Analysis Of Pressure By Alexandra Robbins

In Chapter Three, “Pressure”, the author, Alexandra Robbins argues that the pressure that American high school students are facing is dangerous to student’s well-being. In this chapter, Robbins exposes the amount of pressure that is being put on high school students today to get into a good university and succeed in life. Not only in this country, but also in East Asia. Robbins uses East Asia as an example of the dangerous effects of too much pressure being placed on a minor. In East Asia, the educational system emphasizes on good test scores and GPAs. The stress of being educationally perfect is one of the leading factors in their suicide rate among teenagers and children. East Asia has one of the highest suicide rates in the world with one …show more content…
Robbins suggests that the root of the problem started in 1983, when a report called, A Nation at Risk, was published. The report found that the students of the United States were underperforming on standardized tests compared to other well-developed nations. As a response to this report, The Department of Education made changes to the way that schools taught students by matching the changes to the Japan educational system. The changes made included making the school days longer, the classes more challenging, the school year longer, and giving students more homework. Also as a result of this report, the minds of parents and school officials were changed. “Parents and educators insisted to students that their success as adults now would depend largely on their teenage grades, test scores, and single-minded devotion to school rather than to life - much like the educational system in a certain foreign country(referring to countries in East Asia)” (Page 38). Our educational culture has already started to see the effects of the changes that the Department of Education made in American schools. In the last 10 years, the suicide rate among teenagers and children in the United States has doubled, with spikes during the fall when students go back to school (The New York Times Page …show more content…
They believe that modern schools give students an easier workload and that it is easier to get into university today. Others are parents that just want the best for their children, but they don’t see how much they are actually hurting their child. There are indeed students that love the pressure. Some students say that they perform better under pressure and they use it to push themselves more. While that is sometimes the case, the majority of teens will agree with Robbins’s argument based off of their personal experiences and the data shown within the chapter. These teenagers are the ones that go to school everyday, they are the ones doing the work and activities, and they are the ones dealing with the pressure. Only the students can know how they feel and how the pressure is getting to them. There is no adult that can speak on behalf of what any student feels about anything. In conclusion, I along with Robbins, believe that American students today have too much pressure placed on them and that the effects of this pressure very