As a high school educator of 35 years in Canada we do not have the same standardized testing pressure that US teachers face. We do however have all the similar mental health challenges. I am much more aligned with the After Babel 3 part hypothesis and can clearly say that when I first began teaching in the late 80’s my expectations for m…
As a high school educator of 35 years in Canada we do not have the same standardized testing pressure that US teachers face. We do however have all the similar mental health challenges. I am much more aligned with the After Babel 3 part hypothesis and can clearly say that when I first began teaching in the late 80’s my expectations for my students were far more rigorous than they are today. I’m very aware of the changes in pressure for kids to constantly measure up as we discuss this regularly in our classes, but my own 16-17 yr old psych students always share that it is a combination of many factors : self imposed pressure, societal and parent imposed pressure, school pressure (hmwk), social media making them feel “less than” and lonely, sleep deprivation (typically on phone late), phone addiction or dependency, Covid disruption in learning, developmental delays due to many different factors including the onset of fear based parenting in the 90’s, so that our students ta often struggle taking healthy risks, having hard conversations face to face, critically reflecting, facing discomfort. As Dr. Gray speaks to the loss of the play based childhood is also a huge factor . The list of correlations go on and on. To suggest that the skyrocketing suicide rate is due to one cause is to simplify an incredibly complex and nuanced problem.
I have argued for multiple causes for the great increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide among teens over decades. Most of that increase occurred well before smartphone and Common Core. I'm just saying now that multple lines of evidence suggest that this recent 14-year boost in all this is largely the result of changes in schooling. Such changes occurred in the US largely as a consequence of Common Core but they also occurred in a few other countries.
As a high school educator of 35 years in Canada we do not have the same standardized testing pressure that US teachers face. We do however have all the similar mental health challenges. I am much more aligned with the After Babel 3 part hypothesis and can clearly say that when I first began teaching in the late 80’s my expectations for my students were far more rigorous than they are today. I’m very aware of the changes in pressure for kids to constantly measure up as we discuss this regularly in our classes, but my own 16-17 yr old psych students always share that it is a combination of many factors : self imposed pressure, societal and parent imposed pressure, school pressure (hmwk), social media making them feel “less than” and lonely, sleep deprivation (typically on phone late), phone addiction or dependency, Covid disruption in learning, developmental delays due to many different factors including the onset of fear based parenting in the 90’s, so that our students ta often struggle taking healthy risks, having hard conversations face to face, critically reflecting, facing discomfort. As Dr. Gray speaks to the loss of the play based childhood is also a huge factor . The list of correlations go on and on. To suggest that the skyrocketing suicide rate is due to one cause is to simplify an incredibly complex and nuanced problem.
I have argued for multiple causes for the great increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide among teens over decades. Most of that increase occurred well before smartphone and Common Core. I'm just saying now that multple lines of evidence suggest that this recent 14-year boost in all this is largely the result of changes in schooling. Such changes occurred in the US largely as a consequence of Common Core but they also occurred in a few other countries.