"Meritocracy's Miserable Winners"

The article talks about high stress levels, but it does not talk about a change in our society that has made it worse. My own perspective is that our society as a whole has failed our children/young adults because we have not done a good enough job showing our children how to deal with life’s difficulties by being overprotective.

Every generation tends to have difficulties that are unique to that particular generation in my family. Would my kids have had any less stress growing up poor with my dysfunctional family members, the inner city violence of my youth, and the 25-30 hour work weeks in high school? I am pretty sure that I could survive the outrageous amount of school work that they receive along with living in a comfortable middle class lifestyle because one thing that I was taught and I am pretty sure they saw growing up is that there is no stress worse than being hungry, poor, homeless and forgotten by society (through volunteer work). But I did not have to deal with the Vietnam War like my parents nor Jim Crow laws and racism like my Grandparents either.

We all have things that can cause stress in our lives and our kids would be better off if we showed them how to deal with and overcome those obstacles instead of sheltering them from most if not all obstacles when they are young.

Contrary to what’s implied in the article and by others in this thread, drug use, other than marijuana, has not been increasing among 12th grade students. The MTF has tracked this since 1975. The annual prevalence of any illicit drug use other than marijuana has been steadily declining among 12th graders since 2001. The only real increase in drug use is a slight uptick in pot among high school students.

http://www.monitoringthefuture.org/index.html

Does that study include the non-prescribed use of stimulants? Not really a big issue in 1975, it is now.

^Asking about any illicit drug use other than marijuana is a catch all question. Questions about stimulants go back to when the survey was started. If you’re interested about Ritalin:

I see the surveys reports that 10% admit to misusing prescription drugs, which is down from 2006

Looking at studies in stress and young children, there is a clear advantage to sheltering the young ones from stress if you can. The saying what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger doesn’t hold. What doesn’t kill you warps you.

I’m also not sure why pressure to perform that includes huge amounts of time working on academics and extracurricular activities and high stakes testing isn’t considered a real challenge. It isn’t the same as walking to the US from Honduras due to death threats, but it is brain altering stress that is resulting in depression and anxiety. Having three squares a day and nice electronics doesn’t mean you don’t have stress. It also seems tough to have so much of your life pending. Facing immediate challenges seems a bit easier than having 9 th grade academic struggles possible hurt your college changes in four years.

^

Math, whether pure or applied (many colleges actually don’t even distinguish the two), is chosen by many students as skill preparation, rather than as preparation to become a career mathematician. They may switch to another discipline in science or social science later, either in grad school or earlier.

As to the intellectual difficulty of various STEM subject, I’d rank physics, especially theoretical physics, significantly more challenging than math. A good theoretical physicist has to be a great pure and applied mathematician, and the converse is certainly not true. The vastness of the amount of knowledge and imagination required to comprehend modern physics is beyond any math subject.

One of the things about stress that has always fascinated me is how some things that are very stressful for some cause little to no stress in other people and how our environment and own biology may play a part in how we interpret possible challenges. Why do some seem to handle certain stress inducing challenges while others seem to crumble? I see age appropriate stress in young people as a helpful part of the development of a child. I also believe in talking about stress to young people and what it really means (not always getting what you want is not stress for example) and examining what is really causing the stress.

Just to give one such example, my daughter eventually figured out (with my wife’s help) that the large loads of school work were not really what was causing her stress, but the procrastination and not being prepared as she would like caused her stress. As soon as she started reading a chapter ahead/staying ahead of her syllabus in all of her classes, her level of stress decreased tremendously even though the work load was still the same. The reason that I believe in age-appropriate stress for my kids is that my wife and I could help them (not by taking the stress away or shielding them) by suggesting techniques and methods to overcome stress and supporting them. I believe there is a strength that is gained by fighting your own battles and overcoming obstacles, but I know parents that disagree with that viewpoint.

^^Certainly, learning to cope with stress is a life skill, and we serve our kids well by giving them skills for that. We all find ourselves in situations that are overwhelming and uncomfortable at times. Learning to identify, articulate, and mitigate those stresses is important. The story above is a great example of how we can teach a kid resilience.

I think, though, that in the case above, there could also have been a student who might have found that taking a class at a lower level, dropping an EC, being accepting of a B, etc could have been the better course of action. Balance is important! Stress is a signal that we are in over our heads. Sometimes knowing it’s temporary is enough to make soldiering through possible, and sometimes, it’s a sign that we need to change course.

I worry though that chronic stress can start to feel "normal ", and although someone may function through it, that isn’t necessarily good for them.