My high school alma mater recently made the cover of the New York Times in the following article:
New Jersey School District Eases Pressure on Students, Baring an Ethnic Divide
This story addresses the issue of how much pressure we’re putting on students in school and brings up questions that have slowly been bubbling to the surface over the past couple of years:
- What does it mean to prepare our children for the future?
- How much should we expect from our children at school?
- What is a “good education”?
Parents are up in arms about some of the reforms in the district because everyone wants the best education for their children, but school administrators are also beginning to wonder how much is too much?
It was most striking to me that over the past year, 120 students in the district had been recommended for mental health evaluation, and 40 had been hospitalized in the past year.
It makes me wonder–if parents are mad about this new reform to ease the stress of students, and the student mental health hospitalizations are the way they are, what will it take to make them see that the system now is just too much? Scary.
On Teaching 