'Miseducated Students At Faircrest High School'

Secrets Behind Success

The utmost top scoring students at schools often exhibit an unbelievable amount of intelligence and participate in an abundance of interesting extracurricular activities. Interestingly, there is an unexplained part of the story behind these amazing students’ success, which is described in the book “Doing School”: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students, by Denise Clark Pope, in which Pope interviews and shadows a random assortment of students at Faircrest High School. This book flawlessly supports my topic about the amount of stress that is truly beneficial to students as Pope reveals the consequences stress has on them, such as the hardships they face regularly and

the extremes they pursue to be the best, and also their reasoning behind these actions. Despite what many people believe, these students do not perform outstandingly in school just because they love to learn, moreover because they feel overwhelmingly pressured by parents, teachers, other students, college, and their future, leaving them feeling as if they are not attending school to actually learn, but to please others by earning satisfactory grades. The book goes in depth in describing the lives of five students, and the incredible amount of stress they face every single day. Reading about the anxiety they face, I was completely shocked when I discovered the difficulties they encounter and what they consider to be a normal lifestyle. Recognizing the horrible state in which some kids live in, Pope illustrates the dire importance of transforming high schoolers lives for the better by encouraging them to become thoroughly engaged in learning and creating a more supportive environment.
While getting to know a few of the highly praised students at Faircrest High School, Pope realizes that although they appear to be fully focused and genuinely engaged in their work, they surprisingly are not, and instead have figured out how to “manipulate the system”(41) by completing their work but not actually paying attention in class. One student named Eve Lin admits she had printed out pages from her history textbook and tucked them into her math textbook so she could study during class, and states that she can “get away with so much it’s pathetic”(42). When teachers fail to pay close enough attention to their students, it demotivates them from completing work and makes them less interested in the class, and causes them to believe what they are learning is not so important to actually learn it. Eve confesses that the only way to succeed in remembering material is to “empty it out of [her] brain”(155) after a test to keep up with the new information. Due to the intense pressure that students like Eve face, they are pushed to make rash decisions such as sacrificing valuable lessons in class in order to get one extra hour of studying, or relinquishing important information once they receive a grade for knowing it. Hence, I find it extremely pitiful that some students are so absorbed in their stress, they find it extremely difficult focus in class.
Also feeling the severe pressure to earn adequate grades, tenth grader Teresa Gomez resorts to extreme methods such as plagiarism and cheating.

Although she would rather not, Teresa feels obligated to make these dishonorable decisions, and reasons, “I wish I could not do it, but… I want a future”(71). The highly competitive atmosphere students are expected to thrive in is pushing them towards committing undignified actions because they feel that so much is expected from them, and sadly, I believe this is one of the most significant sources of stress. Accordingly, for students such as Roberto Morales, acting morally is not always rewarding, and he is “disappointed when he tries to play by the rules but does not obtain the results he desires”(136). For this reason, Roberto explains how tempting cheating can be due to the pressure of grades, which regrettably justifies that the environment at schools does not induce the best out of students. The pressure even drove Eve Lin to enroll in an “unprecedented total of seven advanced placement courses”(43) after fighting with the Academic Vice Principal to allow her, and explains her reasoning as feeling “forced to conform”(32) by many factors including the “environment”(32) at school. Reluctant about students pushing themselves to the point where it will lead to an unhealthy amount of stress, the school set rules about the amount of AP classes available, however, for some students the competitive and relentless environment is too

compelling.
The abundance of stress that students face from their work is a result of pressure from parents, teachers, peers, college, and set expectations in general.

Every student Pope interviews explains that their high marks in their classes are a result of working themselves extremely hard in order to fulfill someone’s expectations. Kevin Romoni, a tenth grader at Faircrest, for instance, reveals his real intentions for high school are not to fully connect with his classes, but simply to just “get into college and make his parents happy”(9). The high amount of pressure put on Kevin distracts him from the primary goal of attending and excelling in school, which is to become engrossed in learning and motivated to succeed by a genuine interest in the subjects. Also seeking her parents’ approval, Michelle Spence feels so stressed about receiving excellent grades to be accepted into a college her parents will commend, she “[cries] all the time from stress….and contemplated dropping out of school”(83), despite already being a straight-A student. Although her parents might be attempting to encourage her, the competitive atmosphere at school is too frantic. It is devastating that students are completely overwhelmed by parents’ attempts at motivation, and I believe that their stress will not reduce until the expectations set for them are not pressed as forcefully. The stressful environment students live in leads to their disengagement in learning, which creates even more stressful

habits.
Pope profoundly interprets the intense stress that high schoolers are burdened with regularly, and ultimately concludes that without an excessive amount of outside pressure, students will be motivated to learn and become passionate about their classes, which will result in an exceeding and effective education experience. The profusion of stress is unnecessary because it does not help motivate them; in fact, it causes them to lose interest in learning. Once the expectations for students become about putting in effort and learning new information instead of earning exceptional grades, then will more students feel less tense, yet remarkably succeed. Rediscovering that the true purpose of school is to actually learn, not just to earn impressive grades, and relieving students of the pressure into unrealistic achievements, will consequently alleviate them of a tremendous amount of stress, and furthermore create a supportive learning environment, and an overall better education experience.