Advocacy for a Focus on Mental Health and Social Development by Ria

Advocacy for a Focus on Mental Health and Social Development by Ria - September 2023 Scholarship Essay

With a graduating class of only 61 students, and a high school student body of around 350, my-school’s academic environment has turned it into a breeding ground for hostility. With gossip spreading among teenagers as it does, paired with “award ceremonies” where everyone’s grades are essentially just announced to the high school, individual grades are no secret, which becomes a problem in regards to student mental-health.

FERPA, according to the U.S. Department of Education, was created in 1974 with the intent of preventing student records, specifically personally identifying information, from being misused; however, FERPA also has an implicit secondary purpose of preventing student grades from being shared without prior approval, which is critical as a means of protecting mental-health, as an analysis from a student at PennState university’s Science Controversy Course explains that sharing grades can lead to lower esteem and higher grade-based obsession among students.

Indeed, a peer-reviewed study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, corroborates that a low-self esteem directly correlates with lower academic achievement among adolescents, which another peer-reviewed study in the journal Developmental Psychology claims is one of the leading causes of maladjustment and low economic prospects during adulthood.

All of this is to say, my-school’s focus on grades and academic-rigor may have long-term adverse effects for its students' mental-health. For context, to graduate, we are required to take 6 AP-exams and pass 1, yet most students end up taking around 11-14 AP-exams; these courses are all known for their academic rigor, so the academic stress paired with the mental-health effects of the grade-sharing that is so commonplace at my-school leads to a drop in mental-health and a generally hostile social environment.

In fact, this drop in mental-health is so evident at my-school, due to the fact that before high school, all of the middle schoolers—who study in the same building as the high schoolers, and thus directly observe the workload put on high schoolers—transfer to “easier” schools, often citing stress as the main reason for their transfer.

This sudden decrease in the number of enrolled students not only illustrates the adverse mental-health effects of this school, but worsens them too, as this decrease generally filters out the “low-achieving” or “poorly-motivated” students, meaning that the high-school student body is composed of highly competitive individuals, leading to the effects of grade-sharing to be amplified.

In fact, another peer reviewed study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology explains that the classroom social environment, specifically with regards to competition, is a factor in student’s motivation, engagement, and social skills. With that fact holding true, a highly competitive school environment then leads to a lack of necessary skills to adjust to a new social environment. Being at a school of around 350 students, we don’t have access to various cultural, social, and economic backgrounds with which to build an understanding of what other people go through, leading to a general lack of empathy and social function, which then leads to a difficulty in building valuable relationships in those other environments.

Because these effects will affect students throughout their lifetime, had I the authority, I would create a better social environment at my-school.

First of all, this would be done through the abolishment of the “award-ceremony,” which leads to grade-sharing across different friend groups and grades. Doing so will limit grade-sharing only to those who voluntarily choose to share them, rather than for everyone, thus lessening the adverse-effects of grade-sharing.

Second of all, I would implement more mental-health resources at my-school. As of right now, we have a counselor who visits for 5 hours, one-day-a-week. However, very few of the high school students know about this counselor, and, even if they did, the counselor’s hours do not align with general high school schedules—bring during class hours—preventing easy-access. I would make the counselor more accessible, opening their hours to all day, including afterschool, every day, so that students can seek out help whenever they are comfortable with doing so. Although this change might be expensive, it is necessary to ensure that students feel heard and have an outlet for their opinions, which may be beneficial to the school in the long run by increasing academic motivation and involvement.

Lastly, I would make the environment at my-school more diverse. Even though my-school has no tuition to attend, because of the academic rigor of the coursework, many of the students who stay for high school come from well-off economic backgrounds, as those are the people who are able to afford private help and who have the time to study for their coursework.

This goal of expanding socioeconomic-and-racial-diversity could be achieved through 2 essential means, both of which are not currently present. First, creating a school-bus-program that allowed students who can’t afford to live in near-by neighborhoods to have access to the school, which could be done via-a-partnership with the local public-transport-service. Second, a free lunch program to make the school more accessible to people who can’t afford it. Implementing these changes, while expensive, will increase the diversity of the student body, which is essential to helping students develop a cultural and social awareness alongside an academic one, further helping students develop the skills necessary to build relationships throughout life.

If the function of a school like this is to equip-students-with-knowledge, it should be done holistically, focusing on social development as well, rather than through an outdated view of-education solely through academics.