Doing math homework during English class, cramming in one more extra curricular activity and getting three hours of sleep a night are common habits among today’s high school students.
Denise Pope, author of Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, offers many ways to reduce stress in her book .
Pope argued in her speech on May 18 at North Star School (a third through eighth grade charter school in Redwood City) that kids no longer go to school to learn, but to get good grades. According to Pope, school is one more step to success for students, which is defined for many people as being a college education and high paying job.
According to Pope, more students are going to college than ever before, which creates competition and high levels of stress for applying students. In an effort to earn good grades needed to get into college, students are multi-tasking and not learning in school, becoming what Pope calls "robo-students."
"Students explain that they are busy at what they call ‘doing school,’" Pope writes in her book. "They realize that they are caught in a system where achievement depends more on ‘doing’ – going through the correct motions – than on learning and engaging with the curriculum."
David Pedersen, a father of two high school boys, attended Pope’s speech and agreed that schools instill the wrong sense of success in students which leads to "doing" instead of learning to get ahead.
"We are killing a lot of kids and squashing their creativity," Pedersen said.
Michelle Wachs, a mother of a North Star student, believes the area where a child is raised affects the level of stress and push for students to reach a high level of achievement.
"I think in Northern California, the heart of Silicon Valley, there is a trickle down effect where kids feel they have to be the best," Wachs said.
Stress in students is three times more intense in suburbs than in cities, according to Pope.
Pope suggested that teachers should re-evaluate their curriculum and style to motivate students to learn.
"Individual teachers can change their practices to help curiosity," Pope said, "then the school can change as well."
Pope also encouraged students to think about alternative college experiences. She stated that attending two-year community colleges can be better than being stressed about big name colleges.
Pedersen agreed that a narrow minded approach to college does not allow for many other options.
"It would help if more people were educated about the alternative opportunities," Pedersen said. "[The final decision about college] has a lot to do with the individual."
Wachs hopes that her children will make that final decision for college according to what they want, and for them to enjoy wherever they decide to attend.
"I would only encourage [my kids] to do what makes them happy," Wachs said. "I want them to find a college to achieve their own goals, not mine."
Pope also runs the Stressed-Out Student (SOS) project at Stanford University, which works with schools to maintain health, engagement in class, and integrity by reforming their system of teaching.
"We don’t prescribe, we just ask you to think about strategies that might work to fix your problem," Pope said.
Pope hopes to eventually reduce student stress, one teacher and one school at a time.