Are the new standards and expectations the world has for teenagers really creating monsters? The amount of stress that is put on students these days between trying to balance school, homework, extra curricular activities, social lives, sleep and a healthy lifestyle is being considered as a health epidemic (Palmer, 2005). Students are obsessing over getting the grades that are expected of them to please those that push them, and in return, lose sleep and give up other aspects of their lives that are important to them such as time with friends and family as well as activities that they enjoy. The stress that they endure from the pressures of parents, teachers, colleges, and peers have many physical as well as mental effects on every student, some more harmful than others. The extreme pressure on students to get perfect grades so that they will be accepted into a college has diminished the concept of actually learning and has left the art of “finagling the system” in order to succeed in its place (Palmer, 2005). There are many ways that should be implemented in order to reduce the stress on students so that they can thrive because, withoutthem, the school systems will only be creating generations of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students (Palmer, 2005).
There are multiple causes when it comes to stressed out students. First consider where the pressure is coming from for students to get good grades. Parents and teachers tend to be the main suspects. Parents want to see their kids succeed in everything they do and grades are no different. Some students see a bad grade as them failing their parents because their parents believe in them so much (Weissbourd, 2011). Teachers have multiple reasons why they want to see their ...
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...ke school something that the students can look back on and think that it was a meaningful time where they learned a lot about life instead of a time where they thought they would have a break down because they got a low score on a test. School should be a time to make mistakes in a safe environment that they can learn from, not a place that they are petrified to make a mistake for fear of retribution on their grade cards. Its time to change the school system to save future students from becoming stress crazed and to let them know that there is more to this world than a grade card and in the long run it is a very small fraction of life.
Works Cited
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED536513.pdf
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may11/vol68/num08/The-Overpressured-Student.aspx
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/february23/cheat-022305.html
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