If you type: “work makes me...” I get:
-cry, anxious, sick, drink, angry, tired, so tired.
Now- work AND school systems and cultures and methods could use improvement- and kids are kids. They often can’t and really shouldn’t have to take on adult levels of burden- but.... school is meant to prepare you for life- a career. If school is sunshine and safety- and then all of a sudden you turn 18 and BAM- the world is not fun or fair- school has failed to prepare you. Kids already moan they don’t learn taxes and basic stuff from adults- wait until the generation that graduates from “mentally supportive school” into a world of harsh and unfeeling brutality. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from them on how bad you failed too.
Ideally we would also see the world a better place for mental health. Either way, if the problem is that it creates kids who aren't ready for the harshness of the world than the school isn't "mentally supportive". A mentally supportive school should teach classes on coping with stresses and managing healthy relationships. Children should be being taught when they are young what abuse looks like and that it is wrong. Children should be taught how to break up big tasks into smaller more manageable tasks on their own. Children should be taught healthy coping skills for stressful situations and then be allowed to use those skills. Kids should be taught what is a healthy and appropriate response when someone tells you about their problems, and how to talk about their own problems in a way that is healthy and constructive. Older kids should be taught what is normal and what is abnormal psychology and where to get help if you are struggling with a mental illness.
Children should still be given challenges and stresses. But they should also be taught skills to deal with that. I firmly believe children should have the choice to take extra coursework from a much younger age, with encouragement and even reward for doing so, but without punishment if they don't take it on, and the option to back out if they need to. In life you can find a job that is less demanding, or cut back on your hours if work is too much. And obviously some people can't afford to and that can be a problem. But, this still gives children some ability to manage their own stress input, which can help teach them how to do so.
I would certainly agree that it is not only better to teach skills that rote memorization, but that teaching kids mental health techniques and giving them resources is a path to a better society. Perhaps in a world where the oldest generation alive grew up in such an environment we COULD create “kinder gentler schools” after a few generations had gone by and the “eat your own young” mentality of success and its legacy had given way to a world populated by those raised to prioritize mental health and development.
A fundamental roadblock of course is two fold. Firstly- our societies attitude to mental health, equating those seeking to better theirs to being weak, and treating it as a “luxury.” The image of the life long therapy patient in society and popular culture is the “elite.” Thats changed some but by and large we still see therapy as primarily something for the wealthy and middle class, a place to “whine about daddy/mommy issues” or “complain about the pointlessness of a life without hard work...” That’s obviously not the truth, but it’s the all too common perception and is compounded by the fact that therapy is often out of the budget for many in the most dire need who would genuinely seek it if they could do so reasonably.
The second road block is of course ideological, with many people believing in some sort of “social Darwinism” or Rand-ish/libertarian brutalism which holds suffering and struggle as an integral part of life, where competition isn’t a necessity of circumstance to be eliminated by social progress but an intrinsic human value. The problem is that in a world of ethical and well adjusted people, so long as greed is a motivator, the person who gets the results will tend to have the power regardless of how those results are won. Professional sports is a perfect example with only the most naive or intentionally blind believing that things like PED use aren’t a huge part of the game.
The fact is that there are surely some athletes at the pro level who never have or will break the rules- one in a billion genetic freaks. Not everyone or even many can have those gifts though- and to compete those without will do what must be done, and then they too will have an edge, until anyone who wants to compete at all simply must as well unless they too are a genetic lottery winner- and of course, a genetic lottery winner on PED can break all time records and surpass their peers so....
That tends to be the world we live in on the whole. The skills that an average professional has today could make them a billionaire a few decades ago. The knowledge a reasonably learned person has today would make them one of the smartest people on earth not too long ago in history. As college or continued education becomes almost compulsory as opposed to a relative minority, and more and more jobs that pay “decent living wage” become either about absolute performance or highly technical or regulated- people will have to continue to compete more, do more, to get less than they would have. What makes a star employee one generation makes an entry level employee not long after.
So in a world where kids simultaneously are being pushed into deciding their career path earlier and earlier, where even the preschool you get into of going to preschool become more important, yet kids report being more stressed, having less time for themselves, and seem to bemoan not learning taxes or how to sew all at the same time- to say nothing of school budgets which are so slim that things like social studies, art, etc. are cut from curriculums in ever increasing class sizes while teachers burn out in their first few years- adding a complex and effective mental health component would basically require all school to become boarding school.
Hyperbole of course- but there are already only so many hours in a day and high school and college kids both report between class, school work, and studying they barely have time. What do we cut to make room? There is also the philosophy of “need” and questions about what exactly is most important for school to teach as opposed to what a person should or shouldn’t prioritize in their own time as needed or desired. School is a bit of a balancing act. Parents and the like view school as a means to give their children skills to succeed financially and in careers- with the thought that kids must figure out the rest themselves but a strong financial foundation is the start of everything else.
The truth is that most of not many kids aren’t successful, won’t be rich and likely may not even be “middle class comfortable.” Those kids will never use algebra or advanced English or many other things taught in school in their daily lives or careers. It’s an uncomfortable truth but our system produces by design some percent of people who life will just step on. The problem comes becomes which kids do we decide to “give up on” at an early age and resign their education to one befitting “worker drones” and which kids do we say “they could be anything”?
All very complex stuff- and that’s before we step into philosophy and theology. Stress management and the like is full of exercises on framing, how to think and view situations, outlooks and attitudes. In a diverse world it would be difficult if not impossible to find a curriculum which could meet mass approval, and there are also arguments about wether schools should be responsible for teaching kids how to think as opposed to giving kids a forum to figure out how to think for themselves. In spirit though I agree. All the little details asides I think kids today and yesterday could use resources- and as a nation we need to stop treating mental health as a luxury or indulgence and treat it as though it were as essential as... well... as essential as we seem to think getting into a good school or a high score on a standardized test is.
-cry, anxious, sick, drink, angry, tired, so tired.
Now- work AND school systems and cultures and methods could use improvement- and kids are kids. They often can’t and really shouldn’t have to take on adult levels of burden- but.... school is meant to prepare you for life- a career. If school is sunshine and safety- and then all of a sudden you turn 18 and BAM- the world is not fun or fair- school has failed to prepare you. Kids already moan they don’t learn taxes and basic stuff from adults- wait until the generation that graduates from “mentally supportive school” into a world of harsh and unfeeling brutality. I’m sure you’ll be hearing from them on how bad you failed too.