Every weekday morning, students across the nation arrive at school and file into their classrooms. Most students are ready and prepared to learn, but increasing numbers are reportedly anxious, “stressed-out” and hyperkinetic. Teachers everywhere find today’s students distracted by mobile devices and texting, wrestling with family issues, bothered by bullying, easily excitable, or simply anxious about academic expectations. Child psychologists and parenting experts provide plenty of advice on how to help “stressed-out” kids cope in our schools and homes.
More children and teens claim to be “stressed” than ever before, but — strangely enough– the research evidence to support such assumptions is spotty at best. One of Canada’s leading authorities on teen mental health, Dr. Stanley Kutcher, observes that they are under “different kinds of stress” and perhaps less resilient than in the past. Why some kids can “handle the pressure” of competition while others “fall apart” is now attracting more serious study. Close observers of classroom culture are also noting the recent trend toward promoting the philosophy of “mindfulness,” including “Breathe In, Breathe Out” daily yoga exercises.
Stress is a normal part of everyday life and resilience is what allows students to not only survive, but to thrive. The idea that “all stress is bad,” Dr. Kutcher insists, is a popular myth and “completely untrue.” In a March 2011 interview with CBC-TV health reporter Kelly Crowe, he clearly explained why without resorting to inaccessible medical terminology:
“Stress is useful for us, it helps the body tune itself, it is a method by which we learn how to adapt to our environment either by changing ourselves or by changing our environment. There is good stress, which is positive, it helps kids learn how to pick themselves up and dust themselves off, and start all over again. That’s part of resilience. That’s part of learning how to deal with life, but sometimes there’s also stress that is bad for you and part of the deal is understanding which is which.”
When does stress become harmful to children and youth? Here’s Dr. Kutcher’s answer, based upon the best research:
“Stress which is very prolonged or very intense can be harmful to people and the times in life when that stress comes on can also be more harmful than other times. For example early in life; severe and prolonged stress early in life such as maltreatment or abuse can have impact not only at that point in life but also well into adulthood because of its impact on brain development. Severe and prolonged stress is not good for you.”
Reading recent news articles endorsing “Mindfulness in Class” and “Self-Regulation” made me wonder if advocates of such approaches made any distinction between types of stress, and whether “competition” was, once again, a bad word in elementary classrooms. One Grade 5 class in Abbotsford, BC, taught by Julie Loland, addressed the problem with a “Mindfulness” initiative. In her “high needs” school, Ms. Loland utilized Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Buddhism-inspired strategies to calm the children down and get them to focus on learning. “I felt kids came to school and were not ready to learn; they were battling stressful life situations,” she said. “Many students didn’t care about learning” and simply came to school to escape “their poverty.” Regular yoga exercises were introduced to ensure “kids were open to the learning of the day.”
A Toronto region school, Massey Street Public School in Brampton, is implementing Dr. Stuart Shanker’s prescription from Calm, Alert, and Learning, a variation of “Mindfulness” known as “self-regulation.” In teacher Shivonne Lewis-Young’s Grade 3 and 4 classes, children sit on a blue carpet and padded balls rather than at desks and the day begins with passing a “talking stick” and asking each child “how do you feel today?” Calming the kids down and teaching them how to control their behaviour with “self-regulation zones” is seen as the panacea. “It appears to be working” anecdotally, according to The Globe and Mail’s Education reporter, Caroline Alphonso. It definitely makes the kids feel better, but where’s the evidence that it’s building confidence, strengthening resilience, or improving their grades?
More discerning education analysts and researchers, particularly in Britain, consider such “feel-good” strategies as mostly harmless as school-based elementary-level experiments but possibly detrimental if scaled-up to a system-wide initiative. Utilizing them in socially-disadvantaged schools might be doing more harm than good by further “degrading” the curriculum and lowering student performance expectations. On this score, Dr. Kutcher has some further advice: “We’re not here as a species and still surviving those millennia because we couldn’t adapt to stress. On the contrary, our brains are wired to adapt. I don’t think we actually do anybody a service and we may actually do young people a disservice by trying to protect them from stress and trying to make everything nice and everything rosy and having a Pollyannish approach to life. I don’ t think that does anyone any good.”
Respecting the pupil and challenging them to do their best remains the soundest, proven, and research-based approach, especially for kids who come to school with few social advantages. School classrooms are populated by “Warriors” and “Worriers” and some of that outlook and attitude, whether high motivation or paralytic anxiety, is definitely parent-driven. American psychiatrist Douglas C. Johnson of UCLA, San Diego, a leader in the OptiBrain Center Consortium, specializes in training pilots and favours “stress inoculation” as a strategy: “You tax them without overwhelming them. And then you allow for sufficient recovery.” That, Johnson claims, ‘helps diffuse the Worrier’s curse.’
If that sounds a little harsh and perhaps overly competitive, then Dr. Kutcher’s approach might be more palatable. “We have to learn how to deal with stress,” he says. “That doesn’t mean that giving kids techniques… or showing them how to deal with it is a bad thing. I think it’s probably a good thing but doing it over and over again and providing cocoons for kids I don’t think works.”
Are kids more stressed today or are we just more sensitive to it in our schools and homes? Do educational prescriptions such as “Mindfulness” and “Self-Regulation” help or hurt today’s students? Where’s the evidence that calming them down sharpens their intellect and produces improved performance? Is there any danger that mainstream elementary classrooms are becoming “therapeutic” rather than educative in their focus?
I wonder if some of this is a result of parents feeling more stress. I grew up as a late baby boomer in times when pay went up, jobs were plentiful with benefits and benefit packages including pensions that many of us are now glad we have.
Even if you did not finish high school, there were well-paying jobs a-plenty in the decades following WW2.
Those days are gone- low-skill jobs, rapid economic growth. Bad news from around the world is thrown at us in an instant.
Resilient students can lead to resilient adults and vice-versa. So this issue is important and may become more so. Solutions? I figure there are many that at the very least do no harm though it is important to evaluate efforts to promote mental well being. Some of the work in the area of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is promising.
Thank you, John, for such a constructive first comment. I know Dr. Stan Kutcher well and we talk about parents feeling “great anxiety” and transposing that onto their kids, often without realizing it until it is pointed out by others.
I stewed over this particular commentary all weekend — trying to strike the right balance. I might have included a reference or two to Dr. Michael Unger of the Resilience Centre at Dalhousie. We have some amazing scholars and researchers down East and they too often get overlooked by the national media.
It is important.
I wonder how we handled this generations ago during war and depression? I suspect these issues existed in the “good old days” but were downplayed or not reported like PTSD, rape, etc.
But as I noted earlier
times are different today and perhaps the sources of debilitating, destructive stress are too. Still they exist and society ought to do what it can to help those who struggle.
This is cheaper than prison, homelessness, social assistance and health costs.
Excellent post Paul. I would add that it was/is also possible to transpose stress from teachers to students when it comes to assesments.
I agree with John. My situation exactly. My father was a Lithographer (printer) my mother a school secretary. Both were decently paid working class jobs and essentially ‘jobs for life’.
Berliner will tell you that poor kids have FAR MORE stress than other kids. Food insecurity, housing insecurity, health transportation…you name it.
Their has been a severe bifercation of the Labour market. It is polarized between ‘good jobs’ and ‘bad jobs’ with radically fewer well paid blue collar jobs. This has turned schooling into a life and death struggle with many parents clamoring for advantages in education any way they can get them.
All very stressful. UK has a severe teacher shortage now. They asked teachers why.
Hours too long
Expectations too high
Pay too low
Accountability too onerous.
In a word – STRESS.
Government doesn’t like those answers.
Berliner – stress is a class issue with poor kids under extreme stress.
UK now has severe teacher shortage.
Teachers were asked why?
Hours too long
Expectations too high
Pay too low
Accountability absurd.
In a word -STRESS
I wonder if some class-related stress has to do with our society’s obsession with acquiring “stuff”. Just another reason to detest Donald Trump.
One appeal of mindfulness approaches is that it teaches us to be grateful for what we have and not constantly want the latest stuff.
While recognizing the power of consumerism has on economy, i wonder if
the stress on presents and bargains at Christmas, Black Friday, etc., not to mention electronic toys, outweighs the benefits of our economic system, or at least ought to get us to be more restrained in our wants and desires?
When some seem to have so much and others seem to have so little . . .?
The current polarization of American politics is based on the idea that all increases in productivity have accumulated as profit and income for 1% and none is accumulated by the working-middle classes as income or redistributed wealth. This is where political and economic instability AKA stress arises.
Thanks for this commentary. As both a mindfulness meditation practitioner and as someone who has studied and applied the work of Dr. Stuart Shanker (and his colleague Dr. Stanley Greenspan) with my own stress-vulnerable children, I have often wrestled with very similar issues when it comes to whether or not these types of programs and strategies belong in the classroom. In my experience, they are very effective in supporting healthy socio-emotional development…but the devil is in the details. Particularly relevant is how thoroughly the people delivering these strategies understand what it is they are doing. I see a great deal of “McMindfulness” happening – mindfulness meditation presented as a quick and easy fix for whatever ails us, and something to make us “feel better.” However, when practiced properly, mindfulness is not all about just feeling happy and getting rid of stress, but rather about being able to withstand stress and roll with the punches. It is a tool with which we can build inner strength, tenacity and resilience…and sometimes that is hard work and doesn’t feel very good! For some people with more complex situations, it can also trigger more stress and anxiety, which then requires an altogether different set of skills and experience to help guide them through that. In order to use and teach this well, one should have a thorough, personal understanding of – and experience with it. The same goes for self-regulation. Before we start teaching kids how to self-regulate (or co-regulating with them, which is an important but often overlooked factor in self-regulation for kids) those doing the teaching (parents and teachers) need to know how to self-regulate really well. Many adults struggle with this.
So, as much as I believe in the power and potential of these practices, my gut tells me it is not something that can be passed along in a PD day or two, or applied effectively with just a neat and tidy curriculum package. If these types of programs were rolled out in my kids’ classes, I’d be a bit nervous. I spent 6 solid years learning and practicing these approaches myself before I even attempted to introduce them to my children, so I’d have lots of questions about any simplified, curriculum-ified, one-size-fits-all version being applied.
Kids are stressed and anxious. Hey, I would be too if I was only given 10-15 minutes to eat my mess-free speed-packed lunch; if I had the fear of “bullies” and obesity thoroughly instilled in me; if I thought my grades in junior high would determine my success in life; if the burden of saving the world was placed squarely on my shoulders every day by 2:30 pm. Oh, and then I had to learn to be “mindful” and “self-regulate” in order to feel good. Parents are stressed. Teachers are stressed. Somehow, I don’t think the answer is to add another Band-Aid-type “thing” to teach in class, without a very thorough understanding of what, how, why and for whom we are doing it.
Thank you, so much, Amy., for providing such an informed and grounded perspective. My Commentary is aimed at raising such questions and, I will concede, conditioned and influenced by my own analysis of a succession of immediate strategies to contain and control as well as calm students. We need voices like yours to bring a little more clarity to such discussions.
Just thought of an insight gleaned from Dr. Michael Thompson, a one-time colleague, based in Boston, MA. Every night, he reminded me, parents ask their kids – “how did school go today?” That he believes is indicative of the anxieties of parents themselves. He calls it “interviewing for pain.” I never forgot that insight when I counselled hundreds of parents worried about their teens over two decades.
And high status parents often connect to high stress in their students
Dr. Kutcher’s focus seems to be teen depression and how to identify and educate around it to prevent suicide and other severe consequences for the teen. This is extremely important work. Dr. Shanker’s expertise seems to spring more from an early childhood development background. After working with children, including autistic children, for many years, he speaks to how stress affects the brain. Neuroscience has backed up his findings. Teaching the young how to recognize and cope with stress does build confidence and resilience. Both doctors are educating in the field of mental health and both are making a great difference with their work.
How about cadets in school. My uncles belonged to the RMR cadets in Montreal and went off to fight WW2. Growing up in NDG my brother belonged to Darcy McGee’s HS cadets and I was in Sea Cadets. A long standing tradition should be brought in to handle discipline with some of our very undisciplined snowflakes. Works miracles with males instead of making girlymen out of them
Antithetical to everything I believe. Militarism – a classic cause of wars. The point of modern civilized society is to abolish wars, turn swords into plowshares.
One example does not make it true for all, I’m afraid. My first piece of evidence- Donald Trump.
Besides what would it be like if women could do service.
There may be a cultural component to this. Think of countries in which military or other forms of public service are compulsory after high school such as some countries in Europe and Israel. How it plays out elsewhere in combination with other factors I do not know.
Same could be said for clubs and sports, music, art, drama. There is some evidence that these can play a positive role but the causal factors are complex.
One size fits all? No.
I too worry about the stress/anxiety that appears to be crippling this current generation. I find the children of privilege much more prone to crippling anxiety in my day to day.
I have a pet theory based on pure conjecture -hey I too can be on CNN! My theory is that this current crop of students/children live the bulk of their important emotional interactions virtually.
The internet is a nasty place for activists with causes and even more stupefying for young adults just trying to sort out where they fit. Our young people are plugged into this virtual nether world every waking hour. There is no longer any respite from bullies, fake friends, real friends with their own drama, and most importantly the tyranny of the virtual mob. They are exposed to this, yes by their own design, but still exposed to this- and they need help.
and the jury is still out on whether online learning promotes academic achievement
I think we need to be careful in drawing too close a comparison between stress for adults and for teens. Amongst the findings of the APA ‘Stress in America 2013’ study was this, ‘Teens are more likely than adults to report that their stress level has a slight or no impact on their body or physical health (54 percent of teens vs. 39 percent of adults) or their mental health (52 percent of teens vs. 43 percent of adults).’ Also, only 10% of those teens surveyed said stress led to lower grade scores; 50% reported feeling confident about their ability to handle their personal problems; and 46% said they felt they are on top of things often or fairly often. All of that suggests teens have a nuanced view of stress but the APA study came to a different conclusion. Since ‘teens report experiencing both emotional and physical symptoms of stress in similar proportions to adults, including feeling irritable or angry, nervous, anxious or and [sic] tired’, the conclusion was drawn that teens do not recognize the potential impact of stress and they lack effective coping mechanisms. Is that necessarily true though? Speaking about this specific APA study Jonathan Abramowitz offered a point that needs to be considered. He wrote, ‘It’s hard to know if all the negative effects teens report are really based on stress. It’s hard enough for anyone to really explain why they do certain things, like procrastinating. Give a kid any excuse – it may or may not have anything to do with stress.’
You have raised the level of discussion, again, Adam.
The New York Times piece cited American research that suggests talking about being “stressed-out” or using the term “stressed” in survey instruments actually raises stress levels among child and youth respondents. The same situations posed as “challenges” or “performance opportunities” yields completely different findings. Looking at today’s students I’m continually struck by how much easier they find “keeping pace” than the adults around them.
At the risk of repeating myself, caring teachers and parents alike are prone to “interviewing for pain.”
enough evidence for Adam’s post to be careful about making judgments
Paul
Can you ask edubeat to change his insulting tone or post elsewhere?
Thanks.
http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article57396608.html
Increasingly across USA and UK nobody wants to be a teacher.
Low pay
Too much work
Too much accountability
In a word STRESS.
Do they pass it on to students? I bet they do.
We do know (Hattie et al) that when a teacher is passionate about whet they do, it rubs off on students as increased engagement. I suspect teacher stress also transfers though I have yet to see evidence.
One issue with assessing complex, abstract learnings is that it may take a long time to see results; i.e., lots of places teach “government” or “civics”, but we have to wait until they are old enough to vote to see
– Do they in fact vote?
– If so, how do they justify their vote for one candidate over another?
Even mock elections in schools are flimsy sources of evidence other than students can remember the procedures for voting. Their justification for a particular vote may be different when they are actually old enough to vote.
As for assessing stress levels in a classroom? There is (noted before) some useful work in SEL (social and emotional learning fields). I am working with a team of American teachers in this area.
Self reporting is one direction. Among its challenges
– how honest are students in reporting their own feelings?
– are they “down” briefly only to bounce up?
– is their “usual” mood positive or negative?
– if a down mood persists, how long before we should intervene; and the, what is the cause since there are many candidates— lack of sunlight, trauma, personality, school, peers, poverty, etc.
Folks might watch the Pixar film Inside Out which is based on some quality research.
Fascinating conversation and one that I am thinking about quite a bit of late. As the father of two young boys, I’m very aware of the level of stress that they may be feeling and how I may be contributing to their approach to the world.
The conversation here seems to be focused, to a large extent, on children as students. Despite what our metaphors tell us, the walls of the classroom are very porous. Not only are our students unable to leave other dimensions of their life at the door, but educators bring their personal lives—including the things that are on their minds—into their teaching lives.
So, I think that there is a strong sense in which we need to develop a more holistic view of this.
Think, for example, of the lives that many of our children lead outside the schoolhouse. Many are highly programmed, shuttled from activity-to-activity, their feet barely touching the ground.
I would be surprised if our efforts to “calm” our children in the school context didn’t increase in the next couple of years. I anticipate formal programs of mindfulness being introduced into more schools across the country.
Welcome back to Educhatter, Stephen. You invariably make a constructive, original contribution to our online “chatterbox” blog and have done so, once again.
My CHEA academic colleague Dr. Catherine Gidney (daughter of R.D. Gidney and Wyn Millar, co-authors of Hope to Harris),is researching the history and spread of “mindfulness” in schools and universities. She thinks it raises questions about the secular philosophy of public education and is fascinated by its growing popularity, especially among those firmly committed to state education.
Well a secular philosophy of state schools sounds pretty good to some of us Paul.
Let 100 flowers bloom has always seemed to me an anarchist POV.
The problem with mildfulness is that it is derived from Buddhism. It is too focused on the individual.
Doug, could you explain more about what you mean by “too focused on the individual”?
Sure Stephen. I say “too focused on the individual because I believe most solutions to most problems are collective. Most children who suffer from stress are poor and suffer stress based on their precarious life full of food insecurity, housing insecurity, related health issues and so forth.
I have long felt that people make a gigantic error when trying to sincerely improve results and close gaps when they focus on “the child”. I focus on the collective problems of “the children”. They focus on “the school life of the child”. I focus on “the whole life of the children”.
Ok, I understand. Hmmm…thinking…
I agree that a “collective approach” to this, and many other, education-related issues is appropriate for a public school system. At the same time, I’m also concerned with what we miss unless we are actively attentive to the complexity that becomes apparent when we admit the uniqueness of the kids and adults that walk through the doors of our school each day. At the very least, anecdotal evidence indicates that we ignore the latter at our peril.
How can we create an approach to education that keeps both the collective AND the individual on the radar? Can we realistically do both? If so, how?
Doug, I’m not sure that I agree with the claim that “Most children who suffer from stress are poor…” I’m confident that SES is a factor in the mental health of our children, and that this is an issues with which all of our institutions need to actively deal.
But, would you not agree that “stress” and mental health issues are present in across the entire social spectrum? Again, what do we miss when we ignore the sheer complexity of the problem?
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/toxic-stress-poverty-hurt-developing-brain/
Evidence supports Stephen on this.
One size seldom fits all, even in the area of causation.
It is no less an ideology / faith than to say God is responsible for everything.
If any one blogger is correct on repeating a single cause-or solution- for everything—and Doug is not the only one who commits this error—you need evidence to convince us “unbelievers”.
Education reform has long suffered from “magical thinking”. Among the examples
– Finland
– Korea
– testing
– charter schools
– vouchers
– copying the Americans
– differentiation instruction
– etc.
Michael Fullan had a nice phrase to describe arguments that get repeated only in a louder voice
“brute persuasion”.
Such argument are ineffective.
Another phrase I have remembered for decades from Jacob Bronowski at the end of his series, The Ascent of Man. He is standing in Auschwitz-Berkenow when he says it.
For homework, folks can look it up. It ought to promote some humility among all bloggers so sure of their ideological/faith stance.
On the other hand, science in educational research consists of a bunch of rules that keep us from lying to each other (Dave Barry quote I think). It may not answer all questions but it is necessary for helping us sorts through the issues connected to stress in students and the rest of us.
http://www.apa.org/pi/families/resources/newsletter/2012/07/stress-mechanism.aspx
Ok, but what do you think? Respectfully, the case for poverty-related stress seems to be clear. But what about other facets of the stress conversation. Pointing to SES as a response to everything leaves little room for moving forward.
A couple of other questions worthy of consideration:
The SES context is something that is outside the direct control of school from a causal perspective. Are there things about the mechanism of school, itself, that could be seen as inducing stress?
Second, which of the indicators of stress explained in the APA article you quoted are also evident in families of higher SES? As much as we would like to keep promoting the “lottery dream”, I get the intuitive sense that monetary wealth doesn’t necessarily shield anyone from family conflict, worry or anxiety.
Yes, and I’m not arguing against your point. I’m suggesting that issues of stress are not limited to those living in poverty. We can’t ignore the evidence that you present. One question that emerges, “Can schools mitigate the stressful effects of poverty”?
There are more questions, of course, but that one, I believe, is an important starting point?
I understand Stephen but from my perspective, every activist trying to improve our schools must, at some point come to the realization that the roots of all education problems lie in poverty and the solutions re 80% outside of the school and indeed outside of the school system.
Without the mitigation of poverty, we are attempting to bail out the Titanic with a tea spoon.
Stress appears in any child regardless of SES situation. An argument could be made that stress may be more prevalent in those with higher social economic status due to the pressure put on children to succeed. It can be tough on a child when parents connect standardized test scores with the value of their parents’ home. I think the age of the child also plays a role in how SES contributes to stress.
Kids are more stressed today because there are too many other factors shaping them and their future. Students are educated to think that university is the only measure of success and university is only successful if one pursues a career in medicine, engineering or law. This narrow focus of success means that marks of 80 or 90 percent are not celebrated, but instead questioned about the missing 10 or 20 percent.
Even children’s after school activities are not the same as previous generations. As someone else posted, children’s days are overly scheduled. Summer has also changed over the years. Children spend their summer days at camps that might one day contribute to future careers. Gone are the days of the simple fun of summer camp by the water.
Or wandering off for a hike in the woods! “Be home before the streetlights go on!”
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
[…] are getting more and more stressed. If you follow any of those links, you’ll see study after study showing that Americans […]
As a student myself I believe we are more restricted by school rules and regulations that we have to follow and now that subjects are getting harder I have noticed that our teacher is teaching things that she didn’t even learn in school, so why should we have to. Please I urge you to look at a song called don’t stay in school it’s not what you think it’s just about the things school doesn’t teach you and for those people who read this thank you