No Longer Children: a critique of education in the Silicon Valley
A quick google search defines ‘child’ as “an immature or irresponsible person.” Although legally as a seventeen year old I am a child, I, my peers, and any ‘child’ who has grown up in the competitive pressure cooker that is the Silicon Valley cannot afford to be either immature or, god forbid, irresponsible.
Normally the only times we admit that the stress is a problem is through the sharing of articles on Facebook (such as this piece by Kalvin Lam) or through late night mental breakdowns as we hurry to complete an assignment due the following day, and whenever we accept that the stress exists we feel alone, inferior, and worthless. We stand in a sea of competition who hides their problems better than we hide ours. And to top it all off our parents only compare us to others based on accolades and trophies, not hours of sleep or mental health.
My high school, Leland, hosts an annual AP night so that children (and their highly competitive parents of course) can learn about the AP program and discuss the workload of the classes. A time-management worksheet is passed out to every student, where they can budget the hours they spend over each week doing homework, completing chores, sleeping, eating, socializing, and of course, going to school. There are 168 hours in a week. Or at least that’s what the math (7 * 24) says, but students are very willing to pretend that that 168 hours is 180, or even 200 hours. They take on the coursework anyway, irrelevant of the fact that they already removed all sleep and socializing from their week and are still at 175 hours.
We actively overload ourselves, even when we know we are overloading ourselves. The culture breeds a competitive lifestyle where we are fully aware of what we are doing, fully understand the stress and anxiety we will face, and yet do it anyway because it will all be worth it when we get into Stanford, Berkeley, Harvard, or whatever great school our parents think we should go to.
Despite the overwhelming rigor of AP, honors, and summer courses, we still push ourselves further piling on extracurriculars. Extracurriculars that we waste so many hours on that they seem to become a chore. We lose sight of why we initially loved that sport, instrument, or activity. Why do we keep practicing? The original reason we had which kept us practicing eventually fades until we are left with one word: “college.”
I want to have exciting stories to tell my kids from my high school years, but when every weekend and school night is stolen by some sort of activity that gets justified solely by the fact that it could eventually be one line on a college application to some school my parents and college counselor think I should apply to. When am I going to make those stories? When am I going to get yelled at by my parents for sneaking out of the house? For borrowing their car? For ordering 2am pizza during my “Avatar: the Last Airbender” marathon? The only stories I will have will be somewhat along the lines of “son/daughter, one time I drank a red-bull to stay up and study. It was an exhilarating night.”
Sports that we originally played for our love of the game are either replaced by other activities (just as I replaced recreational soccer with debate) or, if we are good enough, we keep playing in hope of scholarships or any other college related benefit. But either way, the original fun, the original childish whimsy of scoring a goal, hitting a homerun, or swishing a three pointer gets transformed into a sigh of relief as we live up to the expectations of kids who have every opportunity to succeed, but just want to spend another day as a “child.”
Pushed on by our parents, pushed on by our peers, and only held down by ourselves, we get up every morning to add an hour to the sleep we need, take another hour from the sleep we deserve, and head to school to protect our GPA from the pain of taking a day off to just be a kid.
