An Open Letter to My High School
On Friday October the 26th, a student from my former high school took his own life.
On Tuesday the 30th, a second student jumped from the third floor of the arts building during third period. He survived this attempt on his life, but broke his arm.
On Halloween day, there was a bloodstain in front of the arts building, which is referenced on campus maps as the M building. This always confuses incoming students. The rest of the buildings are alphabetically named and placed adjacent to their surrounding letters, A building is next to B, which is next to C and D and E, and so on. The row of adjacent buildings ends at H, which is why new students were lost when they looked at their schedule to see the room number M204 listed. Most likely, this was for Drawing and Design, or Sculpture.
As far as I remember, buildings B, C, and D were for science courses: biology, chemistry, and physics. Building E and F contained English classrooms. And building G along with the side of building F facing it were for the social sciences.
I took AP Chemistry, AP Biology, and AP Physics in building C, D, and E. I remember that because I always had to trudge upstairs to sit in grim rooms with lab stations set up. Me, a girl in college who purposely chose to fulfill all her Stem-related courses in her first year of college because she wasn’t interested in Stem in the slightest, took nearly every AP Stem course offered at my school.
I went to this high school. I entered in the fall of 2013 and graduated with the class of 2017. I was on the tennis team, and on the Student-Athlete Council. I have former teammates and friends who still go there. I am shocked and saddened by what’s happening to my high school.
The spring of my senior year there, I wrote a piece attempting to look back on my years in high school and figure out why the education system has become so cutthroat and competitive. I concluded that it was better to rise above these tendencies as far as possible. I stand by that, but it rings so hollow in light of recent events. And it’s so obviously more easily said than done.
I wrote this piece with one of my very dear friends in mind. Two years younger than me, she is perhaps one of the most driven and motivated people I have ever known. I can’t wait to see her achieve great things as she gets older and finds new opportunities for herself. That said, she also puts an unfathomable amount of pressure on herself. She considers every choice she makes now, at the truly tiny age of 17, life-determining. And so I wrote that piece, thinking about her and all the other students at my school like her, whose every breath is for their grades, their transcripts, their chance at admission into a prestigious university.
I remember sending the link to this piece to that friend during my AP Literature class, which was filled with seniors who had already been accepted to colleges and were noticeably lax because of it. I told her only half-jokingly that I wrote this for her. And I remember she responded with ‘Hahaha,’ followed by a question about whether she should do SAT prep or ACT prep or both that summer.
I thought that when I was in high school, it was very competitive. I would say that certainly in our county at least, my school was known for being the most academically rigorous among all the high schools in the district. Or, as the students put it, my school was where the nerds went. Only nerds wouldn't care about the fact that the school didn’t have a football team or cheerleading squad, if only they could take eight AP courses per year starting sophomore year, at least until the parents would fight the board hard enough to allow freshmen into advanced placement as well — nerds who really really really wanted to get into college.
I hope anyone reading takes these stereotypes lightly, because that’s how they’re meant. I’m trying to remember how we thought of things when I was in school, but these generalizations were in no way malicious.
We were proud of our nerdy culture, because kids from middle schools all over the city wanted to go to our high school. We boasted an incredible figure of students accepted into Stanford, MIT, and Ivy League schools. But what got worse and worse, even in the brief time that I was there, was the competitive atmosphere that went along with that culture.
I never want to generalize one attitude to an entire group of people. But I do feel justified in presenting a general attitude present on campus because I believe that it affects everyone there, even those who do not subscribe to it. I did not subscribe to it, but I was always affected. We, as a student body, knew how “smart” everyone else was. More than that, we could tell you which courses they were taking now, which they were taking the following term, and the grades they had gotten in every course beforehand. I can close my eyes now and tell you about the first test in AP Biology and how everyone did, because that's what we talked about during tennis practice that same afternoon. Not forehands and backhands, but "Sophia thought it was so hard and she got a 60."
We certainly viewed everyone else as competition. We knew and laughed at the students who needed tutors to get by. But we watched with envy as they managed to obtain high scores (undeserved, we assured ourselves) when tested on the material their tutors helped them with. We knew where kids wanted to go to college, and why. We knew their chances of getting in, and whether they really deserved them. And whether we talked about these subjects publicly or privately, we knew them. They formed an unspoken public discourse on our campus.
Say you never reduced others using this mindset, and sought to push yourself for reasons other than to look good to others. Even so, you were invariably drawn in because others still classified you. They saw you as an academic threat; worse, they didn't have to worry about you. They attributed your lack of participation in this silently cutthroat competition to your mental weakness, your inability to compete. You couldn’t escape it. And what’s more, it was a relief to participate. Because though it should be, it is not satisfying to abstain from judging others if you are constantly aware of the fact that they’re still judging you.
I think it’s obvious that this is a problem — more so now that it was even when I went to high school. And even though I speak in reference to my school specifically, I’m sure this kind of mentality is commonplace now to many kids because the importance of getting into college as a gateway to basically the rest of your life is now this pervasive mindset that settles in before kids even understand what college is. It shapes their entire educational experience.
I wish I had a success story to tell, I wish I could say that I went through high school being on the side that maybe even if judged, never resorted to this diminutive, calculating mindset. And I wish even that perhaps I hadn’t used these methods to get into a college that was by all of the measures of my high school audience very impressive, because then I could say that a little part of my joy at getting my acceptance letter wasn’t actually just relief that I’d upheld the reputation of being “smart” at my school.
Now, things have gotten to such a state that I want to talk about this again. I want to be criticized for partaking in this mentality, for not doing anything about it when I was there, and for not knowing really what can be done about it now. Because when I was there, I was aware of the growing problem, but I didn’t care. I genuinely didn’t care because as far as I knew, no one was actually hurting. Sure, people wanted to do well, but the way they perceived themselves probably didn’t change for them with every shift in their GPA like it did for me. I was, obviously, wrong. So now, even though I am 3000 miles away, I am calling for a change.
We don't want to change, not really. It’s so much easier to go with the system, so win inside the system, than to try to change it. Because while you encourage yourself be removed from this mentality, it will hurt to watch everyone else put their heads down, play by rules, and probably hack their ways into an Ivy or an Ivy-equivalent.
My words feel weak. I am exactly one of these people I’m describing: I kept my head down, worked, and always told myself that I only needed to get past this next hurdle before things would get easier. And they did: once I got into college, I breathed a sigh of relief because I was safe. Safe from the piercing judgement of my peers and my own insecurity. Someone thought I wasn’t smart? Well, at least I got into college. Someone thought I wasn’t kind? Well, at least I got into college. Someone thought I had no empathy? Well, at least I got into college. It becomes a justification for everything, the thing that lifts spirits and justifies all past wrongs. It's a convenient measure of success that allows me to accept the praise of my friends' parents, and ignore the doubt inside that questioned if anyone should hold me up as a role model. It was too easy for me to disregard the rest of my experience: how I’d chosen classes I knew I would hate because everyone else took them and would question my intelligence if I opted out, how I took fewer courses in order to make sure my GPA would stay the same, how I either viewed my peers hostilely as threats or condescendingly as irrelevant, how I hoped my friend wouldn’t get into her top choice during the early decision process because I couldn't look a fool a week later if I didn't get into mine. I’m ashamed now, thinking about my patterns of thinking then, and thinking about how I still struggle to correct them to this day. As I work on doing so, I hope that I can still call for change.
We need the attitudes at the base of these behaviors to change. It’s easy to say and agree with this, but to specify concrete actions is far more difficult. I’ll start with this: my school used to not allow freshmen to take any AP courses, period. This should be reenacted, to ensure that during the first year of high school kids aren’t immediately thrown into this I-Must-Achieve mindset. There is no need for freshmen in high school to immediately view education as a game to be won. While achievement is an admirable goal, it quickly becomes competitve and leads to self-devalution.
Of course, the reason this policy isn’t in place any longer is some parents who were upset that their kids couldn’t take eight AP courses starting freshman year and therefore wouldn’t be able to earn a 5.0 weighted across four years got together, talked to the board, and insisted that their kids have this right. The attitude begins at the homes of the students who perpetuate it on campus. But I argue that even as the school is indebted to respect the wishes of parents, it should also protect the well-being of the students.
There will always be students that skirt around new rules that are made — perhaps they'll skip straight to sophomore year while testing out of every freshman course. That is inevatible, exactly because of the high-achievement mentality that has been created. It remains that the school's job is to promote a fair atmosphere in which the majority of students that don't partake in that cutthroat competition don't feel as though this puts them at an immediate disadvantage. And because colleges largely compare students within their own school, students would not have to worry about a treacherous and hugely uneven playing field.
High schools should put a limit on how many AP courses every student can take each year, or throughout their entire time at high school. Limit the academic heights to which they can soar, to save them from an inability to value to any of their achievements in the future. Encourage to pursue activities outside of school, if they wish to find more advanced applications of a certain topic.
High school teachers should not release grades for individual assignments and examinations until the end of the term. I can hear the clamor already: it’s unfair, you need to know how you’re doing in a class. My response is this: that at college, I often do not know individual grades on assignments or exams until the professor decides to release them, usually at a much later date. What this fosters is consistent and earnest effort in the class, as well as increased communication with my professors. If I want to know in advance how I was doing, I talk to my professor, and in the meantime I have the opportunity to make my educational experience much more interactive. And while I certainly understand the opposition to this idea, I respond that ideally, grades would be released whenever the assignment or test was graded, and it would not create an immediate atmosphere of tension and expectation. Because what I vividly recall from my high school was the terror I'd feel at the sight of my peers standing together in clusters after exams were passed back, looking around at other people’s scores, hearing their thoughts, and speculating at others' results they hadn't willingly offer them up.
It was a toxic environment to be around. I felt sick, nauseous at times. Your grades were a public affair, which only increased the sense of competition, and made you feel infinitely worse. You did poorly, and you could feel yourself being pushed into the categorization of “dumb” by your peers. To rid the halls of my school from these frequent and recognizably harmful gatherings, I propose that we first take the step of making academic results private. If a student wishes to see their teacher and learn of their grade, that’s their prerogative. And if they then choose to share their marks with peers, it will come from a place of pride, and not shame.
Further, I believe that privatizing grades will encourage students to keep up a consistent effort in their classes. They will understand that they should not treat their classes as result-central, but rather continue to do their best and get something out of their experience rather than just a mark on their transcript. This is a new and honestly foreign perspective that I wish would be introduced to kids at my high school, and high schools everywhere. That education should be learning-oriented rather than focused on ticking the correct boxes is truly an out-of-date concept.
How do we reconcile these changes with the fact that the college system still stays the same? Won’t kids suffer because they’ll be missing out on opportunities that might have been available to them had they been able to take those eight AP courses their freshman year? How can you win in a system by removing yourself from it?
These are questions that I am still trying to answer, because I do believe change is needed. This is an issue I feel passionately about, but cultural shifts do not happen overnight, or indeed even in one generation. All I can say for now is that despite all of the external and internal pressures I felt during my time in high school, I can say for the most part that I enjoyed it. I cried at my graduation ceremony, and I’d sworn up and down that I hated high school, that I would be glad to leave. So I hate to see the black cloud that hung over my high school experience now turn into something that might not even allow a little bit of light to shine through for future students.
Something has to be done. Maybe not solutions I offered — I don’t care. Most of my advice is, predictably, based on my own experiences both in high school and afterwards. So maybe they're just terribly and objectively wrong in a way that I can't see. But I don't care — the most important thing is that a conversation be started, that goes beyond the general, "Yeah, that really sucks," or "That's so sad". The system isn't something alive — it was created. Kids are literally killing themselves, and something needs to change. And I truly hope that when I graduate college, I can tell people where I went to high school, and that people will recognize the name with admiration and not with pity.
