Pressure And Shame : Is Not A Necessary Step Towards Learning? Essay

Because of the United State’s education system, students are manipulated into thinking that if they don’t receive a passing grade that they won’t become successful in the near future. The pressure causes students to have anxiety. Anxiety has a harsh negative effect on the human brain. The human brain, according to Bain, consists of three separate parts: The alligator brain, the pleasure brain, and the spock brain. Bain says that the spock brain is the part of the brain that builds mental models, stores them, and uses them to interpret new things that are introduced. It’s the part of your brain that makes the rational decisions. The alligator brain is the opposite. It is the brain that interprets “fight or flee.” It makes the fast decisions. When the brain feels pressure, it quickly causes the adrenal gland to release cortisol into the body. Heavy doses of this chemical mixture can block the spock brain from recalling memories. This is catastrophic for students when the grade is immensely crucial like a standardized test. Along those lines, for students that are facing difficulty in a course, they feel obligated to cheat to maintain a good grade, which promotes dishonesty. This dishonestly will eventually lead to students to stop studying harder because if a student can pass a test without studying, it’ll be more rational to cheat than wasting the time that they could be spending on an activity that they actually enjoy rather

Another area many people tend to aim to be successful in is the concept of the American Dream. It is thought that if you live in America you need to fulfill the goal of achieving the American Dream and if it is not achieved or not meant to be achieved then the life lived has been a failure. Older generations and even present generations want the younger generations to get good grades, have a ‘successful’ college life, get a professional job, get married, have kids, and buy a big, just because that is normal to everyone but some may choose to live their life not as vanilla. William Zinsser talks about how everyone just follows the social norm in order to be seen as successful, “Our advertisements and TV commercials are a hymn to material success, our magazines articles a toast to people who made it to the top... He is our national idol, and everybody else is our national fink” (Zinsser 601). Becoming a specific type of successful is being pushed onto teenagers who are still struggling to find out who they are and what they want to do. They may want to figure out a different way to become successful in their own independent way.

Alfie Kohn discussed multiple fabulous points in his article, “Degrading to De-Grading”. The author suggests more effective ways to assess students’ progress other than numerical or letter grades. Kohn goes into detail about why our current grading system is flawed. Grades can cause students to lose interest in learning which causes them to stop taking challenges. If students are not engaged and interested than they are not retaining the information they are being taught. The grading system can also cause students to develop unhealthy competition with one another for instance, “I got a better grade than you!”. Indeed, grades are a wonderful concept, but they tend to be more hurtful than helpful. In some cases, grades can have positive effects on students. For example, setting goals for various assignments, or receiving help where they are struggling. Though, there are alternatives that could make positive changes in the system.

A persistent educational goal of school was to give everyone the same chance to pursue wealth, which is known as equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity is the idea that individuals compete with one another with all participants starting at the same point, which Horace Mann referred to as the, “great balance wheel of society” (Spring, 2016, p. 66). Schools provide everyone with an equal opportunity to pursue an education and wealth; however, I believe there are factors that alter that equilibrium. Mann believed that equality of opportunity would reduce tensions between the rich and the poor. It allowed the poor to believe that regardless of their circumstance their children had an equal chance to compete with children of rich families (Spring, 2016 p. 67). However, there are factors that will contribute to your opportunity to succeed, but schools give students the opportunity to all start on the same path that end in different destinations.

In addition, schools are like assemblies that are require to follow procedures. Assemblies follow ideas or rules to have organize the people, for this reason schools due the same thing. However, those who don’t follow the procedures would show a low progress in class. For example, in the article “Kid, I’m sorry, but You’re Just Not College Material” by Michael J. Petrilli shows how students perform low in their academics’ level, and instead they decide to work because its less challengeable. As a result, not every college student is capable of attending and graduation from college because of their education level. However, everything leads back to when the college students were children. Their academic preface in college show a negative path

Mike Rose in his piece I Just Wanna be Average and Richard Rodriguez in Achievement of Desire approach the subject of education from the view point of the uninspired and highly motivated student respectively. Both authors examine the importance of teacher expectations on achievement, and the role school and home environment plays in academic success.

In the novel, Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids, author, Alexandra Robbins conveys the message that today’s society, including school systems, parents, friends, and students themselves, puts so much pressure on students to succeed (which means doing well well on standardized tests having high GPAs/class ranks, and being accepted into prestigious schools and universities.) This extreme amount of pressure can result in students not learning as much while at school, as well as unhappiness and other issues. Robbins conveys this message throughout the novel by following multiple students around school at Walt Whitman High to discover what the “perfect” overachiever secretly goes through in order to be successful.

Parents want their child at the top of the class and a head of the others.

The grading system is failed cause student focus on score and being on top of the class. In school, children may learn basic academic skills. Also, they may discover social knowledge by attending at the school, which the educational system base for testing and grading; therefore, they will evaluate with marks and understand of teacher’s technique “This stage lasts twelve years, a period during which the child learns that success comes from telling testers what that want to hear”(Baker 72). In fact this structure helps student to prepare for

When a child reaches high school they study when, what and for how long according to what they want. It is completely student driven and allows the students motivation to be the driving force for study. This is the opposite of today’s student who is driven by fear of failure, parents, and competition, as stated by Frazier. Since they will not be learning to become a high paying professional, they are learning for the sake of knowledge. This becomes something that is highly prized and children are motivated by to gain for themselves. It is important because it translate into other parts of their life; they do things for their own interest producing an all around happier individual and therefore a more productive whole. The happiness of a productive society member can also be attributed to equality of all society members.

This means that students lose their curiosity and passion for school. Instead, they reduce everything to points,

This type of grading system has been shown to have several advantages. Body I. The Pros of Pass Fail Grading System. A. Takes pressure off students at certain levels. B. Give students a clear cut idea of their weaknesses

Nowadays, the sense of competition has been greatly rooted in the public. The parents and teachers plays an important role in the development of the elite. On the one hand, some of their parents force them to participate in various test and join many instrumental class, whereas a few parents have supported their children to do what he or she really want. The former may become helicopter parents, monitoring what they do. In response, they have no choose but do what their parents want. On the other hand, a number

The purpose of this literature review paper is to navigate and explore different effects in society towards peer pressure, conformity and rebellion. This study attempts to answer the following research questions: How does peer pressure, conformity, and rebellion affects adolescents in society? The main goal of this review is to have knowledge of the effects of this three concepts such as: peer pressure, conformity and rebellion.

Teachers have always used grades to measure the amount a student has learned. This practice is becoming ineffective. Many students have a wide range of grades, which show that grades may not show what a student really knows. Therefore, the standard grading system should be replaced. Some reasons why grades should be replaced are bad grades can hinder a child’s performance, grades define who a student is in the classroom, and grades are not an effective way to see if students have learned the material. The current grading system should be upgraded and every school should incorporate the plus/minus system in their method of grading.