids can do well and then the cycle just goes on. Teens have to be at the top of their class; they have to be the best because everyone tells them so. For many teens, their overall class ranking can feel like either a reward or a sentence. A chance to succeed, or a ball and chain. Students are told that everything depends on how well they can do in school. And what will happen if they don’t? Teachers and other adults put students against each other in an effort to avoid the fact that grades aren’t everything.

This competitive nature and pressure from all angles leads to extreme stress for most students. Instead of the optimal learning environment, the need to get good grades overshadows students’ desire to learn. Students will cram before a test instead of studying the material little by little or write a 1,000-word essay in one night, all because of reasons such as stress, procrastination, or simply having too much other homework to focus on. The stressful environment created by school overshadows the actual lessons being taught in class because students are too focused on getting an A. Teachers push students to be the best, but at what cost? Schools today are more focused on churning students out like factories rather than giving students the chance to focus on themselves and an education that will have a positive impact. Competition at school creates a tense atmosphere and has an incredibly negative effect on students that lasts even after high school ends. The push to succeed and get good grades heightens students’ anxiety and changes the way students think about school. While competition aides in helping some students succeed, for others, competition means that they’re just trying to get that 4.0. Education has been reduced to a set of numbers and letters that determine whether a student is smart or not and this has lasting impacts on both students’ physical and mental health especially.

After students graduate, many feel unprepared for life outside of high school. The lessons taught in high school don’t stand the test of time and aren’t helpful in real life. The anxiety caused by high school often lasts into adult life, leftover from that chaotic environment. The education system is a large part of the conversation about teen mental health because the years that students spend in high school are years that are filled with stress. In the race to make students valedictorian, schools leave the important lessons out of the curriculum. Facts and lesson plans that teenagers won’t remember in one year are all students these days are learning. Instead of learning about issues with real-world relevance or being taught the basics of adulthood, students are taught to memorize the unit circle and balance equations and are made to believe that that is somehow more important than their own mental health. Instead of making better students, this method of teaching creates a toxic way of thinking and bad habits that will carry into adulthood. The real high school experience that teenagers remember is based on the people they meet and the memories they make, not the grades they receive. Education today focuses on making students mindless memorization machines instead of preparing them to follow their dreams in a realistic way. Adults will remember the difficulty of waking up early, the anxiety of finals, and the countless hours spent trying to mentally escape the classroom. Even with modern methods of modeling high schools after college campuses, who’s to say that college is any better than high school? The pressure placed on students everywhere to succeed and get good grades has far more negative effects than it does positive. High school in the 21st century has strayed too far from what education should be. Today, teachers lose sight of the impact they could have on their students and instead focus only on the next paycheck. Students have been and are overworked when they should be learning about things that truly matter. In fifty years, will you remember the grade you got on that one chemistry test? No, but you’ll remember how you had panic attacks over it. Getting good grades is no longer worth what it used to be.

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