Opinion Story

If going to school is such a large part of a child’s life, shouldn’t we try to make it a place where they actually want to go? For kids everywhere, school is the most stressful part of their day. A simple presentation or test that should be no big deal is causing students to lose sleep, suffer anxiety, and even skip class. The pressure put on students at school is outrageous, and needs to be reduced.

Many teenagers experience mental illnesses that stem from the stress of school. As reported by The Guardian, 46% of polled teachers claimed they knew of kids in middle and high school harming themselves. While there are most likely several factors contributing to this statistic, school-induced anxiety is a big part of the self-harm rate.

In addition, The Almanac printed statistics from the National Institutes of Health and its study on random San Francisco students. The study found that 30% of the city’s high schoolers suffered beneath a suicide risk, and one institution in particular (Menlo-Atherton High School) saw 40 teens forced to go under behavior monitoring within a year.

While school for most doesn’t lead to self-harm, it is a major source of anxiety. 31% of teens reported feeling overwhelmed, 30% reported feeling sad or depressed as a result of their stress, 36% of teens report feeling tired, and 23% report skipping a meal due to stress. Students should not be endangering their mental and physical health to get an education.

Some may argue that pressure is a necessary part of school to push students and get them ready for the outside world. However, in a study conducted in August 2013 by the American Psychological Association comparing teen stress to adult stress, the findings are interesting. During the school year teens rate their stress at 5.8 out of 10 while the adults average reported stress level is 5.1 out of 10. Yes pressure is necessary, but the anxiety students are feeling is more than what they will see in the future.

There is a fine balance between motivating students to succeed and putting too much stress on them. I think that mixing fun and easy assignments in with major presentations and tests would help students cope with their workload.

In addition, there should be more remediation opportunities on tests. The whole point of school is to learn. Having test corrections rewards students for fixing their mistakes, and in the process helps them understand why they got the questions wrong. If there were more correction opportunities, the stress induced by tests would decrease and kids would be motivated to improve their academic skills.

Education is arguably one of the most important parts of a kid’s life. It teaches them both academic and people skills that they will need to succeed in their future lives. I firmly believe this, but many students don’t. A lot of my friends have given up on school because they don’t grasp just how vital it is. This is a problem that high schools across America and the world are facing. That is why we need to implement solutions to make school a healthy learning environment where students want to be.