Pressure of school and grades

Ever feel overwhelmed with assignments piling up or constantly worried about assessments? Are grades slipping through the cracks or falling so behind there’s no motivation left?

The stress of doing well in school has taken the actual learning out of the process. Not only do students cram knowledge in for tests to do well and not truly learn, forgetting it later, but the stress of school interferes with the learning process itself. According to the ASCD, which supports the advancement of education, learning, and teaching practices, stress “interferes with our brain’s ability to process new information, recall prior knowledge, and perform higher cognitive tasks.” Subsequently, the process of learning implemented by schools interferes with proper learning and understanding. Additionally, once a test is done and a grade is given, there is no further mastery of that topic and material as the class moves on to new content. A student from AHS explained that she wishes "school would focus more on stuff we are interested in, rather than forcing us to memorize random things and then moving on without any explanation of what we got wrong, regardless of the grade we got."

Furthermore, grades can have detrimental effects on a student’s motivation and mental health now and in the future. Newport Institute states, “87 percent of students surveyed…said they had felt overwhelmed at some point during the school year by everything they had to do, and 85 percent reported feeling mentally exhausted.” Furthermore, they reported that over 50% of students feel anxiety about tests even if they know they are prepared for them, 35% of college students report experiencing symptoms of anxiety, and 35% report suffering from depression. Additionally, the Pew Research Center reports that “70 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds surveyed believe anxiety and depression to be a major problem among their peers.”

Though these issues may seem like they will blow over by the time, students reach adulthood and land themselves careers, the habits that some develop as unhealthy coping mechanisms can stick with them for their entire lives. Some of these include “taking sleeping pills, smoking cigarettes, and drinking alcohol” and a general increased “substance use.” Academic anxiety can also lead to a “poorer quality of life,” “Impaired overall health and well-being,” “poor sleep quality,” “depersonalization,” persistent depression and anxiety, and academic/workplace burnout. 

In order to combat the adverse effects of school-based stressors, schools must integrate intrinsic motivation into the education system. If students are only working hard for the extrinsic rewards that come from good grades, if they fall behind, it can be detrimental. Harvard’s Graduate School of Education explains that extrinsic motivation “can lead to really unhealthy practices like perfectionism or great anxiety, paralysis. And it could also really turn kids off. ‘Well, I got a C so I’m bad at math. I’m not a math person so clearly, I shouldn’t try anymore.’”

Critics may say that without extrinsic motivators, students will not try in school; however, there are alternatives to grades that promote intrinsic motivation and ensure that students still give their best effort and learn the material. Some ideas are “dropping the lowest grade in a class or not grading assignments done early in a semester” or the student and teacher “meeting once a month and talk about what’s working, what’s not working” or using “only two grades — ‘mastered’ and ‘in progress,” to name a few from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Overall, the impacts of stress and anxiety due to school, especially since the pandemic, have been heightened in recent years, and ignoring them would be a mistake and a disservice to future generations.