Overworked Students?

This article in U.S. News & World Report suggests that American high-school students are having a rough time keeping up with academic requirements and suffering stress as a result. Excerpt:

Earning a high school diploma this spring is going to take just a little more effort for students in Maine. This is the first year that all public high schools in the Pine Tree State are requiring seniors to complete a college application to graduate. It's an effort aimed at boosting the number of students who attend two- and four-year colleges in the state with the lowest college degree attainment rate in New England. Already the requirement has caused some anxiety among parents of students with disabilities and other parents who are worried that applying to college could lead their kids away from home.

Another, more immediate worry for these high school students and their families: Is it one task too much? While Maine is the only state to pass such legislation requiring students to apply to college (admittedly, not the most onerous assignment), many high schools across the country are making students complete similar—and often more time-consuming—extracurricular projects in order to get their diploma. These tasks are intended to boost the teenagers' learning experiences, but they also raise the question of how much work students can handle.

Some education consultants do say that such additional requirements, particularly capstone projects at competitive high schools, make it harder for students to distinguish themselves from their peers when applying to selective colleges.... There is also a danger that struggling students will feel overwhelmed by the additional work and drop out.

On the other hand, we have the following, also from U.S. News & World Report, in a different article:

Two million minutes is the estimated time that students spend in high school. It is also the title of a new documentary film that suggests American students squander too much of that time. While their peers in China and India study longer hours to sharpen their math and science skills, top students from one of the best high schools in the U.S. are playing video games and watching Grey's Anatomy during a group study session...

...American teenagers' attitudes toward academics differ sharply from those of their peers in India and China, who seem more motivated and focused. Take, for example, 17-year-old Apoorva Uppala, who attends Saturday tutoring sessions to prepare for her university entrance exams. She wants to become an engineer, which she calls "the safest" profession in India. In Shanghai, Jin Ruizhang, 17, preps for international math tournaments. He is already the top math student at his school and hopes to get into a prestigious university offering an advanced math program.

As an educator of some thirty-five years, I can sum up very quickly what's wrong with educational practices today: (1) the concept of an integrated core curriculum, including basal readers in elementary schools, has been abandoned in favor of worshipping at the copying machine; and (2) educators' jockey to use special projects as public-relations tools and as the means to getting a positive evaluation from an overseeing administrator. Both of those mistakes also lead to disciplinary problems in the classroom, in effect making enemies of students and teachers.

In some of the most prestigious schools all over the United States, students are subjected to all sorts of activities at the expense of learning the three r's. Furthermore, many dedicated high-school students see the basic flaw and opine, "Teachers don't really care about us learning any more." Compounding the problem is the fact that schools are trying to be all things to all people, to meet all the students' educational needs--from the gifted and talent to the mentally retarded.

It never ceases to amaze me that the spartan one-room-schoolhouse education of the 18th and 19th Centuries led to the rise of some of the greatest minds and inventors in history, including various political leaders and inventors such as Thomas A. Edison and Henry Ford. The old McGuffey Readers and the Blue-Backed Speller, plain as they were, worked; effective use of those textbooks, along with many parents' emphasis on their children "getting their lessons," inspired students to go beyond what was taught in the classroom! Back then, without all the bells and whistle and "experts," many students managed to learn what they needed to know--in part, because their self-esteem was not the primary concern of parents and educators.

Is it any wonder, therefore, that the homeschool movement, which harkens back to the idea of a core curriculum emphasizing the three r's, keeps catching on?