The Ridiculousness of Modern High School Education

I don’t get a whole lot of the very top students from high schools in my college classes because most of those kids are not going to mid-range public schools, even a small state flagship like mine. But you do need what the culture of high school does to kids, which is to create a ridiculous amount of stress over a decision that quite frankly DOES NOT MATTER. That decision of course is which excellent college you go to. They are all the same, unless your 18 year old has a very specific niche career desire. You want to go into marine issues, URI is a superb destination for your kid. You want to become a vet–go to Washington State. Most schools have a niche or two like this, but in the end, it barely matters for 90% of the kids. That’s not to say that students shouldn’t think it matters whether they go to Princeton or Western Oregon, yes, obviously there are differences. But especially at the elite level of education, or really at any level, schools clustered around the same quality are all exactly the same and it’s total nonsense to push kids through this punishing high school scheudle to improve those college apps when any college graduate with even passable grades is going to do just fine in the world.

I have seen this at the more elite level with my in-laws and their friends and let me tell you what I have noticed. This is not about the kids. It’s about bragging rights among their Wall Street friends. I have interjected in these discussions several times with some facts about this stuff, but the parents don’t care and don’t want to hear me. They want to debate whether Vassar, Swarthmore, or Williams would be better for their kid, as if it matters which of these excellent schools one chooses! It’s not a life or death decision!!!! But good luck getting that through Elite Bragging Rights land.

Tim Donahue, who teaches at one of these fancy high schools. on what this does to kids:

To earn the distinction of valedictorian at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, Calif., a student must maintain a straight-A average and take at least 32 honors-level, semester-long classes. One weak “Gatsby” essay during these four years, one math test taken after an ankle sprain, one poorly conjugated verb can put a leak in the boat. And yet this past May, 39 of the 606 graduating seniors maintained the buoyancy to become valedictorians.

This is hardly unusual. In 2022, Edison High in Fresno, Calif., had 115 valedictorians in the class of 558. In 2017, Central Magnet School in Murfreesboro, Tenn., had 48 out of 193. And in 2019, Washington Liberty High in Arlington, Va., had 213 earning the top honor in their class of 595.

In the way some teachers sniff out A.I.-generated essays, some colleges engage in “countermeasures” to decode the truth behind the ever-increasing numbers of ever-improving transcripts they read. But the bigger truth is that many colleges just throw up their hands and don’t factor in weighted G.P.A.s (scaled according to the difficulty of the class) at all. So the same students who are now sweating on the too-hot turf during early-season practices are going to sweat through lots and lots of classes whose contents they can’t possibly retain in order to simply tread water.

We have pushed high school students into maximizing every part of their days and nights. Those who take the bait are remarkably compliant, diluting themselves between their internships and Canva presentations. We condition students to do a so-so job and then move on to the next thing. We need to let them slow down. Critical cognition, by definition, takes time.

The underbelly of grade inflation is that now the ambitious student must clear more time in their schedule for the stuff that really makes a difference. Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, Amanda Claybaugh, said: “Students feel the need to distinguish themselves outside the classroom because they are essentially indistinguishable inside the classroom. Extracurriculars, which should be stress-relieving, become stress-producing.”

And then the kids get to college and they are completely burned out. For what?

And so what is really being squeezed out is the value of reflection.

Consider what slowing down to think about this passage from Henry David Thoreau can do. He’s musing on the origin of the word “saunter”: “Some, however, would derive the word from ‘sans terre,’ without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.”

Let’s not forget that exploration is the catalyst of learning. If we allow for more unbroken stretches of time, we begin to see those meadows that have been in front of us the whole while. When students are allowed uninterrupted thought, they can build ideas together. A gut reaction to a character’s monologue can lead to understanding of another passage, which can lead students to connect not only with fiction but also with one another.

What was once invisible becomes apparent; sustained thought offers a grounding and an ascension. Molly Worthen, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, is pretty adamant about this: “We need an intervention: maybe not a vow of silence but a bold move to put the screens, the pinging notifications and the creepy humanoid A.I. chatbots in their proper place.”

Of course, how does sustained thought please the donors who run colleges and universities these days? That might lead the kids to not want to work in corporate America?!!!!!