Is The Drive For Success Making Our Children Sick

Students today undergo constant pressure for perfection, going through extreme efforts to meet this expectation. Alexandra Robbins, an investigative journalist and author of The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, views modern educational culture as a danger to students because it advocates productivity over learning. On the other hand, Jay Mathews of the Washington Post believes that students today are more apathetic than stressed. Robbins perception of today’s schools is more accurate than Mathews’, for students cheat to appear smarter, burden themselves with grueling schedules to impress colleges, and develop mental disorders as a result.

In addition to sleep deprivation, homework-related stress can lead to serious, long-term psychological health problems for some hard-working students. While short periods of stress are meant to

Not only does homework help student but also it creates interaction between teens and parents. However, statics has shown that even though homework is a way to refresh what students have learned, it also create stress for students. Homework has shown its benefits for student but most of the time when student is given a homework it’s likely he/she will not do it. They believe it’s stressful,and when they can’t get the right answer, they gave up instantly instead of keep practicing. According to researchers, they believe that when student do more homework they get better grades and do well on the test/quizzes that were given. Even though homework has many advantage toward students, it also has disadvantage. Which include having too much homework and these things could lead to mental health issue toward students.

In December 2011 Suleyman Avci conducted a study on 508 first grade students to learn the relationship between self-regulation and the delay of gratification in doing well in academics. Most people are aware the more time they put into something the better the results will turn out and the bigger the reward will be. This theory applies to almost anything including academics. The more one studies the better they will do on a test however, not all students understand this, which explains why some students are more stressed than others. In order to perform well in school students need to set goals for the future and not get distracted by things in the present, like watching television or playing video games, instead of studying for a test. I am completely aware of this; nevertheless, it is still hard to do because my “hot system” wants the instant gratification of doing something fun rather than homework. Future success is hindered by the need for instant gratification. Students who achieve higher levels of academic success are those who realize academic rewards are more important than temporary satisfaction. Those

The goal of wanting to succeed is quite natural for everyone. It is not unjust to assume that all students want to become successful as well. However, some students are more determined to succeed than others and take extreme steps to do so. Richard Rodriguez’s The Scholarship Boy discusses the issue with scholarship students. He argues the overachieving student has an eager obsession with learning. Although Rodriguez addresses the scholarship boy obsession with success, he fails to describe the undergoing stress of the overachieving student.

In his op-ed, “Are Kids Too Coddled?,” author Frank Bruni argues that children need to be exposed to the harshness of reality. According to Bruni, “praise… can lessen motivation and set children up to be demoralized when they invariably fail at something” (par. 25). By showering children in praise even when they are not successful, students will never learn the importance of hard work. There is no reason to put in effort to go above and beyond expectations if mediocre work receives the same amount of acknowledgement. Due to the excess of undeserved praise, Bruni believes that “students have an inflated sense of their academic prowess” (par. 26). Students expect to get good grades without studying and working hard. In order to reverse the damage caused by sheltering our children, Bruni argues that an application of more rigorous standards in school is necessary to make America’s children “ready to compete globally” (par. 29). By setting higher standards, students will be able to learn more and attain true academic excellence.

The true value of education is lost as grades and numbers become top priority. In a spoken word, Suli Breaks shares that students have becomes zombies in schools that run everything in a routine. They lose sleep to hand in assignments and meet the dead-line yet by that time the students are also half dead. The grade is all that the student starts to care about because that is what the school is directing their efforts towards. With all of their focus on the grade no one remembers to remember what they learned and apply it in life. Thus, it is in one semester and out the next. In one study teachers witnessed “unprecedented levels of school-related anxiety, stress, and mental health amongst pupils, particularly at exam time”. People may think that only college students do all nighters but it actually is not surprising to find high school and sometimes even middle schools staying up late nights trying to finish up assignments. All of this leads to sleep deprivation which affects the student’s health and in turn propels their stress as time virtually elapses out of existence. Likewise, the school system runs in such a way that mistakes become feared in an unhealthy manner. It is fine to have the fear of failure but one must learn to accept it because once it is accepted, children are not afraid to take a chance at trying something new. Ken Robinson makes the point that “we

Students in America want to perform well during their school time, so they have a chance of getting a scholarship at best universities in the country. A lot of young Americans spend all their nights preparing for exams, because they can’t do it in the afternoon due to their sports and social life. Therefore many a night are spend studying hard for exams, so the teacher will not fail them and by that prevent them from getting their dream education. However, this tight and packed schedule causes the young Americans to get really exhausted and overloaded, and later on it might even cause cases of stress. In the meantime, this complex of problems seems to have got a solution. A solution that is so effective that most people never would have

One of the reasons student’s shouldn’t be receiving large amounts of homework is because it can cause many negative health effects. According to recent studies, doing excessive amounts of homework can cause headaches, sleep deprivation, and weight loss. This means that students that are assigned lots of homework can be prone to many negative

“49 percent of students reported feeling “a great deal of stress” on a daily basis. Half reported doing three or more hours of homework per night, and 26 percent noted that they had been diagnosed with depression” (Ossola, 1). With all that is expected of students in school, some rules she be changed to reduce these crazy issues. If schools would reduce homework, start school later, changed dress codes, and extend lunches, student would thrive and succeed more in school.

High school students feel more stress than working adults, and children are beginning to feel aversion towards learning. Both adolescents and children are at risk of health issues due to anxiety and less time is spent with family, playing, and sleeping. The cause for all of this is too much homework that is suffocating students. Homework causes students to sleep less, have more stress, and even forces students to give up extracurricular activities. These negative results can be improved by reducing the homework load.

This is true however giving reasonable amounts of homework will allow both time for family and time for learning. Alfie Kohn, the author of The Homework Myth Why Our Kids Get Too Much of a Bad Thing, says that homework promotes “such virtues as self-discipline and responsibility” (3). This shows that homework not only benefits the student academically but teaches the student valuable time management skills that are needed later in

The quality of students’ homework is much more important than the quantity of students homework and data collected during recent studies has proven that homework is not making the grade. “. . . American students are entangled in the middle of international academic rankings: 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math according to the most recent results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)” (Murphy-Paul). Students should not be given an excessive amount of homework because the pressure of having to complete excessive amounts of homework every night is quite daunting for most students. Knowing how much homework is the right amount correlates with age and grade. An 8th grade student should not be given a myriad of homework that would keep her awake past midnight completing assignments. In any case, there should be a limit on the amount of homework all teachers give to students because an excessive amount of homework would eventually cause students to become uninterested in school and learning, which could result in poor test scores and low ranks in international academic rankings. In order for students to carry out daily activities throughout the day restfully, teachers must be able to provide homework that does not exceed the appropriate amount of time needed to complete it, which is based on grade level. If teachers are too clueless of a students health due to excessive amounts of homework, many students will develop cases of sleep

Even though schools and instructors do not want a change and don 't consider the fact that success is making students sick, a strategy to encounter this would be to encourage college educators and fellow students to adopt in instituting a half-day off every other week. This strategy was implemented in Vicki Abeles’ essay, “Is the Drive for Success Making Our Children Sick?” In her essay, she argues about how children’s academic efforts and extracurricular involvement are “eroding children’s health and undermining their potential” (par.6). Therefore, when reading this, I figured that this strategy would be most encouraged to adopt at the Madera Community College Center. The strategy that Vicki Abeles provided will benefit the student to remember the lecture as well as help the students to have less stress and depression. Furthermore, in adopting a half-day off every other week will have its benefits, disadvantages and its obstacles to implement it.

Stress and anxiety in students is mainly caused by homework (Galloway 3). Excessive Homework can cause a variety of health problems and “Studies that have explored the relation between homework and well-being indicate that number of hours of homework is negatively associated with psychological well-being, physical health symptoms, and sleep.” and these health issues can be very detrimental to students (Galloway 4). According to Galloway a “study of 1,457 students…found that academic demands [were the main reason] students gave for their sleep-deprivation.” and a lack of sleep can be detrimental to learning and engagement in school. A study of Australian high school students showed that doing more homework led to “more mood disturbance (…and fatigue) (Galloway 4). More time spent doing homework, the