Why High Achievement Cultures Can Kill Kids’ Love Of Learning

Research finds that high achievement cultures can kill the love of learning. Photo by Annie Spratt/Unsplash

Most parents believe that setting their kids up for a successful life means sending them to a good school. If their student attains academic achievement then they are on their way to a happy life, or so we believe. Then in 2019 the National Academy of Sciences designated kids at high-achieving U.S. high schools as an ‘ at-risk ‘ group for mental health problems.

Now, new research suggests the problem with high-achievement cultures is an international one and is particularly intense around math. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, identifies “a complex process in which national culture promoting high math achievement drives down interest in math schoolwork.” And the problem is worse for girls than for boys.

So not only do high achievement school cultures drive kids to mental health problems, they can also kill the very love of learning they are meant to instill.

“I think we need to look more critically at the idea that we can judge a country’s school system mainly on the achievement level its pupils attain-other important aspects, such as pupils feeling interested in their schoolwork, may get lost in the process,” says the author, Prof Kimmo Eriksson of Mälardalen University College and Stockholm University in Sweden, in a press release. “It seems that cultures that promote…