Why the relentless drive for success is failing our children

The World Health Organization estimates that 14.3% of adolescents (aged 10-19 years) are living with a mental health condition – the equivalent of one in every seven adolescents. As South Africa marks World Mental Health Month in October, addressing youth mental health could not be more urgent.

This growing crisis is probably driven by a combination of factors – some widely documented, and others rarely discussed. The rise in social media use and its associated impact on child and adolescent mental health has been widely discussed. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, in his book The Anxious Generation, has explored this concept in depth. 

Many schools, both in South Africa and across the world, which initially encouraged digital devices in lessons (particularly post-Covid), have since shifted to cellphone-free times during the academic day. 

Some schools in Europe, Australia and the United States are moving back to predominantly paper-based learning materials. In short, schools are adopting a much more strategic approach to technology in the classroom, acknowledging the wonderful opportunity it presents to learners while remaining mindful of its negative impact on the mental health of young people.

Surely it is not just social media and technology use that contributes to this mental health crisis. Are we, as the adults in their world, not possibly also responsible for the pressure that young people feel? 

Schools have historically been places of learning and belonging, where students learnt more than just what the academic curriculum taught. Today, a large number of schools, particularly in the independent sector, are run as corporate businesses, with an academic focus. This has brought a great many benefits – good governance, sound financial management of funds and resources, marketing and communications departments, human resources departments to support and retain staff, and a competitive drive to achieve. But it also means that many schools are no longer just educational institutions.

The challenge that arises with a business model is that performance is measured by results. In the corporate world, this might mean gross profit or sales volume; however, in a school, it translates to the number of distinctions per student, the grade average, results on the sports field, the number of learners chosen for provincial and regional teams, and the variety and number of extracurricular activities on offer. 

What isn’t taken into account is the cost of achieving all of the above. Less closely considered are the outcomes that can’t be measured directly – happiness, self-esteem and self-confidence, work ethic, empathy and a moral compass. These traits are arguably of more long-term benefit to a school leaver than the results that they achieve.

Parental pressure

So are schools that follow this model to blame for inadvertently failing our children? In part, yes. But the difficulty extends beyond merely placing responsibility on the schooling system. Parental pressure can be immense. Not necessarily pressure placed on learners to perform, although this too contributes, but the pressure on the very institutions their children attend.

In a South African society where the unemployment rate is high and obtaining a degree does not guarantee a job, needing to “stand out” from the crowd can feel critical. Wanting to give their children the best opportunities possible is a normal and natural part of parenting. Yet in striving to cater to every possible opportunity, we seem to be losing sight of what should be normal childhood development.

Learners are expected to start their days at 5.30 or 6am with pre-season or in-season training. While these are at times termed optional sessions, learners will attest that they fear being overlooked if they don’t attend, making them, in essence, compulsory. They then attend a full academic day, with the demands and rigour expected of them to deliver strong academic outcomes. 

Once the academic day is done, they return for the extracurricular programme – be that on the sports field or in the water, music rooms, drama stage, debating class, robotics club – a list that can at times become exhausting. 

Once the day’s planned activities are complete, and assuming there are no external club commitments, they must go home to consolidate and revise the academic day’s work, either through homework tasks or independent study. Many learners feel compelled to work late into the evening, or the complete opposite: they have no energy left to work. This cycle repeats itself five or six days a week, depending on the activities the child has chosen, or which have been chosen for them.

To ensure success, or at least the possibility of it, some parents turn to medication to sustain focus or manage the anxiety of not coping. Medication absolutely has a place. But we need to ask whether this avenue is sometimes explored to make the child fit the environment, as that environment has been deemed to create successful individuals.

At school-hosted conferences addressing wellbeing and best practice, a key theme over the last few years has been the busyness of learners and the need to slow down, to allow our children to be children. Yet schools find it extremely difficult to put this into practice and to make the shifts that they sometimes know are needed. 

A culture of comparison

The parental pressure to provide every possible opportunity, coupled with a business model that treats performance outcomes as the measurable yardstick, means schools cannot slow down for fear of becoming obsolete. The result is a culture of comparison: if one school offers a particular opportunity, most other schools will feel pressure to offer the same. 

What schools and parents may be overlooking is the unique opportunities that they already offer, and a situation is created whereby the “unique” is no longer “unique”, as it is offered by all. This deluge of options and opportunities both satisfies the parental demand that children be “successful” and serves the marketability of the institution. For parents, the need to make sure their child takes part in the same activities as others in order not to be left behind and therefore possibly “succeed less” creates a never-ending spiral.

But what of the children caught in this cycle, and their wellbeing? Do we insist on all of this for their sake, or so that we as adults can say we provided every possible avenue? Do we take this approach to appease our own anxiety about what the future may hold? In our intention to provide our children with every chance to be successful one day, are we, the adults, inadvertently failing them? DM