Student Burnout Essay

Introduction
We spent a lot of our time discussing the educator burnout rate near the end of this class and while I think it is important for us to discuss, after all we plan to become educators and will have to face this burnout, I think it is also just as important to discuss student burnout. I feel as if so many educators forget what it is like to be a student and make it so that it is harder for students to really stay motivated to do what they love. Being an English major myself, I have realized over the years that I no longer read like I used to. When I was younger I would read anywhere from six to eight books a month. As a college student the last time I read a book was this summer, I think, or maybe before that. Even with school books

I find way to cut lines and still get the information required to pass the class. I am burnt out. So are many other students my age and younger. This is a very important issue because it explains why we have so many students who are left behind, dragged along, or drop out because they don’t want the other two to happen.
I chose this topic because reading and education is close to my heart and sometimes I feel as if educators forget that their students are not superheroes and can’t hold the whole world on their shoulders, and sometimes that is what educators give them. For the remainder of the paper I will be addressing the fact that these issues have continuously happened throughout history and to this day is still a major issue in education. In addition, I will touch on how a decrease in student burnout will help decrease educator burnout.
Historical Overview
I feel as if this issue has always been present in history. In one article, Resistant Readers in Secondary Education: Some Insights and Implications by William Bintz, the author references a statement from 1960 by an educational reformer by the name of Holtz:
Close to forty percent of those who begin high school drop out before they finish. Why do they fail? They fail because they are afraid, bored, and confused. They are afraid, above all else, of failing, of disappointing or displeasing the many anxious adults around them whose limitless hopes and expectations for them hang over their head like a cloud. They are bored because the things they are given and told to do in school are so trivial, so dull, and make such a limited and narrow demands the wide spectrum of their intelligence, capabilities, and talents. They are confused because most of the torrent of words that pours over them in school makes little or no sense. It often flatly contradicts other things they have been told, and hardly ever has any relation to what they know.
While the time period I’ve picked is still somewhat recent, only fifty years ago, it’s important to note that these issues of students becoming increasingly more uninspired by education as time goes on is still prevalent today and had a big enough impact in the 1960’s for this particular man to comment on it.

It’s not just localized either. Many countries even outside of the US have issues involving the burnout and dropout rates of students (Drop-Outs in Great Britain). While the issue of student dropout rate has not changed, it is said apparent that the idea of student burnout is not being addressed as much as it should. Even in my research I mostly found topics related to the burnout rates of educators. In one article, titled “Determinants and Consequences of Students' Burnout in Universities” by Yoram Neumann, Edith Finaly-Neumann and Arie Reichel, the authors write:
Though much has been written about human resources burnout in work organization, including teachers, no studies have examined this phenomenon with respect to students. College students may in fact experience the burnout phenomenon due to learning conditions that demand excessively high levels of effort and do not provide supportive mechanisms that would facilitate effective

coping.
With all due respect to the authors, I think that it is not just college students who experience this phenomenon but high school students as well. After all, “senioritis” is one of the most widely known terms in our country and it basically is a reference to students being burned out from all of their work. This excessive work load is negatively affecting the students and it is up to the educators to change this in order to get them to a better place and to keep them motivated to stay inspired and in school. This issue has created an impact in education over the years because it instills this idea that education is exhausting and then proves it by piling work on top of students until they are drowning in it.
Contemporary Situation
In today’s society, the same issues still stand. I think that historically things have only gotten worse which is why fifty years after Holtz made his statement, we are still seeing the same issues. Students are so overwhelmed by work that they don’t know how to cope with it. It is an issue that is statewide, nationwide, and international. The increase need for a highly skilled job force is creating a requirement for which these students aren’t ready. It is keeping students from reaching their full potential and is creating an awful situation in which they cannot fathom what that full potential is because they are already working on overdrive to just be seen as mediocre.
This increase in pressure on students to succeed or drop out has affected everyone in the field, I think. I believe educators expect too much of their students and while it’s good to put a little bit of pressure on them and have them exceed, it’s also important for educators to remember that part of their job is making sure that the students are actually learning the information and not just spewing it back out when demanded. It is up to everyone involved in not just the student’s educational life, but personal life as well, to take the time and motivate the students in order to create a better learning environment.
Recommendations
I think the best way to combat the burnout phenomenon is to really think about what these students are being put through these days. When every educator expects a student to spend three hours a night on their homework then there is no possibility of the student to accurately accomplish. Even an hour a night is hard to do when you have four core subjects, a foreign language, and extracurricular activities, which you are expected to be in if you want a decent chance of getting into college. Not to mention that maybe the homework only takes an hour for student A, but for student B it takes at least two, maybe three. This is just another added pressure for that student who may be falling behind. I understand the importance of homework and for students to continue to learn at home, but there’s a chance this added stress is detrimental to their improvement.
In 1927, the British Medical Journal published an article entitled “Homework” in which they quote the Board of Education’s Consultative-Committee in 1922 as saying, “Excessive homework dulls the growing mind. It seems desirable, therefore, that the hours assigned…in day schools to homework should be materially diminished… If we regard homework as a factor in the evolution of interests that make for individuality, this is an advantage too dearly purchased.” Later in the article it points out that despite this statement, students were still doing up to four hours of homework every night. Despite that this took place in the 1920’s, almost one-hundred years later we still have students doing that much homework every night, sometimes for one class.
The first step to decreasing the burnout rate of students will have to be the better planning of homework. This may mean that the educators within a school will have to get together and discuss what types of assignments they expect their students to accomplish and work as a team to determine what they can do to make sure that their students aren’t overburdened. The reason I think this is the best plan of action is because when a student gets home after being in school for seven hours, they generally don’t want to be doing more work. Especially if they have after school activities or jobs. I really think that not many strategies have been implemented over the years to decrease the likelihood of student burnout because, like the article Neumann stated, the idea of student burnout hasn’t had any official studies. So many people are worried about being burned out in the industry they forget about being burned out before getting there.
Besides homework decrease, I think it is important for educators to realize that their students don’t all go at the same speed. While I can read a four-hundred page book in four hours, my boyfriend will take the weekend to finish it. Which is fine, but it is difficult when you have one-hundred page increments to read for a class in one night and you read at a slower pace. So while students should still be pushed, I think part of the educator’s responsibility is to look at their class and determine what creates a good challenge without pushing the boundaries and creating a situation in which spark notes looks like the better answer the next day. In class, independent learning opportunities can take place of the individualized learning at home as well, including class time to read and get caught up on things that they may not understand. If homework truly is necessary I feel like the homework should be short and should include a strong suggestion to involve the guardian of the students so that they can have a motivator at home as well as in school.
I think with these changes will create a much better society of students who are actively interested in what they are learning and will give educators a much lower burnout rate. When students hate what they’re doing, it’s hard for an educator to stay motivated as well. Giving students breaks after school and on the weekends may make it easier for them to really enjoy school and will make the burn out rate for everyone involved a little bit lower.