Every human being strives for success. Every person wants to be the best, the most respected. And the ultimate success, in many ways, begins with an individual’s education. But what are people willing to give to be the best? As of today, 75% of high school students admit to cheating at least one time a year (Stanford.edu). When a number is so shockingly high, the question that follows is, why? Why do so many students feel obligated to cheat? According to The New York Times, prominent colleges like Harvard, Berkley, Brown etc. are all becoming more selective. This is because colleges want to be highly ranked and more selective, making students want to fit their ‘campus profile’ even more than before. Because students’ success is based …show more content…
Colleges look for students in the top 15% of their class that are also participating in a varsity sport or are specialized in a specific field. Knowing this, majority of top students are over burdened. Students are so over burdened, there are days where there is no time to study. In times like these, students don’t know what to do with themselves and the easiest thing to resort to is cheating; they do what they need to do to achieve success. According to the Vista Murrieta High School WASC Report, 50% of students participate in a sport, and all students on teams have at least a 3.0 grade point average. When a student on the water polo team has practice from 5:00-7:00am, school from 7:30-2:30pm, and another practice from 2:45-6:00pm, studying is hard to schedule in. Students will turn to cheating to lighten the amount of homework, a homework load that often consumes as much time as a full-time job. The pressure to complete all of the work within a given time frame can make cheating look like a students only hope. Students have so much drive to succeed; they feel as though they have no choice but to cheat in order to achieve success. And in reality, these schedules are not healthy. In order to prevent this from happening, students need to learn to set realistic goals rather than trying to just be the best of the best. Society as a whole must understand and educate adolescents that involvement in the community is just as important as excelling in academics. Students need to understand that they don’t need to be a poster child, they need to be what a college is looking
From the beginning of high school, students strap on their seatbelts and prepare for one of the most vigorous races of their lives – becoming successful. With the rare occurrence of a break, kids are expected to keep on driving as fast and as powerfully as they can in order to get into a “great” college, which would be followed by graduate school and then an actual job that would make a lot of money. In American society, common values include working hard, determination, and being so productive that free time is not even a question. However, this philosophy is taking a major toll on American college and high school students. For at least 40 years, America’s future has been steadily growing unmotivated, tired, and hopeless due to the overemphasis on performing well in school. This phenomenon is appropriately expounded in William Zinsser’s “College Pressures”, which takes a look at the top four sources of tension that cause these feelings of dejection and agitation. After reading this article, I came up with a few solutions to this national problem. It is time to switch the harsh, over-encouraging green light of education to a comfortable yellow one. In order to make this ideal transition, directors of education across the country need to primarily reduce the amount of out-of-class assignments, lighten the grading system, and incorporate days in the school year that allow students to express their thoughts about school and provide useful feedback.
In “The Case Against College” Linda Lee tells us exactly who belongs in college, they are “the high-achieving student who is interested in learning for learning’s sake…. And those who seem certain to go on to advanced degree’s in law, medicine, architecture, and the like,” (670). But just because there are certain people who belong in school does not mean that those are the people that attend. Those who are more privileged just happen to be in a position that allows them to partake in certain amenities, one of them being a higher standard of
The statistic shown in the student survey of fall 2007 and spring 2008 reveal that only a select few of the students willingly uphold the school’s rules (Source: E). This lack of enforcement relates to the percentage of how many students have not been caught doing unethical behaviors. By increasing the number of students who follow the rules, the amount of students who cheat will decrease proportionally, thus creating a healthier environment. Additionally, students have shown to have an overall effect on other students and their behaviors: “Students who enter a college of mostly ‘honest’ types will more often choose not to cheat even if they are not innately ‘cheater’ types” (Source: C). Honest people who abide by the rules provided can influence other students into being ethical and vice versa, implying that the environment should promote the growth of virtuous behavior. Through a healthy surrounding, a school may have a majority of its students become honest people, thus revealing that the students and the environment directly affect each
As Americans, we must take action against(or for) the issue of maintaining good grades while wanting to pursue an athletic career in high school. The reason being is because of untapped potential, bad time management skills, and peer pressure. There are many people who are affected by this issue such as students athletes, their parents/ guardian and the school itself. Lets not forget the hard working coaches that are counting on your presence you don’t wont to let them down.
All college students sitting in classrooms today face challenges that can impede their success. A challenging course schedule, competing demand for the student’s time, and college readiness are all factors that can hinder a student’s performance in the classroom. Moreover, these challenges also have the ability to impact the student’s overall student development. While most students share a common set of stressors, there are certain groups on campus that face pressures and challenges that are not shared by the majority of their peers. Student athletes are such a group. Joshua Watson (2005) noted the positive benefits of participating in intercollegiate activities, but also noted that such participation can lead to issues of “maladjustment, emotional illness, and psychological distress” (p. 442).
Apparently, most student-athletes don't ignore academic preparation even if they believe they will make the pros. The Harris survey was the first conclusive evidence that concerned athletes and school administrators have finally reached these young people after a decade of messages begging them to balance academic and athletic goals”(Lapchick). This piece of evidence supports that youths should have the opportunity to compete in contact sports because it explains how student-athletes today balance out sports and their academics. Participating in sports and balancing academics is hard but, studies show that student-athletes academics scores are higher.
Student-athletes face many of the same pressures as their non-athlete counterparts academically. Many carry a full course load that is tightly regimented by someone other than them and they are unable to drop below 12 credits otherwise risk losing their NCAA eligibility. For many student-athletes the time they put into a sport is comparable to having a 30-40 hour a week job (Brown, Glastetter-Fender & Shelton, 2000; Schroeder, 2000; Simons, Van Rheenen & Covington, 1999). A student-athletes daily schedule (when in season) may consists of attending classes, practice, weight training, visiting the tra...
“Maintaining good academic standing is part of the student athlete culture,” according to women’s head soccer coach Jack Hyde, “It’s part of their responsibility...they embrace it,” he said (Stricklen). “I love football and I wouldn’t want to mess it up by not getting good grades in all my classes,” said Narayan, a student athlete (Given and Tribou). However, more and more student athletes are not finding studying and keeping their grades up a priority. Most student athletes dream of one day becoming a professional athlete, but without good grades, they won’t be able to go to a good college to play for. Being an athlete with good grades also benefits them when trying to get scholarships. Becoming a professional
Some of these students are star athletes and recreation becomes the primary factor in their lives. It has been set into their minds when they were young by their parents and piers. Early in their lives the child is taught the importance of being the best and nothing else matters. The school system now comes to realize how important this athlete has become to the school team and grades are given to keep the student on the team, and problems are just pushed aside.
Being a college athlete requires, year-round dedication. In order to be a college athlete, one must be willing to not only put time and effort in on and off the field, but in the classroom as well. Student athletes attend between twelve and twenty hours of class each week, and they are required to put in much time with practice, daily and games whenever they are held. College athletes can put in around twenty to sixty hours of practice a week, even during the off-season. After sports seasons begin, almost all of a college athlete’s time is spent dedicated to their sport, while somehow trying to maintain time to study, eat, sleep, and stay healthy. Arguments have gone on for many years about whether or not college students should be added to
n Addition to this with sports in high school student athletes need to keep up their grades in order to play the sport. Some people may say that when you participate in a sport, it takes away from your studying time and then makes you not as academically inclined as others. I believe that that statement is further from the truth in a recent article written by Daniel H. Bowen and Colin Hitt “High-School Sports Aren 't Killing Academics” from The Atlantic Bowen and Hitt state that “We would expect to see a negative relationship between the commitment to athletics and academic achievement. However, the University of Arkansas’s Daniel H. Bowen and Jay P. Greene actually find the opposite. They examine this relationship by analyzing schools’ sports winning percentages as well as
Colleges demand a well-rounded resume that students are trying to fulfill so they can get accepted to the college or university they desire most. “We know schools and families are embedded in society and are responding to its changing requirements and demands, with respect to the competitiveness to the college admissions process, the kinds of skills needed to succeed in the workforce, and even uncertainties in the global economy” (NYU Study Examines), in a study, students from a big university admit to finding that students are becoming more stressed out because of college pressures while still in high school. Colleges are trying to find the students that can succeed in both academics and extracurricular activities. Once students get into college, student athletes can buy a book written by Carl I. Fertman appropriately titled Student Athlete Success – Meeting the Challenges of College Life, to help organize their priorities with their busy schedule. This is a work book that allows the college athletes relate to other college athletes that feel the same way they do. College has its own set of challenges that high school students usually do not face, so this book would help the students cope with these new challenges. In the first section, there is a heading that is labeled “What Student-Athletes Say” with a list of common quotes from student athletes themselves. For example “Sometimes I feel like student athletes have extra pressure and greater expectations placed on them than other students. Everyone knows who we are and people are looking at us to catch us doing something wrong”. (2), which shows how students that do participate in sports feel as though they have added pressure because they are so well known in most cases. Although they do commit to being more known than a regular student when they join a sports team, it is often not fair to the
...order to get better jobs and earn more money, to get to the good life, yet influenced by what colleges want them to learn and what employers want them to know: these all may or may not be the same thing. What employers want out of college graduates is also based on money: who can do the job the fastest and best, who can save or make money for the business. What is clear is that the university or college which is purely a "meeting of the minds," a place for people to gather and learn for the sake of learning, seems to be becoming a thing of the past. It is being replaced by an increasingly commercialized system of higher education: one that costs more and more each year--with the cost rising much faster than the rate of household incomes, and one that is being altered by the needs of an increasingly diverse student population and the needs of the business world.
Vince Lombardi, one of the most successful football coaches of all time, said, “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of will.” Although Lombardi was primarily speaking about success on the turf, he was also speaking about success in life. Aside from being a phenomenal leader on the field, Lombardi was a leader in all aspects of life and stands as a role model for many young student athletes. When student athletes apply this extraordinary will to their academics alongside athletics, the stellar character of these young adults is revealed. Unfortunately for these athletes, many people, especially educators, blame athletics for struggles within the classroom. A common controversy amongst parents, educators, coaches, and athletes is if education is severely affected by athletic participation. When the results of classroom performance aren’t proficient or greater, it is easy to blame sports because of their time consuming nature. This topic carries a lot of weight for kids ranging from middle school to graduate students because, for many, involvement in athletics is a crucial part of developing important life skills that cannot be attained through a classroom setting, and may be the student’s only method of social outreach. Sports serve as a sanctuary, an escape, a passion, and so much more to each individual involved. Athletics have the potential to negatively impact education, if you allow them to yet research shows just as many cases of sports having positive affects on education as cases of sports being detrimental towards education. The truth of the matter is that your education is your responsibility, and sports cannot be blamed for a lack of succes...
Are the new standards and expectations the world has for teenagers really creating monsters? The amount of stress that is put on students these days between trying to balance school, homework, extra curricular activities, social lives, sleep and a healthy lifestyle is being considered a health epidemic (Palmer, 2005). Students are obsessing over getting the grades that are expected of them to please those that push them, and in return, lose sleep and give up other aspects of their lives that are important to them, such as time with friends and family, as well as activities that they enjoy. The stress that they endure from the pressures of parents, teachers, colleges, and peers has many physical as well as mental effects on every student, some more harmful than others. The extreme pressure on students to get perfect grades so that they will be accepted into a college has diminished the concept of actually learning and has left the art of “financing the system” in order to succeed in its place (Palmer, 2005).