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Too many kids show worrying signs of fragility from a very young age. Here’s what we can do about it | Parenting kids with anxiety

37 comments

  1. [17]
    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    I: Search Before this whole school closure situation, I instituted a rule in my classroom recently that, when my students were on their Chromebooks, I wouldn't answer questions they themselves...
    • Exemplary

    I: Search

    Before this whole school closure situation, I instituted a rule in my classroom recently that, when my students were on their Chromebooks, I wouldn't answer questions they themselves could find the answer to.

    I let them know this, and I let them know why: I wanted them to be able to seek out their own information. I talked about how the internet is a tool, and how I wanted them to be able to utilize it.

    Some background: my students, at large, are tech savvy in that the know how to use computers, but they are what I would call "internet ignorant" in that they don't know how to utilize the internet, particularly in searching for or processing information.

    More background: you know how, for some search queries, Google will pull a snippet from a website and show it above the results? Well, a large number of my students are entirely dependent on that. They will search by typing in a question, and they will accept whatever gets returned in that box, unconditionally. A student recently asked me when a book was written, so I encouraged them to search it. Google returned a snippet showing the release date for the movie based on the book, and the student uncritically accepted that information, not even realizing that it wasn't the correct answer to their question.

    This happens all the time. My students do not click on search results. They barely even read the small amount of text they're presented with above the search results. Nearly everything on the page is noise to them.

    There's also an additional dependency here. Let's say a student doesn't know how to find the area of a circle. They search it, and the snippet given isn't just the formula, but a high-level mathematical summary of circles that happens to include the formula but is also written in college-level language. Most of my students, realizing they don't know what they're reading, will instead assume they don't know how to find the area of a circle instead of realizing that the information they're looking at isn't targeted to them.

    They will then have two responses to this: the first is to solicit help from someone else, and the second is to simply accept that they don't know how to find the area of a circle and cease trying.

    II: Siri

    So, my rule about the Chromebooks: I wouldn't answer questions that they could find the answers to, but I would help them with how to find those answers. So, if after searching for what you were trying to find you couldn't get the information, I'd help you look through your search results for what might be a good resource; I'd help you tweak your search with better keywords to get more relevant results; I'd help you scan the websites you did go to in order to try and find the relevant information you're looking for.

    My students did not like this. They would hem and haw because I "wasn't helping them". My favorite example of this:

    My students were on their Chromebooks, and they were seated in groups of four. I checked in with the group to see how things were going. The first student asked me "What time is it?" I let the student know they could find that answer on their computer. The second asked me a procedural question about the assignment. I let the student know they could find that answer on their computer (I had put up detailed instructions for what they were supposed to be doing on my Google Classroom). The third student asked about the author of a particular book. As you can probably expect, I let the student know that they could find that answer on their computer.

    The fourth student turned to me and said "Wow, you really don't want to teach us anything, do you?"

    This isn't a parable I invented to prove any sort of point. This is something that actually happened, and the tenor of which is indicative of something I experience far more regularly than most people probably realize. So many of my students treat me like I'm Siri -- an on-demand service that they can use to ask questions to. Furthermore, any time I try to build skills in students, they often respond in frustration, usually blaming me for my "failure" to teach them. To them, teaching is, at least, me directly answering every single question they have and, at worst, me individually stepping through every single step of an academic process with/for them.

    Just as they see my refusal to answer their questions as "not teaching", they similarly see Google's failure to answer their question as Google's fault. Sometimes when they type in a question, Google doesn't give them that helpful snippet! Google's not working right!

    They have the power to seek out information on their own and use Google as a tool, but they prefer that Google, and consequently me, ask nothing of them, because then they have no obligation to us as a result.

    III: Authority

    When I was growing up, the idea that I, as a student, would openly criticize my teacher, to their face, even one deserving of it, was completely anathema. Those days are gone. We now live in a culture, at least in the United States, where open criticism of anyone, for any reason, is widely accepted. I often describe my job as a "perpetual negotiation to get students to do what's good for them". I imagine many parents feel the same way. My words don't carry an implicit weight behind them. Instead, I have to package them in the most student-friendly way lest they ignore them.

    I don't want to reinforce the idea that not critiquing authority is good. This is how we address power structures and hierarchies, redress discrimination and oppressive forces, and give voice to the silenced or overlooked. It absolutely has its place.

    On the other hand, a complete loss of faith in authority imbalances relationships, and probably anyone who works with kids can attest to this. If I address my students from a place of authority or imposition, I'm seen as overbearing. If I don't, I'm treating them with a familiarity that mischaracterizes the relationship between us. I am not their peer, though many prefer that I treat them this way. Parents too know this struggle: freedom vs. discipline; individuality vs. structure. Anyone who interacts with kids has to navigate a relationship complexity in which there are seemingly no right answers, and in which, especially recently, they are starting with the chips stacked against them instead of in their favor.

    Human relationships are fundamentally complex, and this is actually a good thing. It yields a lot of their richness. Furthermore, kids need to learn about this complexity and how to navigate it. But, it helps when they fundamentally trust that the adults in their life are acting in their best interest, rather than children perpetually being skeptical or dismissive of adults' motives and actions. This does not mean that there aren't adults deserving of critique; it simply means that when the adults closest to the student are continually undermined, it can promote another unhealthy imbalance that leaves the student open to finding fulfillment through other relationships.

    IV: Relationship-lite

    Let's put these two pieces together for a moment. My students are fundamentally uncritical of information they receive online; their primary value in it isn't correctness, depth, or trustworthiness, but convenience. Meanwhile, my students are fundamentally critical of the key adults in their life: parents, teachers, etc.

    You can find a lot of discussion about parasocial relationships out there right now, and my armchair analysis says that kids are absolutely primed for them. Many students, valuing convenience over everything, fundamentally expect their every need and whim to be met and be met immediately, whether by the adults around them or by the technology in their life.

    This creates the illusion that a failure to have those whims met is adversity or deserving of frustration or scorn. They then respond positively to any forces that swoop in and inflate their injured egos. "The most important thing," YouTubers, people on Instagram, and companies will tell them, "is who you are and what you're feeling." I'll stay away from how this can play out politically as well, but I'll leave that implication as an exercise for the reader.

    Kids today are being held hostage to an individualism that tells them that instantaneous fulfillment of need or desire is living, and obstacles to that are injustice. It pressures them to value fake, easy relationships over richer, more dificult ones.

    V. Injustice

    I hesitate to write this because it dovetails with some pretty ugly discourse out there. Injustice is a real thing. Systematic oppression is a real thing. Feelings and individuality and self-expression do matter. I do not want to take away from those. I grew up gay in a homophobic environment and would have been better off had someone openly critiqued some of the adults in my life for the toxic behaviors and mindsets they perpetuated.

    I am someone who, following my coming out, attempted suicide and was later diagnosed with major depressive disorder. My diagnosis came in my 20s, but it was an after-the-fact labeling of something I'd lived with far longer, through most of my adolescence and teenage years. I am a child who was directly harmed by the adults in his life and the culture they created for me. I am no stranger to injustice or oppression. I know how damaging they can be. There are people who are no longer in my life and in this world because of this. I am absolutely the last person in the world who believes that the correct response to adversity should be to "just suck it up" or "be a man" or any other paradigm that ignores the issue.

    Discussion about these things seems to exist on a sliding scale. At the far end are people who will ignore outright and significant injustice with the belief that people should take what they're dealt and meet it with resilience. At the other end are people who will focus only on external factors, making everything someone else's fault and saying that we cannot blame people for their responses to these stimuli. There is a vast and heavilty debated swath between these two.

    Difficulty in life can help yield essential soft skills. Eustress is a powerful and necessary formative factor. Through these we learn how to problem-solve, manage our time, prioritize, etc. We also learn that we have the ability to overcome things. We learn that we have strength and agency. Too much difficulty or too many stressors, however, or an environment where either of these are malformed or unfairly applied, can be debilitating. These simultaneous truths create a tension of adversity. Some will overlook adversity because they believe that it builds character. Some will find adversity where there is none, as a way of excusing character.

    VI. Individuality

    The above adversity tension gets argued at large, but the reality is that the situation is different for everyone. I criticized my students' deep individualism earlier, but I also think it's how we need to look at people to understand them. I am my own contradiction: does this make me a hypocrite, or is this just a sufficiently complex issue?

    "Accommodation" is given a negative tint in this article, but it's also the baseline for much of what we consider best practice. For example, accommodation is what has enabled people with disabilities and neurodivergent people to have greater presence and agency in society.

    The adversity tension playing out at large often overlooks this aspect. An able-bodied person refusing to climb stairs is different than a person in a wheelchair attempting to tackle the same task. "Just climb the stairs" might be the right directive to the former, but it's patronizing and destructive to the latter.

    Much of what I do as a teacher is accommodation, and much of it is necessary. If we're examining character traits and conflict in a story, I'm enabling access for my student with dyslexia to engage in that discussion if I provide them with an audiobook of the story. The target skill isn't reading; it's analysis. Their dyslexia doesn't inhibit analysis, but it would make the reading of the text prohibitively difficult. For them, I've "taken away the stairs" as an obstacle and routed around them, understanding that asking them to climb them would be detrimental and unfair.

    For a student that can read and refuses to, meanwhile, the audiobook can be an easy way out. It accommodates an anxiety or a laziness, passively encouraging it by reinforcing the behavior that caused it. It lets them get away with "not climbing the stairs" even though they absolutely can.

    VII. Lines

    The above examples have very clear lines where correct answers are obvious, but real life rarely breaks out that way, particularly when you consider a longer developmental path. A student who may be overaccommodated today might, in a few years, develop an anxiety disorder on account of that. A student with a disability, meanwhile, might develop a similar anxiety disorder should they go through education being under-accommodated. In both instances, the work might be triggering for the students, and in both instances the students have a valid reason to feel that way, and in both instances the students don't have control of the situation, but the fundamental causes for these similar outcomes exist in the past and are almost diametrically opposed.

    These are the lines that we, as teachers and parents, walk every single day, with every single one of our students/kids. When is it right to "push" a student to perform better or meet a higher standard? When is doing so unfair to the student's abilities or mental state? If we fail a student on an assignment, are we teaching them a valuable lesson about the quality of their work, or are we creating insurmountable anxiety for an already severely troubled child?

    VIII. Accountability

    It's hard for me as a teacher to talk about all of this without mentioning accountability culture. This is, writ large, the culture of education that we've experienced in the United States for decades now, largely tied to the 2002 No Child Left Behind act. At the root of accountability culture is the idea that we need to "hold schools accountable" for the educations they're giving children. Most people associate it with high-stakes testing, but it's a much bigger issue.

    Accountability culture has flipped the ownership of education onto schools and teachers and away from students. A failing grade on a student's report card used to be reflective of the student's performance. A failing grade is now far more likely to be seen as reflective of the teacher or school's performance. This comic is a cultural touchstone for teachers nationwide. I've seen it countless times: in teacher's lounges, shared on social media, etc.

    The big open secret of schools right now, and I encourage you to ask any American teacher you know about this, is a lack of student failure. It doesn't happen. Seemingly anywhere. Through a system of corrections, re-takes, curves, dropping grades, not counting homework, no-zero policies, sliding due-dates, make-up work, and other myriad techniques, schools engage in widespread and systematic grade inflation because we are now seen as fundamentally responsible for failing students.

    This is a complex issue, and one I can't (and shouldn't, given how long this already is) do justice to here. I don't want you to think I fundamentally want students to fail or that there is anything necessarily wrong with certain techniques or tools, but I do want to express that it's easy to lose the forest for the trees on this. It's easy to get lost in the weeds and miss the idea that we have systematically cut out students' agency from their own educations by making adults the primary stakeholders for their learning.

    IX. Accommodations

    Because we own their learning, and because their failure is seen as our fault, we are systematically encouraged to overaccommodate students. If a student chooses not do an assignment, the likely explanation will be that we didn't make it interesting or relevant enough; it wasn't accessible to their learning style; we didn't give them enough time; we didn't provide them with enough resources; etc. There are a thousand and one ways we can be found to be at fault for this. And, even if it's a clear cut case where the student is absolutely and obviously at fault, they likely won't face penalty for it. They won't get a zero or a detention or anything like that. They'll get another chance, or a bailout, or it will be waived or forgotten about.

    A few years ago I watched a student who didn't attend school for over 50% of the year and who completed maybe 5% of the assignments given to them that year pass on to the next grade. Everyone passes.

    I'm sure parents feel similarly burdened and under the gun when reading even really good and really thoughtful articles like this one. We're already carrying so much on our shoulders, and now you want to add something else? Just as education is seen as entirely teacher-driven; kids are seen as entirely parent-driven. This also creates the fun frictions where parents blame the teachers; teachers blame the parents; and the kids just go on, underneath this conflict, needs unaddressed and behavior undirected.

    This is a hard thing to talk about, as kids are seen as sacrosanct and uncriticizable. Or, worse, intergenerational conflict is politicized to continually erode interpersonal distrust (c.f. "kids these days", "OK, boomer"). Just as the kids get lost when adults circularly blame each other; agency gets lost when everything is painted as someone else's fault.

    X. Concern

    I don't have a solid conclusion. I wish I did. I'm hoping my reputation on this site can temper the reading of this comment for me, because I think I come across as bitter and frustrated when what I'm really hoping to convey is deep and abiding concern. I care deeply about students' well-being. I care deeply about parents. I want everyone to live their lives in peace, with dignity, and experiencing happiness. I don't like pointing the finger at anyone; my social philosophy can best be summarized by Andy Warhol. I firmly believe that most of the parents I know and most of the kids that I know are doing the best with what they have in ways that they know how.

    But I also know something is deeply wrong; with both parents and kids, but mostly with kids (which always gets put back on parents' shoulders anyway). Every time I talk about this I get pithy comments on how adults always think kids have issues and kids always turn out okay. Someone always mentions that Socrates quote as if its lessons are self-evident and no further examination is needed.

    Even if this is the case; even if kids have always had problems; I refuse to accept the fatalism implied by this. I know we can do better. Furthermore, this zoomed out lens is a misdirection anyway, because this matters less on the societal level and almost entirely on the individual level. As I mentioned before, looking at the aggregate blinds us to the individuality of these situations. Looking at the aggregate doesn't do justice to the child who has a full-on, debilitating, breath-stopping panic attack in front of their peers on a regular basis. It doesn't do justice to the student whose teacher has to quickly pad a wall to protect a child who's beating their own head against it in fury. It doesn't do justice to the parents in a meeting, crying in front of their student's teachers as they tearfully admit that they don't know why their child is never, ever happy.

    Each of these is something I've experienced as a teacher, by the way.

    Multiple times, across multiple kids.

    Ever had to direct a classroom of high schoolers to clear out to the computer lab because there's a student on the floor, sobbing and screaming mid-panic attack that they want to kill themselves? I have. Ever checked your morning e-mail after coffee to find out that a child you care about went to the hospital last night after attempting suicide? I have. Ever have an 11-year-old come to you to tell you that they're worried about their friend who is cutting themselves? I have.

    Reading about how all people will eventually die does nothing to alleviate any individual loss. Our emotions operate at a low level, not a high one. We can know something and still feel its opposite. Which is the truth? Both.

    Even if kids haven't ever been okay and won't be, that doesn't stop me from wanting better for each of them.

    XI. Knowing

    There is a growing discontent with our kids. I see more apathy, more helplessness, and more distress than I used to, and I haven't even been a teacher for that long. The students that I'm getting year after year act "younger" than they should be; less mature than they should be for their ages. They are increasingly adult-dependent, even for the most simple of tasks. They are increasingly task-averse, demonstrating a lack of stamina in their thought and work habits. There's an immediacy to everything that they do. We either fight this or feed into it. The first choice is an uphill battle. The latter is letting them down.

    I don't have a conclusion to this. Much like my students, I'm worried. I'm worried about them, and I'm worried about me. I don't know what my career will look like 10, 20, 30 years down the road. I don't know if I have the patience and stamina to make it to retirement. I act younger than I should. I'm less mature than I should be. I'm increasingly task-averse. I have to fight to build my own stamina for life pursuits. I don't know who's responsible for this or how to feel about it; all I know is that I don't like it and I live with these feelings all day, every day.

    I think this is probably what they, too, are experiencing. How do you fix an intangible problem? How do you answer an unanswerable question? And how do you do this as a child when you don't have the metacognition to even be aware of it? And how do you do it as an adult when you're underneath it too? Is it fair to us to teach kids that this isn't the way of the world, when it's clear from our own feelings that it, at least in some way, is?

    I don't know.

    48 votes
    1. [5]
      moocow1452
      Link Parent
      Do you have a blog or a newsletter, kfwyre? Because you always produce these amazing posts and if you're making more content out there, I rather not miss it.

      Do you have a blog or a newsletter, kfwyre? Because you always produce these amazing posts and if you're making more content out there, I rather not miss it.

      15 votes
      1. [4]
        kfwyre
        Link Parent
        That's very kind of you! I don't have a blog or newsletter or anything like that. Tildes is the only place I post anything.

        That's very kind of you! I don't have a blog or newsletter or anything like that. Tildes is the only place I post anything.

        10 votes
        1. [3]
          Death
          Link Parent
          I wish I could write posts as clear and enjoyable as yours, if I'm being honest. The way you structure your text and your prose is very smooth, very easy to read, and the argumentation is clear...

          I wish I could write posts as clear and enjoyable as yours, if I'm being honest. The way you structure your text and your prose is very smooth, very easy to read, and the argumentation is clear and solid. It's exactly the kind of contribution that lives up to the potential of the ideals of something like Tildes.

          It actually feels a little scholastic, almost, so it makes me wonder if your experience as a teacher has an influence on the way you write your comments as well?

          4 votes
          1. [2]
            kfwyre
            Link Parent
            Thanks! Those are very kind words, and they warmed my heart. :) There's a good chance my writing feels scholastic simply because I predominantly write in a sort of personalized academic register....

            Thanks! Those are very kind words, and they warmed my heart. :)

            There's a good chance my writing feels scholastic simply because I predominantly write in a sort of personalized academic register. For as positively as you see it, there are a lot of others to whom it probably comes across as stuffy, or like I'm posturing.

            With regards to your question though, it's a good one, though it has a somewhat disappointing answer. I think my actual teaching career has less to do with my writing style than it does with my own education as a student, as well as just plain personal interest in writing as a form of expression. I loved writing all through school, and some of my favorite college classes were writing-focused. I've been "publicly" writing in the manner that I do for decades now -- pretty much since I first found my way online and into the internet chatrooms and forums of the 90s. A lot of what you see here is a skill that I've been personally developing for a long time, driven by my deep-seated, self-centered need to not just be heard, but understood.

            If you've read anything else I've written on Tildes about my career as a teacher, you'll know I'm not very happy in it, particularly because it has compressed to the point where deep thought and deep learning on the part of my students feels outright impossible. Instead, everything is standardized, quantized, and accelerated unnecessarily, punctuated with dollops of clerical work and documentation that exist seemingly only to siphon off what little time I already have. Inspiration and meaning have left the building in favor of data and the pursuit of it.

            The type of writing I do here is, sadly, unrecognizable when compared with my day-to-day teaching practice. My writer self is my most measured, focused, slow-moving self. My teacher self, though I hide it from the kids, is frantic, stressed, and frustrated. I don't have time in my job for slowness or focus -- there's simply too much to get done. This also means that everything that gets done is a poor version of what it could be, because I'm optimizing for task completion, not task quality.

            I put more hours into my earlier comment in this thread than I have time to complete work in a given work week. This is not an exaggeration. Outside of the current situation with schools closed, I have 50 minutes each day to myself to get done what I need to. All other time is spent in front of kids or in meetings. That adds up to just over four hours each week for doing everything that I'm supposed to do. Meanwhile, that comment I made took me 7 to 8 hours from start to finish, though it admittedly wasn't a fully continuous task as I did it across stops and starts throughout the day. What you see posted is also the sixth or seventh draft. My notes app was filled with a whole series of mis-starts that failed to get across what I wanted to say, so I stopped writing each of those and would open up a new note, trying again a new way, and then again a new way, until I ended up with what you see. It was a process of iteration and deep thought, neither of which are provided for, much less even considered valuable, in my job.

            I know you probably weren't expecting a pessimistic rant when you asked your question, so I'm sorry for unloading on you like that. Teaching is and seemingly always will be my sore thumb, and my previously mentioned need to be understood has me compulsively going around, showing it to everyone. See?! Look! Don't you see how sore this is?! If I take a step back a bit, pull the focus away from myself, and try to answer your question genuinely, I think the biggest influence that teaching has on my writing is that, as a teacher, I constantly have to think in terms of audience: what do they know, what will they relate to, what are they likely to misunderstand, what's the best way to get this to stick? I go through a similar process when I write stuff here. Though the Tildes audience is far different from what I face in my classroom, the audience-focused questions I ask myself are still largely the same, and are rooted in the same concept: What can I say that will help me be understood by those I'm speaking to?

            8 votes
            1. Kuromantis
              (edited )
              Link Parent
              unremarkable reaction Wow. That's commitment.
              unremarkable reaction

              That comment I made took me 7 to 8 hours from start to finish, though it admittedly wasn't a fully continuous task as I did it across stops and starts throughout the day. What you see posted is also the sixth or seventh draft. My notes app was filled with a whole series of mis-starts that failed to get across what I wanted to say, so I stopped writing each of those and would open up a new note, trying again a new way, and then again a new way, until I ended up with what you see. It was a process of iteration and deep thought, neither of which are provided for, much less even considered valuable in my job pretty much anywhere.

              Wow. That's commitment.

    2. [7]
      vakieh
      Link Parent
      I teach at uni (compsci, at that) and it is honestly hilarious how much of this is relevant to people aged 18-25 show exactly the same traits, and more than a little depressing. We are...

      I teach at uni (compsci, at that) and it is honestly hilarious how much of this is relevant to people aged 18-25 show exactly the same traits, and more than a little depressing.

      We are increasingly expected to 'entertain' when teaching, as if we are responsible for being their motivation to learn. It's got to the point we set up 'gateways' in their degrees where they have to be passed by someone entrenched (basically tenured, though Australia doesn't have quite the same system as the US). Those people don't have to give any fucks and will gleefully fail 40-60% of the class when they pull that nonsense.

      12 votes
      1. [6]
        kfwyre
        Link Parent
        The people I know who teach at the college level all say the same thing to me as well. In fact, many of their peers look down on people like me as if we're the problem, having failed to prepare...

        The people I know who teach at the college level all say the same thing to me as well. In fact, many of their peers look down on people like me as if we're the problem, having failed to prepare the kids for the reality of the demands of university workloads. My message to them is always the same: I promise you we're doing the best that we can! We're fighting the same tide you are!

        Also, I'm glad you brought up the "teaching as entertainment" paradigm, because it's a huge frustration. My coworkers and I talk about this constantly. We're expected to jazz up instruction with entertainment, and we're castigated should we not do this. Furthermore, if you fail to entertain in your lesson, the students see your instruction (no matter what it's about) as boring, and therefore not deserving of their attention. Any time an activity is the slightest bit "boring" we completely lose the kids.

        It leaves us in a pretty bad bind. If we constantly amp up the engagement to hook them, we're just teaching them that it's okay to ignore "boring" things. The implicit message is that schools and ultimately the world will cater to your attentional preferences, and the primary worth of education is feeling, not knowledge or skills. Doing this creates the expectation for kids that everything they learn should always be maximally interesting, and funny to boot!

        If, instead, we insist that sometimes topics are less interesting, and sometimes a lesson is a slow-moving one, and sometimes you need to have stamina and persistence in order to learn something, not only do the kids immediately check out, but institutionally we get treated as if we're pariahs who are deliberately failing to meet kids' needs. Nothing is worse than getting evaluated by an administrators during a boring lesson.

        The biggest casualty of this is reading. I've talked about it before but the crux is that most of my students do not have the mental and attentional stamina and to be able to read a book from the beginning to the end. Not in one sitting, mind you, but even chunked out over days or weeks. Reading, to them, is boring, and therefore undeserving of their attention. Also, so many of them haven't had to practice tasks that would build up stamina in the first place, because so much of their instruction has moved to stuff that feeds their need for constant stimulus and entertainment.

        9 votes
        1. [5]
          Grzmot
          Link Parent
          I feel like the answer to this problem lies somewhere in the middle of the two approaches. As you said in your original comment, it's important to be accepting of people who are different, without...

          I feel like the answer to this problem lies somewhere in the middle of the two approaches. As you said in your original comment, it's important to be accepting of people who are different, without accepting children's natural laziness and teaching them to survive on their own in this world.

          Also, I'm glad you brought up the "teaching as entertainment" paradigm, because it's a huge frustration.

          There it is again, because the nuances to this situation are so varied. There's "boring teaching from the front" which is unengaging and will often leave kids uninterested which I feel like isn't the right way to teach. But teachers should never be forced to make entertainment out of their classes to appease absolutely every student, because you can't appease absolutely every student.

          I think what would help here are smaller classes. A single person, no matter how qualified, cannot properly teach 20 kids without relying on the dreaded "boring lecture" method.

          My mom's a (I think that's the US equivalent) highschool teacher and although it's not as bad on this side of the pond probably because while not ideal, we do give parents more resources to actually care for their kids and this culture of, for the better lack of a word, "coddling" your kids so much hasn't spread.

          Parents aren't the friends of their children. That does not mean that their kids can't confide in them, or that they can't have fun times with their children. But it means that they need to be taught discipline in the right amounts, so when the time comes where they have to rely only on themselves (and that time will come), they have the ability to get whatever needs to be done, done.

          That does not mean that they can never rely on their friends or family to help them out, of course not. But you can never rely on other people as much as you should rely on yourself, because other people might not be around you when you need help, or they might not respond because they have their own problems to solve. But you'll always be around yourself, so you know, it might be best to push through and do the unpleasant thing, sit down and study, or finish that project.

          The biggest casualty of this is reading.

          It fucking sucks, because there's a lot of knowledge and good stories hidden in books. I don't know how old the kids are that you teach, but I can heartily recommend Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. Very funny, relatable stories and good characters, and the man uses simple words to convey complex stuff in a way that betrays a mastery of a the english language I've not seen in any other English-writing author (But I've not read that many famous ones).

          3 votes
          1. [4]
            kfwyre
            Link Parent
            Yeah, like you said, the entertainment line is a nuanced one. I think everyone can relate to the drudgery of an outright boring teacher or class, but more often than not I think "boring" becomes a...

            Yeah, like you said, the entertainment line is a nuanced one. I think everyone can relate to the drudgery of an outright boring teacher or class, but more often than not I think "boring" becomes a proxy for "anything I don't like".

            There's also a pretty powerful imbalance with regards to subjects. A lot of the math teachers I know put up with a lot of "boring" complaints from seemingly everyone, but they can't help it that while the kids are playing with fire-breathing bunsen burners in chemistry and talking police brutality through The Hate U Give in English, they're... factoring... polynomials... in math. Some things you just can't jazz up, and, unfortunately, the more you jazz up things hoping to catch the students' interest, the more the normal stuff looks like drudgery in comparison.

            Also, I have actually never read any Pratchett myself, despite the fact that Discworld has been recommended to me constantly over the years and it's something I would probably love (Pratchett is always mentioned alongside Douglas Adams, for example, and I've read and loved pretty much everything Adams has written). Your comment is yet another reminder that I really need to get around to Discworld!

            4 votes
            1. [2]
              FlippantGod
              Link Parent
              Seeing as this thread is back, I can finally comment. I've cooled on most details I wanted to get into in the time since this thread first came around; I can't imagine any result but feeling...

              Seeing as this thread is back, I can finally comment.

              I've cooled on most details I wanted to get into in the time since this thread first came around; I can't imagine any result but feeling drained from even a healthy debate. There are too many interlocking pieces for me to easily keep in mind.

              What still remains at the back of my head was just this; mathematics really is such a difficult field to drive engagement in. I know so many people who profess a hate, or believe themselves inherently unsuited for excelling in or even learning mathematics. Even I struggled to get excited until I found applications I wanted to work on in college.

              I think it might be impossible to instill in someone a desire to excel in highschool trigonometry because they will know how to calculate the smallest enclosure for a yard. But trying to get students excited for the myriad applications of mathematics seems hopeless when many students don't even know what they want to do in the next ten years of their life, let alone twenty or thirty. And there simply isn't another motivation like intrinsic motivation to tackle hard or uncomfortable problems.


              If I have hope for the future of education, it is that the quality and popularity of community colleges will continue to grow, we see a resurgence in trade schools, and that AI gives us incredibly powerful personalized teaching tools. I think all three of these are possible, and fingers crossed, beneficial, in the near future.

              6 votes
              1. Akir
                Link Parent
                I've always felt that mathematics is one of the fields that need far more investment on 'hands on' materials. Young kids get manipulables to teach them basic numerical concepts, but why don't we...

                I've always felt that mathematics is one of the fields that need far more investment on 'hands on' materials. Young kids get manipulables to teach them basic numerical concepts, but why don't we have something like that for upper-level math? Instead of talking about triganometry in terms of imaginary lines and points, why not take them to the wood shop and show the students a real-world example? Or perhaps we could introduce basic programming to students so they can better understand algebraic formulas (which will also be very important when the student is studying physics).

                But more than anything I agree with what @Grzmot originally said on the topic; we need smaller classrooms so that teachers can have the time to check with their students and ensure they're actually understanding the materials.

                3 votes
            2. Grzmot
              Link Parent
              That's a perspective I haven't considered before. But you're correct; subjects like mathematics require very abstract thinking, and there's only so much that can be proven or shown graphically...

              There's also a pretty powerful imbalance with regards to subjects. A lot of the math teachers I know put up with a lot of "boring" complaints from seemingly everyone, but they can't help it that while the kids are playing with fire-breathing bunsen burners in chemistry and talking police brutality through The Hate U Give in English, they're... factoring... polynomials... in math.

              That's a perspective I haven't considered before. But you're correct; subjects like mathematics require very abstract thinking, and there's only so much that can be proven or shown graphically (e.g. the pythagorean theorem has a beautiful graphical proof that is easy to understand, sadly I only discovered it in university). I think math as it is prettiest (and most understandable) when you don't teach about math directly, but instead try to find patterns in the world using mathematics. Thus you can describe things like acoustics using numbers. You can actually mathematically devise many different chords on the guitar purely from their name if you understand the theory behind it, because it's math. This might, for a teacher, be a way to describe math to seomeone not interested in math, but music (and thus raise their interest in it). But it would require the teacher not only to undestand math, but also to understand music. And it's something that isn't feasible in large classes.

              I think a lot of these problems would be solved with

              a. Smaller classes
              b. More autonomy for the teachers actually teaching

              This comes at the cost of maybe losing more comparability between students graduating from different schools, but considering that grades don't matter anyway in my country, especially if you have a higher education, I wouldn't worry too much about producing quality workers, and instead worry about producing quality humans.

              2 votes
    3. [2]
      Autoxidation
      Link Parent
      This topic has come back to the front page after 2 years, and since then I've become a dad and started to pay more attention to articles such as this one and your insight. Has anything changed?...

      This topic has come back to the front page after 2 years, and since then I've become a dad and started to pay more attention to articles such as this one and your insight. Has anything changed? How has covid impacted the classroom pertaining to this topic? Have your efforts to teach kids been successful?

      4 votes
      1. kfwyre
        Link Parent
        Great question, and one I don't even know if I can do justice to! Believe it or not, I had completely forgotten about my original comment, so seeing it pop back up on my feed was a sort of...

        Great question, and one I don't even know if I can do justice to! Believe it or not, I had completely forgotten about my original comment, so seeing it pop back up on my feed was a sort of out-of-body experience for me. I definitely wrote it, but having forgotten that I did, I re-read it almost as if it was someone else's words. I was like "huh, this fellow's certainly got a lot to say... He seems pretty unhappy..." Then I checked the date and went "oh yeah, THEN. I remember THEN."

        So, COVID's impact is hard to talk about in part because it affected people so differently that it can't be pinned down to any one result, and in part because I don't think we'll fully see its effects until later. The age group I work with was definitely impacted by COVID but I would say they weren't fully derailed by it. Some of them probably even gained some valuable resilience and perspective.

        Younger kids though, I think really struggled. On the whole the perspective of teachers below me seems to be the sort of thing I identified in my comment (kids coming across as younger and less developed than they should be) was really exacerbated by COVID. They report a lot of issues in social development and interactions. In some ways this is frightening, and in others it might just be a short-lived concern. Kids are malleable and grow and learn very rapidly. I can see both perspectives: that COVID offset our kids' development in a way that will reverberate for years to come and that it's merely a speedbump that didn't throw us off course.

        I do know that this year my team of teachers and I have focused a LOT on developing student skills independence -- things like explicitly teaching study habits and organization. This is something we always tackle to some extent, but students generally arrive at my grade with more autonomy in that area than they have. Also, in general, last year was essentially a "year off" for a lot of students. Many kids checked out of remote learning and most schools (rightfully) didn't hold low grades or missing work against kids. A lot of students this year had to re-learn how to just be students and prioritize school and learning after a year of hanging out with their friends and going on TikTok for eight hours a day.

        I'm a pretty big believer in the idea that where there is the greatest need there is the greatest potential for change. Even though my students had bigger setbacks than normal, they've also grown more than kids do in a normal year. Rereading through the pessimism in my earlier comment felt foreign to me not just because I'd forgotten I written that comment but because I'm actually really damn proud of my kids this year. They're great; they've been through a lot; and they've come a long way. I'm happy for them, and I consider it an honor to help them along their ways, as difficult as that has been in the past two years.

        So, what's changed? Mostly my kids have, and mostly for the better.

        5 votes
    4. HotPants
      Link Parent
      I want to suggest three ideas, and share a very personal story. Children have challenges. The adult world often wont always cater to those challenges. If you can identify the challenges, if you...

      I want to suggest three ideas, and share a very personal story.

      1. Children have challenges. The adult world often wont always cater to those challenges. If you can identify the challenges, if you can find another way to overcome those challenges while still meeting the end objective, then you are brilliant. And if you can encourage children, when appropriate, to still hit their challenges head on, you are amazing.

      2. Parents are not smart at being parents. We are quite literally learning as we go. We are also busy. Distracted. And don't like bad news. And most don't even seem to care. But much like the dog trainer spends time training the owner, the best outcome is if you help parents learn. And realize it can sometimes take multiple years and multiple teachers for parents to learn/ care.

      3. It's a journey. You wont know for 10-20 years what impact you had. And you probably will never know. I had crippling fear when speaking in front of my class. Every. Single. Time. Now I love to speak, I am good at it, and part of my day job is helping others present more effectively. If only my teachers could see me know. <Pikachu surprised face.>

      The story

      My child was recently flagged as potentially suffering from anxiety. He does well intellectually, but struggles to focus on tasks. I'm not sure if it's anxiety, but I am open to new ideas.

      Honestly, it took me a while to see the problem. He does well at school. He cares about others. But... He is not at his potential. And he is disruptive to everyone else.

      It took me a long time to understand how bad my kids problem is, and I still don't know how to help him stay on task.

      We have a brilliant teacher this year. She is kind, empathetic, motivating, and she takes the time to tell us every day if tasks were completed. We reduce internet time at home when he is not completing assignments at school. She has seen a huge improvement.

      I've also been my worse enemy. I've encouraged my child to question authority. And he doesn't challenge me when I offer him more delicious cake. He challenges me when I tell him to do stuff he doesn't want. Which is fine. But he constantly rehashes the same stupid bloody arguments. I am worried about what I am doing to his teachers. And I am worried about his inability to argue effectively, and then let it drop if it is a loser argument.

      Especially about homework. Oh god. Why did I tell him homework was not effective at his age. Did I mention parents are idiots?

      I think I am going to implement Charles' rules of internet arguments in real life. You get one time to argue your case. You can clarify any misunderstandings. Then there are consequences for not completing tasks.

      By the way, I love that you are teaching children how to learn and think critically. I would guess only 1/10 people have that ability. If you can turn that 10% into 11%, that is a huge gain. Especially in todays day and age.

      2 votes
    5. mrbig
      Link Parent
      Saving that for a rainy day.

      Saving that for a rainy day.

      2 votes
  2. [3]
    Miroona
    Link
    I encourage anyone remotely interested in this topic to set aside an hour and watch this video. It won't be super relevant if you're not a teacher or a parent, but it is nonetheless chalk full of...
    • Exemplary

    I encourage anyone remotely interested in this topic to set aside an hour and watch this video. It won't be super relevant if you're not a teacher or a parent, but it is nonetheless chalk full of great information and useful data particularly in the middle half of the video, though the whole thing is worth watching entirely.

    I try to be mindful of the links that I share these days; this video is worth your time. Hopefully you find it as informative as I have.

    13 votes
    1. skybrian
      Link Parent
      Could you say a little about what you learned from it?

      Could you say a little about what you learned from it?

      6 votes
    2. teaearlgraycold
      Link Parent
      2 years later and I watched the video. It's good, and by itself is a great representation of the point it's trying to make. As a young, college educated person myself I was worried I might be...

      2 years later and I watched the video. It's good, and by itself is a great representation of the point it's trying to make. As a young, college educated person myself I was worried I might be called out. And maybe I was a bit. But that's okay.

      I love the final point. Trying to throw competing views out of a campus is like throwing the weights out of a gym. Don't go to college if you can't stand there existing a debate where one argument is from an ideology you hate.

      2 votes
  3. [13]
    vord
    (edited )
    Link
    So the article mentions about how suicides from 10-24 year olds started ramping up again starting in 2007, and hasn't stopped since. I would really like to see a more detailed breakdown there....

    So the article mentions about how suicides from 10-24 year olds started ramping up again starting in 2007, and hasn't stopped since. I would really like to see a more detailed breakdown there.

    Because 2007 was right about the time that a large quantity of high schoolers that who were front and center of post-columbine hysteria, watched W steal the election a bit before we could vote, watched 9/11 happen live on TV, the subsequent power grabs and endless wars that spawned, and took on massive amounts of debt to go to college were starting to enter the post-college workforce to entry-level wages at best. Many of them just starting to feel the effects of that crushing debt. Oh, then the 2008 crash happened, fucking over so many, to the point that 12 years later they only have 3% of the nations wealth, comepare to the ~20% of older generations when they were our age. Obama promised so much, and let us down.

    We are the older Millenials, and we got lucky compared to the rest that have come since. Those of us who have survived are now in our mid-thirties.

    If you're wondering why Bernie resonated so much with the <40 crowd, that is why. He's given us a voice and given us hope, in a way nobody else has in this terrible, neoliberal world. The first millenials in congress are growing out of his movement.

    If you don't like Bernie's message or policy, buckle down...Bernie was the first of many that will follow.

    18 votes
    1. [2]
      NaraVara
      Link Parent
      I don't think most of that stuff is top of mind for your typical teenager, so while it probably has some impact I think it's mostly background stuff. I suspect the most direct driver is the...

      Because 2007 was right about the time that a large quantity of high schoolers that who were front and center of post-columbine hysteria, watched W steal the election a bit before we could vote, watched 9/11 happen live on TV, the subsequent power grabs and endless wars that spawned, and took on massive amounts of debt to go to college were starting to enter the post-college workforce to entry-level wages at best. Many of them just starting to feel the effects of that crushing debt.

      I don't think most of that stuff is top of mind for your typical teenager, so while it probably has some impact I think it's mostly background stuff.

      I suspect the most direct driver is the intensity of college admissions and the academic rat race. From most accounts I hear kids are really overscheduled these days and have a ton of pressure to perform on standardized tests and to get into a good school so they can get a good job. That can really weigh on anyone who is already prone to anxiety or not super scholastically inclined. Combine that with the general messaging to get a good job so you can work hard and pay off your student loans and it's pretty easy to imagine a kid come away thinking "All there is to do is work so I can work so I can work so I can pay bills until I die." If that's the future you see in store for yourself without any real emphasis on finding sources of joy or community, of course you're going to be demoralized.

      10 votes
      1. vord
        Link Parent
        I agree with most of your 2nd paragraph....the academic rat race is brutal...but is a mirror of the rat race as a whole. This is the reality unless you are independently wealthy. Well, except that...

        I agree with most of your 2nd paragraph....the academic rat race is brutal...but is a mirror of the rat race as a whole.

        All there is to do is work so I can work so I can work so I can pay bills until I die.

        This is the reality unless you are independently wealthy. Well, except that even disposing your corpse isn't free, so bills persist after death. Working 40+ hours a week, especially not building any wealth to escape said rat race, or being able to take much time off is demoralizing, and it's the experience for the majority...well unless they can't find steady full-time work, then it's worse. You might find sources of joy and community, but there are only 168 hours a week. ~48 of those are for work (including commute). ~56 are for sleep. So that leaves ~64 for chores, family, hobbies, and wider community. That ain't much, especially since several of those 64 hours aren't in a large block of time.

        I get that this has been true for a long time, but our society has progressed tremendously technologically. Why haven't we evaluated using this progress to increase leisure time instead of driving to work harder and longer?

        I don't think most of that stuff is top of mind for your typical teenager, so while it probably has some impact I think it's mostly background stuff.

        Yes and no. Columbine had a direct, measurable impact on us, as we watched schools undergo a massive introduction of armed police, stripping (already low) privacy and autonomy that students had.

        W stealing the election might not have been 100% surface, but shit like that sinks in over time, you know? Especially when your parents listened to Rush Limbaugh and Fox News day in, day out.

        9/11 was straight up traumatic. Every person in our high school had tuned into the TV after the first plane hit, and we collectively watched the second plane hit and the subsequent fall. Lots ended up enrolling in the military to 'fight them terrorist muslims.' Some died, the rest became cops (spoiler: the ones I know who did this shouldn't be allowed to buy a firearm, let alone carry one for a job).

        Many likely didn't care much about the patriot act or what it did...but those of us who do very much understand that it streamlined the militarization of every aspect of our lives.

        Since our country has been in a perpetual (large-ish) war since before we became adults, we're either acutely aware or completely numb to it. Doesn't exactly bode well for mental health either way.

        And even then, it's not that we were acutely aware of it at the time. But looking back on it now...it certainly has been a major influence in our lives, even if not consciously.

        9 votes
    2. [10]
      bleem
      Link Parent
      interestingly, 2007 is right around when online gaming became mainstream. i'm just using my personal experience but around that time kids got nasty. was it youtube also? 4chan? who knows. I do...

      interestingly, 2007 is right around when online gaming became mainstream. i'm just using my personal experience but around that time kids got nasty. was it youtube also? 4chan? who knows. I do remember when online gaming was a fun experience and i was actually playing. More hacks/cheats? all could be factors. I didn't read the article but i'm about to.

      6 votes
      1. [3]
        vord
        Link Parent
        Thinking about that... Unreal Tounament 2004 was (IIRC) the first online game to build in voice chat. Penny Arcade had summed it up nicely at the time: 'Anonymity + Voice Chat = Total fuckwad'. I...

        Thinking about that...

        Unreal Tounament 2004 was (IIRC) the first online game to build in voice chat. Penny Arcade had summed it up nicely at the time: 'Anonymity + Voice Chat = Total fuckwad'.

        I think it has something to do with voice communication being a far more intimate and personal method, thus is harder to ignore the teasing and the trolls. Everyone gets angrier and it spirals out of control.

        UT2004 had a far more toxic environment than its predecessors, and it was released at a time right around when the younger groups of the 2007 population were hitting an age where computer use was largely unsupervised, and the net was faster and more widespread.

        Their first experiences were toxic, so they assumed that's how it always was and it propagated ever since.

        There were always cheaters, that has been a universal constant. But assholes screaming in your ears sticks with you, and you're more likely to snap or be rude to someone else after.

        5 votes
        1. NaraVara
          Link Parent
          Also total lack of adult supervision. In school when we played team sports there was generally a coach around to keep us from getting too out of hand and to teach us concepts like "respect,"...

          I think it has something to do with voice communication being a far more intimate and personal method, thus is harder to ignore the teasing and the trolls. Everyone gets angrier and it spirals out of control.

          Also total lack of adult supervision. In school when we played team sports there was generally a coach around to keep us from getting too out of hand and to teach us concepts like "respect," "sportsmanship," how not to be a sore loser, and how to be a gracious winner. The intensification of high school and little leagueish sports has kind of taken a lot of this away too, which probably contributes to things being worse.

          Even if there isn't a coach, being able to get a pick up game going depends on being able to be friends with the other people playing. If they don't like playing with you they'll just tell you to leave.

          None of that in online gaming, it's just Lord of the Flies in there.

          8 votes
        2. bleem
          Link Parent
          cheating wasnt really main stream, i think mmorpgs like in ultima online, there was a huge draw. the skunk works website where they would post exploits. I actually got access to the "elite"...

          cheating wasnt really main stream, i think mmorpgs like in ultima online, there was a huge draw. the skunk works website where they would post exploits. I actually got access to the "elite" section because I found an exploit and allowed them to post it. That's how you got to the stuff that was really under ground. There were third party programs that would totally fuck with the game. Im amazed I never got banned for the shit I pulled, from duping millions in gold to straight up stealing everything in someones backpack to get killed by town guards and then a friend loots you. To then get access to their house and rune which you could totally just steal everything they had. It was seriously the wild west in terms of online gaming.

          2 votes
      2. [2]
        rmgr
        Link Parent
        I was in year 10 in 2007 and while I'd grown up on the internet, that's the year where I really started staying up all night on 4chan and playing games and when I started to get REALLY depressed...

        I was in year 10 in 2007 and while I'd grown up on the internet, that's the year where I really started staying up all night on 4chan and playing games and when I started to get REALLY depressed and antisocial. I think back on the shit I exposed myself to when i was a teenager now and I'm shocked.

        Now I'm married and kids are on the horizon and I'm seriously considering how im going to weigh authoritarian surveillance which I am vehemently opposed to against protection of my children online.

        4 votes
        1. vord
          Link Parent
          I'm a few years ahead of you on that one, and I struggled with that as well. Here's my take: As a parent, your duty is to be an an authority figure until your child is sufficiently developed to...

          how im going to weigh authoritarian surveillance which I am vehemently opposed to against protection of my children online.

          I'm a few years ahead of you on that one, and I struggled with that as well. Here's my take:

          As a parent, your duty is to be an an authority figure until your child is sufficiently developed to not maim or kill themselves (physically and mentally). I struggled with this a bit early on, as I resented my own parent's heavy-handed authoritarianism.

          The real struggle is to identify when your kid has progressed enough for you to trust that you don't need to take the hard-authoritarian stance. The biggest flaw my parents had is they never dialed back.

          That likely means whitelist-only supervised usage early, and backing off from there until you have reasonable confidence that you can trust them to make the right decisions. Even then, logging is probably a good idea for a while in case they start going off the deep end.

          Protip: log at the router, not on devices... a savvy kid will figure out how to clear those in short order.

          All of parenting is like that really, at least early on. Your primary job is to keep them alive and help them become functional adults. You're gonna fuck up (I know I have), but as Daniel Tiger says 'It's ok to make mistakes, try to fix them, and learn from them too.

          5 votes
      3. [4]
        JoylessAubergine
        Link Parent
        2007 was when online open communities became mainstream for young adults. Facebook, Bebo, Tumblr, Myspace, etc. I think its a bit "*letting recent events influence your thought" to blame online...

        2007 was when online open communities became mainstream for young adults. Facebook, Bebo, Tumblr, Myspace, etc. I think its a bit "*letting recent events influence your thought" to blame online gaming or 4chan when we know how destructive socialmedia is to young adults mental health.

        *What's the word im looking for here?

        2 votes
        1. [3]
          bleem
          Link Parent
          social media has been around forever. I think giving it a very public platform where everyone can do stuff anon, that's when shit hit the fan

          social media has been around forever. I think giving it a very public platform where everyone can do stuff anon, that's when shit hit the fan

          2 votes
          1. [2]
            Greg
            Link Parent
            Forever?

            Forever?

            3 votes
            1. [2]
              Comment deleted by author
              Link Parent
              1. Greg
                Link Parent
                Oh I see - for me, modern social media is almost defined by not being anonymous. Back in the IRC/newsgroup/web forum days we all had the shield of usernames and avatars to depersonalise the abuse...

                Oh I see - for me, modern social media is almost defined by not being anonymous. Back in the IRC/newsgroup/web forum days we all had the shield of usernames and avatars to depersonalise the abuse a bit. Facebook and Twitter came along with the strong expectation/requirement of using your real identity, and in turn I'd say the negatives also became a lot more real.

                In the video that @Miroona posted there's also an interesting link drawn to the advent of the like/retweet button and the associated dopamine hit, and subsequent addictive properties, which might also draw a line between them and the old guard.

                7 votes
  4. Kuromantis
    Link
    A long and pretty interesting article on how to take care of children with anxiety and what led us to where we are.

    A long and pretty interesting article on how to take care of children with anxiety and what led us to where we are.

    5 votes
  5. [3]
    ohyran
    Link
    /1) I don't know what its like to be a kid today (I'm 40+) 2) I am not a parent or a teacher and I am 3) not in the US so I am totally divorced from this - BUT I would love to see a creative...

    /1) I don't know what its like to be a kid today (I'm 40+) 2) I am not a parent or a teacher and I am 3) not in the US so I am totally divorced from this - BUT I would love to see a creative discussion between someone who's a teacher and a parent and a young person to see how they see the discussion.

    3 votes
    1. Kuromantis
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      I'm young (not American either though) so I guess I'll start. I personally see this as mostly a failure of the system caused by conservative nonsense and think that (personally), not many of these...

      I'm young (not American either though) so I guess I'll start.

      I personally see this as mostly a failure of the system caused by conservative nonsense and think that (personally), not many of these people are actually in need of much help. (at least in the cases of mental health issues that come from financial troubles. I personally believe socialization related stuff is, well, personal and needs a response on a personal level, something I don't believe in most cases.) This is (unlike some arguments in @kfwyre's thread winning comment) a pretty biased (At the other end are people who will focus only on external factors, making everything someone else's fault and saying that we cannot blame people for their responses to these stimuli.) take.

      Overburdened adults > overburdened (financially, in their workload, in their terrible institutions thanks to budget cuts) parents/
      teachers > terrible parents/teachers (because of a lack ot time and mental energy to raise people) > young people who don't really know what to do/where to go/worry about unless they somehow surround themselves with people who do with other methods. When you try to join the adult world and are burdened with an absurd amount of work/debt/rent with nothing in return and a complete lack of context as to how the world works it basically feels like being punched in the dark with no memory of coming in and no method to get out to someone. If that's what the world feels like to you, forcequitting via suicide/failing to cope and ending with a variety of mental health issues is a pretty obvious ending. (And this is only if you weren't already coping with being lost socially). The way to stop this is to give adults free time to think and raise and to give young people a chance to try without being dearly punished (that is, wipe all student debt and make tuition free, along with also making Healthcare free and applying generous welfare standards so mothers don't need to come back to work after 2 weeks) and show them where did all the punches come from and what they can do to make them stop (that is, civical and political education and business/economic education). Provided this, people will go from being worried about studying for the next test/getting the next paycheck to being worried about whether their elected leaders are writing fair rules for them so they can trust that those tests are fair and those paychecks are negotiable and fair.

      I really do think that these anxiety issues (again, at least the financial and existential dread ones) would be resolved with a Sanders type presidency, political engagement of the youth and a fix to politics.

      3 votes
    2. Grzmot
      Link Parent
      @kfwyre's comment might be of interest to you.

      @kfwyre's comment might be of interest to you.

      2 votes