High School Causes Conformity and Burnout. We Need Alternatives

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For many individuals, the American high school experience is a pleasant one. A time of growth and discovery within a climate of routines and order punctuated by tradition, ceremony, and celebration. Upon reflection, the high school years are often looked back on with nostalgia and affection by many. With its grand architecture, healthy funding, and talented faculty, Newburyport High School offers an above average experience.

The four years of high school are also a bridge that transitions a child from a student to a young adult who is prepared for either higher education or the workforce. By many accounts, the institution of high school does its job well, particularly if you are looking at it through a lens of assimilation. Specifically, how the student can assimilate to higher academia and eventually find their role in a company or organization. High school says, “we’ve done our job” and capitalism says, “thank you very much.”

For some, however, this system does not work. Above all else, high school focuses on metrics of grades, attendance, and scores. In order to succeed within this framework there is a certain amount of diligence and commitment that is required by the student. This diligence and commitment is required past the hours that school is in session and bleeds into evenings and weekends. Outside of school vacation and summer break, high school is essentially the student’s entire life, mirroring a similar framework of their eventual career.

So, what’s the problem here? This system seems to be working so far, no?

The problem is that for a student to succeed in the high school model it requires one thing of them: total abandonment of the self. 

Adolescence is a period of great transition for a young adult. Among physical changes they are also experiencing a myriad of psychological and emotional revelations. It is during these vulnerable years that one discovers their power, discernment, value, and voice. What we sometimes refer to as “acting out,” is often them simply trying out different behaviors to see where their own boundaries and those of others lay. This is also a critical time in terms of passing the torch of health and self-care habits that their parents once nurtured. A time when we should be teaching them to tend to their needs first and foremost, and instead we encourage the opposite.

Waking up at 6:00am to rush to a building where a student is expected to immediately engage in a topic of study only to be interrupted abruptly 45 minutes later and expecting them to repeat this cycle for the next 7 hours is absurd. It serves nothing but a system. Classist attendance policies that require permission from a physician to simply take time off when feeling ill teaches the student that their own judgment regarding their health and wellness cannot be trusted and will not be considered, furthering the agenda of the medical industrial complex. Students spend four exhausting years completing a series of general education courses that can easily be finished in two years or less. If the student is college bound, they then go on to repeat these same general education courses at university, but this next round comes with an astronomical price tag. 

Although there are many alternatives to the traditional high school experience there, is one that is quite simple and affordable: community college. We are fortunate to have both Northern Essex Community college and North Shore Community College in commutable distance. Students as young as 14 have the educational base to pass the placement test of many community colleges, whether they are traditional placement tests or the more commonly used guided self-placement tests. In either case, most community colleges will work with the student to prepare them for matriculation.  Once onboard, the student now has the freedom and autonomy to design their courseload around individual needs. Upon completion, the student will have an associates degree that they can build a career around or transfer into a four-year college. Factors like evening classes, summer intensives. and online courses support a balanced lifestyle that is conducive to who the student truly is: a sovereign being.

Adolescence should not be a time of conformity. It should be an awakening to the power and responsibility of every individual.  These years set the groundwork for the relationship one has with oneself during adulthood. One of the reasons the “self-care” movement and industry has been trending for so many years recently is because Gen X and Millennials have had to quite literally relearn how to properly care for themselves after decades of neglecting basic needs in favor of serving a system.

The timing feels auspicious in the current cultural climate for setting a new standard for our youth transitioning into adulthood. Let us encourage young adults to do what generations before them have struggled with. Let us create spaces for them to truly take care of themselves, and in doing so, each other.

Marianne Curcio
Newburyport resident

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