A Culture of Anxiety (Part 2 of 4)

A culture of anxiety pervades the K-12 academic experience. Many students—even bright and talented ones—feel they are constantly at a competitive disadvantage. Many parents feel their school is failing their children, or that the deck has been stacked against them by a specific teacher, the entire administration, or a school system that won’t meet their needs.

Headlines warn about the increased rates of teen depression and anxiety, but the mental health of parents is also declining. Two surveys in 2022 indicate that 20% of mothers and 15% of fathers suffered from anxiety—in line with the 18% of teens with elevated stress levels.¹ It’s impossible to isolate the student experience from the experience of the whole family living through it together—though, to be fair, the studies were conducted at the height of the pandemic, so elevated stress levels would have been expected.

Familial Anxiety

Much parental anxiety is a logical, though irrational, response to their children’s academic experiences, which some parents think of as zero-sum: if another kid wins, my kid loses. In private schools in particular, the money spent on tuition ratchets up the expectations: if my kid doesn’t meet a preconceived idea of merit (say, the Ivy League), then all the money, time and energy will have been a waste.

This education anxiety does not allow students to follow their own curiosity, because the hamster wheel of achievement demands constant forward motion. Enriching tangents and digressions are seen as wastes of time because they’re not relevant to the final grade, which is the arbiter of everything.

In the “anxious education,” private schools dangle at prospective families shiny new toys (cutting-edge science labs, golf simulators, or subject matter usually associated with collegiate academics). Independent schools need to protect graduation rates and college placements in order to guarantee they’ll win the kindergarten wars for incoming talent. Grade inflation leads to students clustering at the top: a B+ becomes a scarlet letter.

The “anxious education” tells a student he has to be good at everything (impossible), that he should always push himself to do more (unhealthy), and that college acceptance is the ultimate barometer of self-worth (false). It warns that if he takes time to rest, he’ll fall behind and never catch up. The anxious education tells him he has to perfect himself by age 18.

Such thinking would stress anyone out. Now imagine living through four, eight, or twelve years of it.

A Better Path

What the "anxious education” forgets is that school (including college) is not an endpoint, but serves to expose students both to general and specialized knowledge and to open a pathway to a student’s future. There are many ways to do that.

I believe education has one essential task: to connect something inside the student to something outside her. All students should do that in their own ways—finding something within that is personal and precious, then marrying that to an external experience or opportunity. That’s a fulfilling education—and it’s also what colleges want.

Many students feel they have to be perfect to get into college. True, the most selective places expect high grades across all disciplines and top-notch test scores, as well as leadership positions, extracurriculars both in and out of school, and dynamic application essays. Though some students can achieve that, few are good at everything. In my experience, however, most colleges aren’t looking for perfection. They want students who’ve personalized their journeys, who’ve zigged instead of zagged, who’ve nurtured a small, idiosyncratic part of themselves and put energy into developing it. Beyond grades, colleges want to know how you’ve discovered yourself, not just how excellent you are.

Everything the anxious education proposes is a mirage. It’s the “Uh-oh!” and “Oh-no!” of the creative process outlined in the previous post, without the acknowledgement of the “A-ha!” and Ta-da!” phases. It’s all “defend” and no “discover.”

Tutoring Leads to Personalization

After a tutor helps a student through the first two scary phases of the creative process, she can then guide him to experience the empowerment that lies on the other side, reducing his anxiety and setting the student on a clearer, more personal path. An experienced tutor can also help parents understand that doing well in a class often means forgetting about grades entirely and that it is misguided to stress out about every quiz and test.

Tutoring leads a student to articulate his personal goals, while developing unique skills and strategies to meet them. Tutoring moves a student through seemingly overwhelming assignments and on to action plans. Tutoring guides a student toward learning within his own personal context—not as a series of ever-larger hoops, but as building blocks that create a stable foundation for future lessons.

Avoiding the culture of education anxiety takes concerted effort. It may require turning off news reports about college admissions, or refraining from the high-school gossip that flies over text messages and community message boards. The strategy to avoid falling into the “anxious education” involves personalizing the learning journey: pursue what you love, double down on the topics that mean something to you, cut away whatever else you can. Nurture those “A-ha!”s.

1. “Parents are suffering from depression and anxiety as much as their teens,” The Washington Post, accessed December 12, 2024, https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2023/07/11/parents-teens-anxiety-depression/.