Is School Related Stress Making our Kids Sick? Vicki Abeles at the Podium in Scarsdale

A well-attended talk by Vicki Abeles at the Scarsdale Middle School on Wednesday, April 6 has gotten parents, teachers and school administrators talking.

Ms. Abeles, an ex-Wall Street lawyer and mother of 3, is now well known as an author and documentary film producer. Her topic of expertise? The current state of our education system and the impact it is having on students. She produced the 2007 film "Race to Nowhere" and more recently the film "Beyond Measure" that portrays our schools as pressure cookers that are actually making our kids sick. "Beyond Measure" is also a published book. The films were creatively distributed at the community level.

She began her presentation by describing a day in the life of a student: Wake up early to finish school work, get to school by 7-8 AM, attend school for 7 hours, head to tutor/sports/clubs/religious school/band rehearsals after school, eat dinner, begin school work around 8 PM. Before formulating her position she visited hundreds of schools where she witnessed extreme anxiety among students. She met students who had somatic conditions as young as 6, cutting behaviors, sleep deprivation, anxiety, and students who were suicidal. She was quick to point out that stress and pressure crosses socioeconomic barriers using as an example a kid from an impoverished area who could be the first in the family to do well enough in school to receive a scholarship to college. Ms. Abeles said, "Many parents think kids need to work extremely hard because they're paying their dues until college. But the achievement race isn't allowing children to thrive; it's actually doing the opposite. We aren't teaching kids how to become good at something other than getting good grades," she continued. "They're good at doing school, but not at taking risks." She also spoke about the student perspective of feeling that they're constantly being measured and graded.

Ms. Abeles presented and defended her view and presented data to demonstration that the "drive for success" is making kids sick by inducing unprecedented stress; this stress, she claimed, is leading to high levels of anxiety and depression. She referenced Dr. Stuart Slavin, a medical professor from St. Louis, who spoke to a Scarsdale audience last week. "We are conducting an enormous experiment on our entire American student population," she quoted him as saying. He said that medical students had severe depression and anxiety to the tune of 50% and 80% respectively. However, when he implemented certain interventions like a half day off a week and pass/fail for certain courses, depression and anxiety decreased and board scores actually increased.

She quoted the CDC saying "...teens get two hours less sleep per night than they need, on average." The American Psychological Association reported that nearly 1 in 3 teenagers said that stress made them sad or depressed and that the number one source of their stress was school.

It is interesting to note that schoolwork was not cited as the source of stress and Abeles did not consider social stress and social media that can also make teens anxious. Furthermore, when I read the APA article, I found that Ms. Abeles left out other information in the study, namely that teens who reported high stress during the past school year also said they spend an average of 3.2 hours a day online compared with less than 2 hours among those reporting low levels of stress.

Ms. Abeles spent the next half of the session with a call to action. She named those who are responsible for the "crisis" we are experiencing in schools: helicopter parents, unreasonable parents, school administrators, college admissions officers, the media and even congress. "The real answer is our collective culture," she said, "and we all play a role in this. So we can all play a role in changing this."

Abeles recommends the following to make kids happy, healthy and engaged in learning:

• Prioritize wellness, create an education task force, have community nights off, change graduation requirements, reinvent the high school transcript
• Recalibrate time: safeguard time outside of school hours, later start times, reduced homework, upgraded seminars driven by student interest, block schedule
• Transform learning- make it personalized and experiential, blend across subjects

What can parents do to help?
Ms. Abeles would like to see parents take a more relaxed approach to school and the college admissions process.

What can educators do to help?
Ms. Abeles advises emphasizing curiosity and exploration over test prep, limiting/abolishing tests and other number driven evaluations, limiting/abolishing homework starting with weekends and vacations, and limiting work that gets graded and encouraging iteration, editing, or prototyping instead.

The Scarsdale crowd was asked, "If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your school?" Here were some of the responses:

"I'd like to see more self direction in terms of what's studied."

"I'd like to see the homework issue addressed, especially on the weekends. Social relationships shouldn't be put to the side because of homework."

"I would have elementary school start earlier and high school start later because of natural sleep patterns."

"I would like to see fewer tests and quizzes given. They create a lot of stress."
"I want more down time and more time in nature and for play. Also, the opportunity to let our kids make mistakes."

"Kids are bombarded with grades as of middle school- 6th grade."

"Stop rankings of schools. It just drives the competition and gives a lot of mixed messages. There is no best high school. This is a big contributor to the stress we feel as parents."

"Assignments can be more efficient rather than just busywork."

"I'd like to see the drug use issue addressed. I recently graduated from Scarsdale High School and I can tell you that there ARE drugs here. And there's no acknowledgment of it."

"Open art studios in schools."

Overall, homework was the number one thing parents wanted changed in the Scarsdale schools.

Ms. Abeles closed her talk by saying, "Your kids deserve a childhood. You have a responsibility to take action. We are stealing their childhoods from them as well as their futures."

To catch the film, click here:
To purchase the book, click here: