By Kaden West/Staff Writer
Eight hours of school, two hours of extracurriculars, three hours of homework, and the remaining time to balance family, friends, eating, sleeping, hygiene.
Students are expected to excel in all aspects of their lives — school, social, and personal — without room for error. The struggle that many hard-working students have is that they are pushed even harder by parents and teachers while they watch subpar peers put in less effort and get no backlash for it.
Granted, hard-working students do see a higher grade than the students who lack motivation, but hard-working students face much more emotional baggage. Students who put their all into everything they do, whether it be sports, theatre, or other extracurriculars, are often pushed harder by parents and teachers to continue to strive toward being better.
“There’s glaring evidence that overzealous parents’ quests for success – and unbending insistence on perfection – wreak havoc on children’s happiness, mental, and physical health, and overall well-being,” stated Psychology Today, in an October 2014 issue.
Speaking from experience, pushing students who are already at their limit, makes them feel overwhelmed and lose the strong motivation they have to do well. Pushing students harder and harder causes them to feel as though they aren’t doing enough already, and the high grades, success in extracurriculars, and feeling of confidence from doing well begins to diminish.
“Making the stakes too high engenders fear, leading teens to avert possible failure at all costs,” stated Psych Central, a mental health social network, in a October 2018 article.
The high stakes that are put on students cause constant stress and fear of not being good enough, which in turn stunts students from doing well in any aspect of their lives. Meanwhile, students who don’t try as hard aren’t put to such high standards, and the students who work harder take the heat.
Students who go beyond the required amount of work are already stressing themselves to be successful. Those who are already holding themselves to high standards should not be the ones who are being hounded to do better, it should be the students who are below teacher’s standards.
“If a kid becomes too distressed or shows dysfunction, you’ve gone too far,” said Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit organization made to help families with children with mental health and learning disabilities.