Why Students Fail - The "Stressful" Truth

There are two types of students in our education system. There are those who are academic, and then there are those who are non-academic. The academic students are the ones associated with "being smart," "being successful," but most importantly, "being ready for the real world." After all, that's why our education system exists, right?

As for those who are not academically gifted, or the non-academics, it is inherently obvious to many that these are the students who are "lazy" and "stupid." Now while the majority of people will never admit that they associate these connotations with students who do poor academically, it's naturally how the system has taught us to think.

As Sir Ken Robinson often discusses, for the last one hundred years we've been taught the same thing about school. If you can discipline yourself, get good grades,  and get a college degree, then you can get a job. It's as simple as that. And yes, that was the case throughout most of twentieth century. But we are no longer there. As a society we have moved on in just about every aspect, and other countries have figured out that in order to keep up with changing times, the way we educate must change as well. The problem is, the United States has yet to figure that out. 

We work rigidly and systematically. We put every single one of our students through the same process, the same standards, and the same education. We work by equalling out the playing field to make everything fair.

What we seemed to have forgotten, is that our students are not factory products. We are all significantly different individuals. That's exactly how humanity and biology work... No two people are the same. We do not prosper and excel by moving on the same conveyor belt, released into the real world all with the same skill sets. No, instead we thrive when we find interest, and when our passions are stimulated and woken up. Unfortunately for many students who are seen as non-academic, and even some who are academic, they don't get a chance to ever become stimulated. 

Instead, they are shown through a series of standardized classes and testing, that if you do not fit into the system, you do not fit in at all. Just like a teenager who is told they don't have the perfect body, these students lose confidence in themselves, which is the most dangerous thing for a developing young mind... The results are horrifying.

What the heads of our education system originally based their style of learning and teaching off of, was the idea of making sure every student in the school system was given a fair chance. And this makes sense. Why should one student have an easier time getting by than another? But the truth is, we became so tangled up in competitiveness and comparing one to the other, that we pushed for our focus to land upon testing rather than learning. Not only did we compete with other states, and other countries, but we began competing against one another right in the classroom.

How Stress Affects Performance

Some pressure, competition and stress is good for a person though. As we've seen in many psychological experiments, most people actually do their best when there is a little bit of pressure. However, we seemed to have forgotten that this is not exponential. It's parabolic (perhaps the one thing I learned in freshman year pre-calculus). In other words, there's a certain level of stress that causes our performance to peak, and once we pass that, it declines rapidly. This is known as the Yerkes-Dodson Law that was developed in 1908.

To put it bluntly, our education system has exceeded that maximum performance efficiency level by a lot. We've put so much pressure on our students to perform and succeed at such insanely high and inhumane levels, that we are killing them. Literally. 

A surreal 6% of undergraduate students across the country "have seriously considered suicide" over the course of the last year. Even more disturbing, half of that group never told anyone. It's reported that each year 1 in 12 students have made a plan to kill themselves at some point, and that 7.5 out of every 100,000 students actually carry through with it. Now if that doesn't raise some kind of a red flag, maybe this will. The suicide rate for students ages 15 - 24 has tripled over the past 50 years. The leading causes of the stress?

1. Competitiveness (ding, ding)
2. Tuition
3. Acceptance Rate
4. Campus Crime
5. The Economy

So, is all of this worth it? Does the stress and the competitiveness yield the results that we are looking for, and does that outweigh the fact that everyday there are students who consider ending their lives over letter grades and number comparisons? Let's see.

In a recent club meeting for entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware, I came across an incredible experiment. The Marshmallow Challenge. We split up into several teams, and were given a certain number of non-cooked spaghetti noodles, tape, and a marshmallow. The objective was to build a structure out of the spaghetti and tape to get the marshmallow as high as possible given 18 minutes. The results of this were fascinating. ?

When given the natural competitive environment of teams competing to see who can come out on top with no given incentives or prizes, the results looked something like this:

Now add in an incentive, and watch things get crazy. In the original experiment, they offered the winner of the challenge ten thousand dollars as a prize... Look what happened:

Not one single team was able to even build the structure. Each time they would attempt to, the structure would collapse and they would become increasingly frustrated. 

So what does a silly marshmallow challenge have to do with academic pressure and performance? Well lets replace the 18 minute marshmallow challenge with a standardized test, seeing as everyone has the same materials. time allotted, and incentives. In this case, the incentive would be that if you pass the standardized test in 18 minutes, you pass the course. If you fail, you must start over. What's the difference between the two? Nothing. 

This experiment showed that natural pressure is good. Competing against one another without high stakes yields productive results. However, add in an incentive that only one team can win, and all of a sudden there is chaos. Looking more closely at the experiment, Peter Skillman (founder of the Marshmallow Challenge) pointed out that when incentives were given and stakes were higher, people panicked more easily. It sparked the classic "fight or flight" response, where rather than trying to figure out how to make the structure work using trial and error, they devise one plan and stick to it. When that plan doesn't work, rather than trying a different one, they keep forcing it and trying to make it work because they see this as a one solution type of problem. The pressure from the incentive significantly enhances the amount one solution type of thinking, and kills off both creativity and outside of the box thinking (hence the one-solution answer that students come up). In a recent Forbes article on chronic stress, Rick Hanson, a California based neuropsychologist and author of Just One Thing: Developing a Buddha Brain One Simple Practice at a Time, stated, "Chronic stress degrades a long list of capabilities with regard to creativity and innovation. It’s harder to think outside of the box, nimbleness and dexterity take a hit, and the response to sudden change is more difficult to manage."

It's no surprise why some students are struggling so severely in school. When we pile all the pressure that we do on these students, it closes off important areas of the brain that are used for creative thinking and learning. Needless to say, stress from school doesn't only hurt education, but also promotes other mental illness. Yes it promotes productivity, but just because someone is productive, does not mean they are efficient in learning the task at hand.

Even less of a surprise based off of what we just learned, is what group of individuals consistently come out on top with the Marshmallow Challenge. No, not the hard working business students learning hours of math or the law students mindlessly memorizing content for days on end. It's the Kindergartners! According to Skillman, what these kids did differently from the adults, was trial and error. Right when something wouldn't work, they would try a different method until something worked. The business and law students would do the opposite by coming up with a single plan, and attempting to do the same thing over and over again. As for the Architects and Engineers, their skill base is high enough that the pressure doesn't have as big of an impact, which makes them come out on the top of the top. 

Drugs, Drugs... And More Drugs!

The education system is a large problem to be able to conquer. It's a long term type of problem, that would require years of work before change could be made. So naturally as people, we found a way to fix things in the short term.

Rather than try to beat the increasingly challenging school system, we decided to keep up with it. However, we have reached the point where students no longer have the natural ability to keep up with the high quantity, low-grade work. Luckily we came up with a solution, as we always do. Over the course of time we've begun to load our students up with "high performing stimulants" that can actually make it possible to keep up with the daily workload and stress. You might recognize some of these stimulants as Adderall, Ritalin, or Vyvanse, typically prescribed to children and adults diagnosed with ADHD. But the truth is, these drugs have had no problem getting into the hands of kids without ADHD.

A survey done in 2014 showed that nearly a third of college students have used some kind ADHD drug. Nearly 30% of those using this drug, however, do not have a prescription for it, and are using it illegally because they feel they can not keep up with the workload without performance enhancing drugs. And its not a world-wide issue either. In 2013, American manufacturers produced 211 tons of adderall, which means that there was enough for every person in the United States to receive more than two dozen 20 mg pills of Adderall. In addition, while our country only makes up 4.5% of the world's total population, we produce 70% of the ADHD drugs across the globe. And these students really are not to blame for the extreme production and use. Neither are the doctors prescribing them. Here's why:

ADHD is broken down into three major symptoms.

1. Inattention
2. Hyperactivity
3. Impulsivity

When broken down even further, these three categories are described as follows: 

1. Inattention

• Be disorganized
• Lack focus
• Have a hard time paying attention to details and a tendency to make careless mistakes. Their work might be messy and seem careless.
• Have trouble staying on topic while talking, not listening to others, and not following social rules
• Be forgetful about daily activities (for example, missing appointments, forgetting to bring lunch)
• Be easily distracted by things like trivial noises or events that are usually ignored by others.

2. Hyperactivity 

• Fidget and squirm when seated.
• Get up frequently to walk or run around.
• Run or climb a lot when it's not appropriate. (In teens this may seem like restlessness.)
• Have trouble playing quietly or doing quiet hobbies
• Always be "on the go"
• Talk excessively

3. Impulsivity

• Impatience
• Having a hard time waiting to talk or react

If you read over these symptoms a few times, it becomes quite clear just how broad these terms are, especially considering the demographic that is being discussed. As Sir Ken Robinson would put it, by diagnosing your child with ADHD, you've essentially diagnosed them with "childhood."

Yes, when you are being taught boring subjects with low-grade busy work hour after hour, it's likely that your child will become "unfocused". And yes, if you are asked to take a 2-hour long standardized test, it's likely that after the first 90 minutes, students will begin make "careless mistakes" and not pay as much attention to small detail. 

THIS is why so many students between the ages of 15 and 24, and unfortunately increasingly younger, feel that the only explanation for their failures in school is their ADHD disease. Being inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive at times does not mean you have ADHD, even if you are "officially diagnosed." Rather, it's become the answer to the problem of being in school, not the problem of not being able to stay focused.

Divergent Thinking

There are two types of thinking. There is divergent thinking where we list as many solutions to a problem as possible without eliminating any. And there is convergent thinking where we systematically only come up with "good" ideas, giving many less overall solutions to a given problem. 

When students think divergently, not only does it feel better and allow free-flowing thoughts and ideas, but it also allows for a significant increase in creativity and innovation. Convergent thinking, on the other hand, is the kind of thinking that is taught in a school setting and teaches students to come up with the right answer rather than possibilities. In this scenario, students are taught at a young age that some things are right and others are wrong, without room for justifying why they may think something could be possible. It also teaches students to voice their opinions less and less, knowing that there is only one right solution. 

Divergent thinking is clearly associated with the idea of creativity and innovation. And while arguably we are steadily increasing the IQ of students each generation, we are doing the opposite to our students CQ, or creative quotient. 

A study done by researchers and presented by Sir Ken Robinson in 2013, revealed that the tests for CQ consist of questions about how we can use different objects in as many ways as possible. In other words, they directly test divergent thinking.

When tested on Kindergartners, 98% of them scored at the genius level.

But something interesting happened as they were tested again year after year. The scores steadily decreased. In fact, by time many of these kids left their local school systems, there were almost no students who scored at the genius level. And no, this is not associated with age. It's associated with school.

Like we discussed above, school teaches that there is one answer. We systematically remove the divergent thinking from our students when this is taught over and over. Students who struggle in school, tend to continue scoring high on their CQ tests, rather than having their numbers drop like the others who conform. 

What we are doing by continuing our current ways, is eliminating the innovators from our system. Those who feel lost in school, more often than not become lost in real life, which is wrong. This shouldn't be the case... Ever. School should promote interest and learning, not systematically pass on information that is right. When students are disengaged, whether from boredom or stress, they become hopeless, because again we are taught to succeed in life, we must first do well in school, go to college, and apply for a job with the right grades. That is not how our world works anymore.

Most of the greatest innovators to ever step foot on our planet were divergent thinkers. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates never used their degrees to get where they got. They came up with ideas that were seen as crazy, and actually left their education to pursue them. The rest of their stories are history. And these two individuals are not the only ones who went through something similar. There are countless examples of businesses large and small developed by people who took a leap of faith in THEMSELVES, not in their schooling. 

Change is possible, but the first step is recognition of the problem. We are putting our students through unbearable stress, stress that those who grew up twenty years ago never got to experience. We put our focus on testing, and not on learning, and as a result not only are we harming our students, but we are forcing them to change things about themselves in the form of drugs to keep up with the system. Worst of all, we're becoming counterintuitive. Education should be in place to promote learning, not to discourage or prevent it from happening. Just as Albert Einstein once said, 

"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

Credits:

https://www.collegedegreesearch.net/student-suicides/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-smirniotopoulos/post_3156_b_1375546.html

https://www.newsweek.com/creativity-crisis-74665

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/05/12/adderall-addiction-drug-legal-column/26135649/

https://marshmallowchallenge.com/TED_Talk.html