Transcript

Are we overwhelming our students? | Dr. David Gleason | TEDxConnecticutCollege

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] good afternoon my name is David gleon I'm a clinical psychologist for the last 25 years or so my work has been primarily with adolescence in high achieving and very competitive School environments public schools and independent schools in the US as well as international schools around the world so it's from that perspective that I give this talk so I'd like to start this talk by first telling you two stories they may not seem to go each go with each other but I hope that after I've told them you'll see that they actually do so the first story St begins like many good stories like this it was a dark and stormy night one of the night Watchmen on the battleship deck went downstairs to wake up the captain captain captain what is it sir I'm sorry to wake you but we have a serious problem what there's a ship in our sea Lane several miles away and it won't move we'll tell it to move we did Sir and it it still won't move then I'll tell it so the captain goes up on deck and a signal goes out move 20° starboard at once signal turns you move 20° starboard at once so the captain is feeling kind of annoyed he sends out another signal this is Captain Marcus Adams ordering you to move 20° starboard at once signal returns this is Seaman Carl Jones ordering you to move 20° starboard at once what arrogance the captain thinks who does he think he is we're a battleship sends out another signal this is the mighty Missouri Flagship of the seventh fleet signal returns this is Seaman Carl Jones again and this is the lighthouse you need to move Steven cvy the late Steven cvy used to tell that story as part of his workshops I'm telling it here for a slightly different purpose that you'll soon understand why so the second story that I'd like to pair with that one is this in 1981 David elkind published a book called The hurried child in which he described the dangers of hurrying children through their developmental years and he talked about hurrying in terms of the crippling effects of imposing too many demands on children and adolescents before they have the developmental capacities to cope with those demands in 1991 Eline published the 10th anniversary edition of that book because what it meant to be hurried in 1991 was already dramatically different than what it had meant 10 years earlier in 2006 elkind published the 25th Ann anniversary edition of that book because once again what it meant to be hurried was dramatically different and even more dangerous than what it had meant in 1991 and in 1981 in that 20 2006 Edition Eline said and I quote the human brain is the ultimate scientific Authority I agree with that statement and in my opinion wait for it the human brain is the ultimate scientific Authority and it is the lighthouse the human brain is not going to move or be hurried simply because we want it to for centuries the human brain has been evolving on its own developmental schedule no matter what time and history we're born no matter into what gender we're born no matter into what race or culture we're born it always develops on its own schedule our job is to get in sync with that exquisite developmental uh um schedule and let that guide our adolescence with our guided and balanced support to their healthy adulthood as elkind and many others have shown the more we try to hurry development the more we actually heard it so why am I telling you these stories in my opinion these two stories help to illuminate like the lighthouse the conditions under which many teenagers in these highly competitive schools are facing every single day here's what I mean anxiety and depression and the many dangerous manifestations of those conditions substance abuse Eating Disorders chronic sleep dep deprivation cutting and self-injury and too often suicide are ever increasing conditions in competitive schools across the US and all around the world so why is it that in these esteemed and prosperous environments that are so focused on students overall progress and achievement why are so many students struggling in such serious ways as a psychologist who's evaluated and treated these students for the past 25 years I've become rather familiar with these conditions but I'm not the only one who's begun to explore them or to be concerned about them in a whole new way over the past two to three years with the help of an open-ended and rather structured interview format I've set out to investigate these concerns in many US schools and in many international schools throughout Europe and many parts of Asia and to my surprise everyone parents and Educators alike see and say the same things through my many interviews I've accumulated hundreds of candid testimonies and have found almost complete unanimity with how these parents and educators have responded to my questions to an alarming degree that unanimity is this for a host of compelling economic and cultural reasons these dedicated and caring adults also admit to over scheduling overworking and at times overwhelming their students let's see what some of these students say Tom is a High School junior the school day isn't just till 3:00 in the afternoon most days it goes until at least midnight often much later I'm usually up really late almost every night until like 1 or 2 in the morning and this isn't for social reasons this is just to get my work done eating is never a priority sleep is never a priority ever Clara a sophomore we hear from early in freshman year that we have to establish our credentials that we're supposed to be preparing ourselves to look good for colleges my whole life seems hijacked by the fact that I have to do more and be more all the time it's incredibly stressful there are a lot of instances of kids just breaking down really horrible instances like kids just crying at the drop of a hat and other kids just losing it and that just seems like a new normal and what's really weird is that no one's really talking about it so then I've talked with parents and parents have similar resports parents say we overs schedu our kids and we micromanage their lives we criticize them for not getting their work done and for spending too much time on social media and for not getting getting to bed on time and we talk too much about where they're going to college Educators report similar issues we overschedule our students we compress too much time too much activity into an inadequate number of days and weeks we assigned too much homework we place too much emphasis directly and indirectly on their grades and we over focus on the college process we expect our students to think like adults and to act like adults before they even developed those skill sets so we have to ask ourselves what adultness are we asking of adolescence as I see it the most common adult-like functioning that we're asking of adolescence may be characterized by our faulty assumptions that their executive function capacities have fully developed executive functions in a few words refer to these taking initiative and having consistent self discipline study habits being able to organize manage their time their space and their materials particularly in the face of competing demands every day and into many nights and being able to understand regulate and cope effectively with their own emotions you may already know that executive functions are themselves capacities that develop gradually and over time and that they're coordinated within the prefrontal cortex of the brain the part of the brain that we now know develops last and not fully until the late 20s and early 30s so it's not as if teenagers just get a set of executive functions when they turn 13 as they enter the teenage years as if it were a new tool set with which to build and shape their academic and personal identities no it doesn't work quite like that these are capacities that develop very gradually over time so isn't it ironic that these executive capacities that for most people develop last are the very skills that early adolescence at the age of 13 14 and 15 that they need first in order to be successful in these highly competitive schools all around the world some students actually can uh fake it I think they they frequently make it look like they're managing but often at Great cost they pull all nighters they walk around exhausted all the time often on the brink of emotional breakdown but they make it but for many students they don't because it's too much pressure for them too early in their lives thanks to the wonders of neuroimaging we now know with ever increasing exactness about human brain development and because of these extraordinary insights I think we know exactly why so many students are experiencing so much pressure so early in their lives essentially their brains just haven't yet developed the adult capacities to manage the Relentless competing and high-pressured demands that we as adults admit to imposing on them something is very very wrong here this slide illustrates something that's known as the yuris Dodson law a discovery made by these two psychologists back in 1908 over a hundred years ago where they grafted the relationship between performance and pressure or stress level or as this slide shows arousal level the way it was termed back then as you'll see by this inverted U-shaped curve some pressure isn't just good it's actually necessary to achieve Optimal Performance but if pressure continues or is experienced as too much pressure then you'll see that performance drops off precipitously and leads to significantly increased anxiety pain anger and violence as this slide shows or in the many forms of adolescent anxiety that we've already reviewed so about 20 years ago in the context of a workshop that we were presenting together a friend of mine Dan Garvey of the of the American Youth Foundation said and I quote we are responsible for the cultures we create I've never forgotten that statement and I've been quoting Dan ever since what it means for us is that as a population of well-intended parents and Educators all around the world we admit to over scheduling overworking and thereby overwhelming our students too frequently those practices result in too much pressure for adolescence who from a very clear and undeniable developmental perspective are simply not ready to manage those pressures at this time in their lives so remember Clara the sophomore who said that this pressure had become a new normal and that no one was really talking about it the cumulative effect of not really talking about it is that eventually students don't just talk about it they start screaming about it with symptoms of their own anxiety and here they are again substance abuse Eating Disorders self- injury and suicide and then I think we have to look very carefully at our own practices and our policies we have to ask ourselves at what cost do we continue to over schedu overwork and overwhelm our students at what cost do we expect adolescents to think like adults and to act like adults before they actually are adults like the ship that had to chart a different course to accommodate the lighthouse I I think we have to chart a different course too to chart the lighthous likee reality of adolescent true developmental capacities our adolescents and our students rely on us not only to educate them but also to take care of them we owe it to adolescence everywhere to educate them and parent them in healthy and balanced ways in ways that respect their development in ways that do not hurry them or risk hurting them remember we are responsible for the cultures we create for our kids sake we need to acknowledge our Collective responsibility in this regard and then parent and educate adolesence accordingly thank you very much [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]