Original Post 7/22/2015
The man who has been active on the campus, whose personality is such that he gets along with all kinds of people and who has done an adequate job with his studies has a most decided edge over the strictly academic student. ~Robert P. Moore
The Strictly Academic Student
Parents and teachers tend to put a lot pressure on children to “get good grades” in school and less pressure on understanding the material; this backwards practice leads to stress in children their parents. If we don’t take steps to change our mindset our children will grow up to become stressed out adults who repeat the process.
According to a survey reported in the following article: Teens More Stressed-Out Than Adults, Survey Shows, 30% of teens claim to feel sad or depressed because of stress.
I can’t say that I blame them because I couldn’t even imagine what it’s like to go school today. There are so many things that they have to worry about everyday that we (previous generation) didn’t have to cyber bullying and other kids shooting up their school. With all of that they still have the pressure of getting A’s and B’s.
The saddest part about this is that the kids rarely have someone to talk to who understands them. After all, there are so many parents who also had a lot of stress and pressure to deal with while in school; unfortunately most parents may not have dealt with their stress too well and wind up giving their kids advice that doesn’t help them deal with their issues adequately. All of this leads to poor grades and low graduation rates. It’s very hard for anyone to get along well with others or comprehend anything when they're stressed out.
In order to help our children, we must first understand how to deal with our own stress, then we can teach our children how to deal with their stress. One thing that we can do to help our children cope is to ease the pressure off of them getting A’s and B’s and focus more on making sure that they understand what they’re learning and how it applies to everyday life.
Food for thought...
Kids in general WANT to learn, but learning shouldn’t be stressful. Challenging yes, but not stressful.
~Matthew