Essay on high expectations can affect children's mental health
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The pressure on children to achieve high levels of academic success is overriding the joys of education and making kids anxious and depressed, says author Lucy Clark. So what is going so wrong with education in Australia, and what can be done to fix it?
When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sat his year 12 exams in 1972, he apparently didn't feel much pressure to do well.
"I wasn't as stressed out about the exams as perhaps I should have been," Mr Turnbull later recalled. "There's no point being anything other than chilled when you do the exam."
Just you try telling that to a high school student today.
Indeed, the pressure of school has ramped up considerably since the '70s; thanks in part to an education system now obsessed with a narrow definition of success — with standardised testing, ranking, comparison and competition — a disturbing number of young Australians suffer from depression and anxiety.
Clark's daughter was one of them, struggling — and often failing — every day during the two years of her Higher School Certificate (HSC) to attend classes, hand in assignments and show up for exams.
"By all the standard markers … my daughter graduated from school a failure," Clark writes in her new book, Beautiful Failures: How the Quest for Success is Harming Our Kids.
But it's not just the kids who 'fail' who are suffering, Clark says — those who 'succeed' are, too.
"This drive to achieve a number at the end of 12 years of schooling has become a kind of mania," she says.
"Overriding so much that is wonderful and exciting … about being educated."
Her daughter's struggles led Clark, a journalist with Guardian Australia, to ask questions about what is going so wrong with education in Australia that 26 per cent of children drop out of school, and many others lament losing their adolescence to stress and mental illness.
She spoke to ABC News about what an education 'revolution' might look like, how parents and policymakers can ease the burden on our kids, and the Australian schools already leading a change
When Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull sat his year 12 exams in 1972, he apparently didn't feel much pressure to do well.
"I wasn't as stressed out about the exams as perhaps I should have been," Mr Turnbull later recalled. "There's no point being anything other than chilled when you do the exam."
Just you try telling that to a high school student today.
Indeed, the pressure of school has ramped up considerably since the '70s; thanks in part to an education system now obsessed with a narrow definition of success — with standardised testing, ranking, comparison and competition — a disturbing number of young Australians suffer from depression and anxiety.
Clark's daughter was one of them, struggling — and often failing — every day during the two years of her Higher School Certificate (HSC) to attend classes, hand in assignments and show up for exams.
"By all the standard markers … my daughter graduated from school a failure," Clark writes in her new book, Beautiful Failures: How the Quest for Success is Harming Our Kids.
But it's not just the kids who 'fail' who are suffering, Clark says — those who 'succeed' are, too.
"This drive to achieve a number at the end of 12 years of schooling has become a kind of mania," she says.
"Overriding so much that is wonderful and exciting … about being educated."
Her daughter's struggles led Clark, a journalist with Guardian Australia, to ask questions about what is going so wrong with education in Australia that 26 per cent of children drop out of school, and many others lament losing their adolescence to stress and mental illness.
She spoke to ABC News about what an education 'revolution' might look like, how parents and policymakers can ease the burden on our kids, and the Australian schools already leading a change
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