Overpacked days lead to restless nights, and more experts are rightly questioning the sense — and safety — of that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/opinion/frank-bruni-todays-exhausted-superkids.html
Of course my long response got deleted because the site is glitchy =/
It can be summed up concisely though.
1.) Frank Bruni needs to stop writing opinion pieces. He’s a hack who has no idea what he’s talking about and is contributing to the problems, rather than constructively offering an idea of how to solve them.
2.) This is an issue with society as a whole. The problems with school are simply a symptom of this problem. We’re heading towards longer hours with less pay and we’ve been going in that direction for a while.
3.) The issue is being bombarded with bright lights, social media, sedentary lives with little exercise and mental rest, and chronic stress. This plagues all of society – school just happens to take part in this. How many nights do kids stay up late with their lights on staring at bright computer screens typing up a paper, or staring at a math textbook trying to figure out that last set of problems? There’s a constant stream of activity going on and people don’t know how to disconnect from all of it. The idea that we’re expected to be at 100% for hours and hours and then suddenly you can just shut off your brain is insane. Your body takes time to turn off and calm down so that it can go to sleep. There’s no wind down for most people – they just expect to go from 0 to 100 and back to 0 again at command.
4.) Frank Bruni REALLY needs to stop writing opinion pieces.
This… just… wow. This is contributing to the problem. What kid can find “genuine passions” when (s)he is 14-18? Why can’t a kid just do stuff that he/she enjoys for the sake of enjoyment? Why do people need to “discover true freedom” (what does that even mean…)? Kids are rational human beings. Let’s treat them like that and allow them to make decisions for themselves. They should be given the power to make their choices and live with the consequences, regardless of the outcome. But they should also learn to do something because they enjoy it. They should take classes in things that they like and appreciate something for the experience of doing it, not for its outcome. He’s just pandering to moms with this piece and trying to tell everyone that they should grow up to learn what it’s like to live a life with a “normal” amount of stress. There’s no such thing as normal and maybe if we stopped trying to get kids to fit a specific mold we’d be better off.
Why can’t a kid just go to the park and player soccer with his friends? Why does he need to be on two travel teams, a club team, and the school’s varsity team? People can do things just because they enjoy them and not because they expect it to be their passion. I love playing guitar, but it’s not a passion of mine. I play with my friends and I love to learn new songs at home, but it’s not something I’d do professionally. Actively pursuing your passions is the easiest way to never find one.
Agrees,micmatt. I have long complained about expecting a 15 or 16 year old to have a " passion". what is wrong with a teen tries different activities? Oh yeah, then the college admissions officers see him/her as a dabbler. Can’t win.
We seem to spend a lot of time worrying about how stressed out all our kids are. The reality is that this applies to 1-5% of the HS kids in America. Even at our local HS, nationally ranked, 90+% go to college, etc… this only applies to the top level. The vast majority of the kids are getting plenty of sleep, getting high on a very regular basis, and not at all concerned about ECs, APs, or test scores. It would be nice if we spent as much time worrying about the 95% of kids who don’t have any sense of personal responsibility, don’t give a damn, and think mom, dad, or Uncle Sam are going to take care of them.
Wow @gluttonforstress Not sure where you live but I am glad I don’t live there! The vast majority of students are getting high? 95% don’t have a sense of personal responsibility? You should really consider moving.
@gluttonforstress Can you substantiate that 95% of kids don’t care and lack personal responsibility more than is normal for a teenager? Because it seems the elders of every generation back to the Ancient Egyptians have had that complaint (I remember once reading a translated papyrus complaining about how all kids these days do is talk back to their parents and get drunk in taverns.), and my experience growing up poor working class certainly doesn’t substantiate the idea that me or my peers expected our parents (who can’t afford to help us out with college much) or Uncle Sam (whom we don’t trust) to take care of us.
this is an issue for a small small small % of american kids/families. not everyone lives in Manhattan and takes a helicopter to he Hamptons for the weekend. most people who have ambitions of even attending college never look past the local state college. they have to work in high school to pay for a car/insurance or help pay the family bills. they are stressed in life because that is what humans do (it is built into our wiring) but the stress is not from worrying about if yale or stanford will take them in. it is from real life issues that regular folk worry/deal with.
p.s. the new york times is an elitist publication read by elitists (and the NYT has been slipping in readership and relevance for a long time)
@zobroward - I do not deny that the NY Times represents a particular viewpoint, but what news publication would you feel is more representative of a America as a whole? And hasn’t readership of ALL newspapers/magazine etc been slipping in the digital age?
Wsj :))
Don’t blame Bruni for this. He is simply observing the mishigas and writing about it. Read his latest book “Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be”. He does make some suggestions about how individuals and the system can change.
I’ve felt this way about Bruni for a while, @anonymous26. He has constantly put out some of the worst editorials of any of the NYT staff in my opinion.
He has written about numerous topics that he really has no clue about and a lot of the times I find that he just writes for the generic “progressive” position most times. I know opinion pieces are allowed to be biased, but that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t accurately represent whatever the topic is.
And although I agree that the NYT is too elitist for me, I prefer it to a lot of other newspapers. The NYT puts out accurate news and consistently has some of the best researched articles in the industry (see: Rolling Stone’s article about UVa), but the opinion section often leaves more to be desired.
The last thing I’d like to point out is that where you go IS who you’ll be. Maybe not all of who you’ll be, but it will still be part of who you become. Just like who you choose to hang out with, what music you listen to, what things you do for fun, and all those other qualities shape who you are. I think we focus too heavily on the political correctness of the situation sometimes. The truth is that someone’s classmates at Harvard are going to be different than his/her classmates at Alabama. Not that one is preferable and one is “worse,” but they are going to be entirely different environments. You can’t live somewhere for four years and not have it at least form a part of you.
@toowonderful USA Today? :)) Most dumb-downed newspaper IMO
It would help a lot if schools would schedule the day’s beginning a little later. Elementary school students start at 9 in many communities, and middle and high schoolers start at 7:30. This could be reversed. The needs of sports drive this schedule. Imagine a day that starts at 10 and ends at 4! But even 9-3 would help a lot.
Micmatt, I don’t understand your diatribe against “passions.” I consider a “passion” to be something you truly enjoy doing, and your guitar playing would certainly qualify. I think we interpret the word differently. I found this article to be on target, but a bit trite, since we all read these articles every day and nothing really changes.
My kids went to a subpar school (I chose the community inentionally) and they did not have a huge amount of homework. They did indeed explore many interests, which distilled into more focused “passions” later in high school. They have all continued to pursue those “passionate” interests which they enjoyed so much (in and of themselves, not for college admissions) and have acquired new ones too, once at college. Ironically they did get into great schools.
I don’t know what I would do now for my kids’ education. My youngest is 22, oldest is 29. They all avoided full day kindergarten and two out of 3 avoided preschool. Nowadays they would be “behind.” It wasn’t that long ago that early education was “developmental” with lots of play, creative projects, no academics or only rudimentary before first grade.
Our school had an um, relaxed guidance counselor who gave equat attention to kids going to community college, military or work. Many of us paid no attention to his colege advice but the atmosphere was less stressed than it is now, with well-trained guidance counselors pushing the kids and a new principal who wants to increase selective admissions.
I sometimes think we had the right idea: avoid school obligations as much as possible so that kids do have the “room to breathe” and do what they enjoy. That doesn’t mean working less though. it just means working at what has meaning for you, not what the Edcuation Board requires so the particular school scores well on standardized tests.
This article is confusing. If they really were “Superkids”, they wouldn’t be exhausted, would they?
Just an anecdotal tidbit . . . my physician and my dentist both have high achieving kids who went Ivy (one went to Harvard). Both of these unrelated health care providers - completely unprompted and I’m not even sure how we got on the topic - shared with me how tired their kids were. One was frustrated that the child was bucking them on graduate school.
Right on @JustOneDad!
Newspaper best representative of America? The Peoria Journal Star maybe?
@micmatt513 Your insights are spot on. There are many choices that, in aggregate, define a person. Very few are absolute but people are effected by their environment. I guess the lesson is that going to a college other than an Ivy does not define you to mediocrity (as many young people seem to think).
Perhaps Bruni should have titled his book “Where You Is Not Necessarily Who You’ll Be”
After seeing the hassles/stress my older child went through applying to competitive schools, younger sib has opted to apply only to affordable state schools with good honors programs for NMF and skipping the Ivy league and Daisy league applications altogether.
That’s the most sane option for us.
Ivies have amazing financial aid. And they are great experiences, with interesting peers and courses. State schools are great too: two of my kids went to ivies and late in life I took classes at our state university and was very impressed., no large lectures or TA’s in sight and the teaching quality was excellent…
if a state school is more affordable due to a family’s EFC then I would choose a state u., but if the Ivy is affordable, I would still try for it, but with the right attitude- this kind of stress is not necessary.
I hate to see any college experience denigrated, Ivy, state or any other. And if one person goes through a lot to apply maybe another won’t. it is a shame to limit oneself, but finances would justify the limit more than anything else.