How High School Became an Academic Pressure Cooker

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Oh, not really, we have Xfinity Shield, so we're not worried.

Ananya Kota (0:26)

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Welcome to Forum, I'm Mina Kim. Anxiety, depression and burnout are increasingly common among high school students, especially these days as they apply to top colleges. Pediatrician Stuart Slavin says the phenomenon that was largely concentrated in affluent neighborhoods two decades ago, has spread like a contagion infecting a wider socioeconomic swath, and far more than smartphones and social media are the culprits. Slavin says it's the pressure cooker of academic and extracurricular demands and performance expectations from teachers, coaches, parents and the students themselves. And this hour, we hear from a student, a school administrator, and from Slavin, whose new book is called The Success Trap. And listeners, if this sounds familiar to you, give us a call at 866-733-6786, find us on Discord, Blue Sky, Facebook, or Instagram at KQED Forum, or call us at 866-733-6786, 866-733-6786.

Are you a student, a recent graduate, a parent of a student? How has academic pressure affected you?

I'd also like to welcome to the program now, Los Altos High School Senior Ananya Kota. Ananya, welcome.

Ananya Kota (1:49)

Thank you so much for having me.

Mina Kim (1:50)

And of course, Stuart Slavin, pediatrician, medical educator, and researcher and author of The Success Trap. Stuart, welcome to Forum.

Stuart Slavin (1:57)

Thank you so much, Mina. Pleasure to be here with you.

Mina Kim (2:00)

So Ananya, I'll start with you. You wrote a piece for your student paper in May about the pressure a student face. So tell me, what made you write the piece?

Ananya Kota (2:10)

Yeah, of course. So I've always kind of been aware of the academic pressure that was in the Bay Area. And generally, I felt that it manifested differently in different schools. And I was really curious how the academic pressure affected Los Altos High School in particular. So I was kind of mulling it over. And while I was thinking about it, unfortunately, a student had committed suicide in one of the recent in one of our school districts nearby. And I think that kind of made me realize just how horrible the academic pressure could be.

And I really wanted to understand by speaking to students and getting their experiences, speaking to teachers, and understand how does it affect our school particularly? And why do students feel the need to over perform so much?

Mina Kim (2:54)

So how were you seeing it manifest? How was it affecting you and your peers?

Ananya Kota (2:59)

I honestly primarily saw it manifest within the student community itself. So when I started writing the article, it was a little difficult. Honestly, I had to turn myself into an observer of a community I was so already integrated in.

So I was constantly observing and seeing the interactions between students, where students would be like, oh, I just got to be on this test. I'm going to fail. And I was just thinking in the back of my head, like, no, you're not going to fail. I mean, the standard is so high and students are making very casual comments that kind of inflate that standard. And I just think like a lot of the times when we get, for example, like grades back or there's the SAT or the ACT, the AP scores, it's always the highest standard that's expected among students. If students don't get a five on their AP exam, they're automatically disappointed and assume that they're failing. If they get a B, they're automatically panicked and assuming, oh, I'm failing. Anything less than the standard, it feels like failing to a lot of the students is sort of the impression that I got while observing my community.

Mina Kim (4:04)

Did you find that people were talking about having trouble sleeping, that they were, you know, experiencing some degree of not feeling like they were good enough?

Ananya Kota (4:17)

Definitely.

It's very common for me to hear like, oh, I only got like three hours of sleep. I was studying for this test or, oh, I barely slept yesterday. And it feels very normal. But when I think about it objectively, I'm just like, that's not healthy at all. You should be getting sleep. You should be eating well. But all these basic things are being sacrificed for studying and getting those perfect grades. I do think that students have placed the entirety of their self-worth on their grades and these numbers and these letters. And you can really see how it affects their mindset, how it affects the basic care they do from themselves.