U.S. kids are more depressed, stressed, and anxious than ever. ADHD and autism diagnosis rates are steadily rising. What’s going on? In this episode of Hyperfocus, journalist Jia Lynn Yang joins Rae to examine how major school policy shifts in the U.S. have changed what’s expected of kids, often with unintended — and serious — consequences. Drawing from her New York Times reporting and her personal experience as a parent, Jia Lynn explores whether school itself may be contributing to the crisis — and what kids actually need to thrive.
U.S. kids are more depressed, stressed, and anxious than ever. ADHD and autism diagnosis rates are steadily rising. What’s going on?
In this episode of Hyperfocus, journalist Jia Lynn Yang joins Rae to examine how major school policy shifts in the U.S. have changed what’s expected of kids, often with unintended — and serious — consequences.
Drawing from her New York Times reporting and her personal experience as a parent, Jia Lynn explores whether school itself may be contributing to the crisis — and what kids actually need to thrive.
For more on this topic:
For a transcript and more resources, visit Hyperfocus on Understood.org. You can also email us at hyperfocus@understood.org.
Jia Lynn Yang: It's hard to talk about this because we are kind of conditioned to feel like school is really sacred. School is always good for you. More school is always just more good things.
And if you talk to enough adults honestly, you actually begin to hear how painful school was.
I just thought, I have to write about this somehow. And I have to figure out a way to write about it that's not simply like, here is what happened to me, or a thing that happened to me in my child, but as more of like, why are so many people around me going through this truly bizarre, terrifying experience? What is actually happening? It can't be that each of us has a child who's somehow broken and needs to be fixed.
Rae Jacobson: One morning, just before the holidays, I opened my phone to three different texts from three different friends, all saying some version of, "Have you seen this?"
And each one linked to a "New York Times" feature article called "America's Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem?"
Blearily and a little warily, I settled in with a cup of coffee and started to read, and I was riveted.
The piece, by Jia Lynn Yang, a senior writer at the "Times," dove into a topic that is hardly new. By all measures, American children are less happy and more stressed and anxious than ever before. And on top of that, rates of diagnosis for ADHD and autism are steadily rising.
Like I said, Jia Lynn's wasn't the first piece I'd seen trying to make sense of what was going on, but her take felt incredibly rational and oddly radical.
Because as research showed again and again that kids were struggling, the politicians and pundits positing and hand-wringing all about it seemed to be overlooking something very important, something Jia Lynn didn't miss. As she writes in her piece, quote, "No one in political leadership or our broader national conversation about mental health seems to be asking about the environment where children spend most of their waking hours: school."
School, this vital, sacred, almost unquestionable institution. Something we think of as a tentpole of childhood.
But school isn't what it used to be, because the institution as we know it has changed, changed in big, sweeping, policy-driven ways that can be hard to understand.
And when Jia Lynn began investigating these changes, it led her to a big question, a question that has been obsessing me for years.
What if school, this place that exists to benefit kids, is actually part of the problem?
I'm Rae Jacobson and today on "Hyperfocus," Jia Lynn Yang.
(03:07) Parenting and navigating the school system.
Jia Lynn: So, I'm the mom of two kids, one who's 6, one who's 3.
And I think I went into parenting — I'm an only child too, so I think in a way, like I came into parenting like quite blind and with like sort of low — not low expectations, but I didn't have like, you know, I'm not like, I haven't dreamt of being a mother like my whole life. And I have actually just been stunned by how much I just love being a parent.
And my older child who's now 6, immediately became apparent that she just had a different kind of brain. She was reading when she was 2 and a half. She was reading my copy of "Charlotte's Web," um, and which was very sweet, but also a little bit, you know, I was like, this, this is, we're in a different realm right now. Something is different here.
And so that sort of led me down a very long road of trying to think about who my child is as an individual and what the school system offers to children.
So my daughter was in a preschool by the time she was about, 2 or 3, I think. And right away you're beginning to see how your child, does in that kind of environment. And we ended up, to make a long story short, um, I've actually ended up finding really fabulous schools for her, but then also went through an entire IEP process. We were living in New York City, so that was just an absolute monstrosity. Any of your listeners might be able to relate, the sheer bureaucracy of getting the IEP, your promised services, the services don't come.
You find yourself doing essentially an entire other job in addition to your job because that's what it takes. And my husband and I both basically had to like just, um, spend huge amounts of time on this.
And it was just a very, you know, it can be a very scary experience. There's no manual. Everyone you talk to is coming from their own quarter of it, right? So you might hear from a teacher this, then you might, you just do Googling, you might find yourself listening to someone else saying, "Well, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. Do we need a neuro-psych evaluation? Do we need an occupational therapist, a speech therapist?" I mean, as I go on, it's like, it's endless, right?
And because there's sort of, I think there's like endless possibilities, um, endless fear, endless people telling you things. I just think all of this combines to become a truly stressful experience.
And so just a long way of saying like when I thought about what I wanted to write about, I just thought, I have to write about this somehow.
And I have to figure out a way to write about it that's not simply like, "Here is what happened to me," or a thing that happened to me and my child. But as more of like, why, like, why are so many people around me going through this truly bizarre, terrifying experience? What is actually happening? It can't be that each of us has a child who's somehow broken and needs to be fixed.
Then also, what does it mean for a teacher when the number of IEPs in the classroom is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger? Somehow we have left the sort of old model of disability education and special needs education. We are now in something else entirely. So I kind of brought to the piece questions, but also kind of already deeply held beliefs that I had come to just from, um, being a parent.
Rae: When you say you came into it with, you know, a reporter's mind, but also deeply held beliefs and like an interest in the subject, like, was what you found as you did your reporting what you were expecting to find? Or was it a surprise?
Jia Lynn: I think I was surprised, I have to say. I came to it, as I said, with sort of deep moral beliefs about the worthiness of every child, right? So there was no — call it an opinion if you will, but I'm not going to — there's no, anything I write is just going to come from that place. Like everyone has just deep, deep, deep dignity and inherent worth and the writing has to reflect, be based on that.
I think what I was surprised by is how much had changed recently in our education system because I was born in 1982. I came up in the public school system in the '80s and '90s. And I really missed the entire "No Child Left Behind," the "Common Core" change under the Obama administration.
I had heard about these things, but I think I had not quite grappled with the larger systemic changes that had happened, both in that realm, but also in how we conceive of childhood and what we expect of children.
But I think when you're a parent, maybe just to speak for myself again, like you just think being a kid is being a kid. Being in school is being in school. These are like universal experiences. How different could it possibly be to be a child?
And I think I was just surprised. I was reading histories of childhood, histories of school reform, and school changes, and I was kind of shocked at how much had changed. And I started talking to people who are more skeptical, and it's funny, some of them were even saying to me, like, "It's hard to talk about this because we are kind of conditioned to feel like school is really sacred. School is always good for you. More school is always just more good things," right?
Education, and school success is desirable. Who doesn't want to be educated? And I don't want to say that I don't believe in education. I certainly believe in education. But I also think, you know, there's kind of a do no harm principle here too, right? And if you talk to enough adults honestly, you actually begin to hear how painful school was.
(08:55) How school is overlooked in discussions about kids' mental health
Rae: This was one of the big reasons I wanted to talk to Jia Lynn. Because it seems like whenever people start talking about what's wrong with kids today, nobody brings up school.
Somehow this huge part of life gets lost when we talk about mental health and what kids are going through. And I have to wonder if this is because some people flew through school while others didn't.
I was one of the ones who didn't.
School was rough for me in a variety of ways. I have ADHD and dyscalculia, and that made going to school, especially in the 1990s, a little extra difficult.
Though reading Jia Lynn's piece, it seems that today, neurodivergent or not, no one seems to be thriving in the modern school environment.
Jia Lynn chalks a lot of these issues up to two big changes in school policy: the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" and the "Common Core," which came around 2010.
These were sweeping national education policy moves that changed how kids learn and how school success is measured.
I had a pretty basic understanding of what "No Child Left Behind" and the "Common Core" did, but I asked Jia Lynn if she'd take me deeper.
(10:06) The accountability of "No Child Left Behind" and "Common Core"
Jia Lynn: So you kind of have to go in a time machine and imagine a time when schools were not rated. You know when you're looking at a real estate listing and there's like the school, like the Great Schools rating? Okay, that did not exist before.
A child's test scores were a matter of — it was like a private matter between a child and a teacher. It was not made public and then the schools and the teachers were not judged based on that.
And that's really what "No Child Left Behind" and the "Common Core" regime, I think, introduced, which is this idea of accountability.
And of course, when we say the word accountability, what could possibly be wrong with accountability, right? You, your schools are low-performing, let's say. You want them to get better. Let's measure, let's make it public. Let's see how they do. Let's reward schools that do better. Let's punish the ones that don't and remove funding.
Again, this all sounds like from a distance like, "Who could possibly not want this?" right? And I think this is why it became quite popular with both political parties. And I will say this began really in the '80s. I think it's a little bit of a Cold War thing too. It's kind of like we're competing against other countries.
There's like global competition happening. You still see this now, right? Whenever the country's like test scores come out, it's like, "Oh, we're ranked way below Singapore again." We're always below — I don't know that we'll ever reach Singapore's level, whatever Singapore's doing.
But the whole idea of measuring, of global ranking, of ranking schools against each other, of trying to get those scores up, that just totally takes over in the '80s and different governors start doing it, both Democrat and Republican. And then George Bush — George W. Bush — he comes in and is like, "Let's make this thing that different states are doing, let's make it totally national." And so he does this in the early 2000s. And now it is really kind of standard that every state is doing some version of this measuring and kind of taking the temperature all the time.
When Obama comes in, you know, I think it sort of goes on super drive because this is coming out of the Great Recession. School budgets are really low, and basically the Obama administration embraces these new standards called "Common Core," which is sort of these new national standards of learning for reading and math in particular and says, "If you take on these new standards and all the curriculum materials that come with it and the testing, we will give you more money."
And so all the schools begin to then do that. They sort of, they take on — from what I understand, there's just an entire world of educational materials based on the "Common Core" standards because that's sort of what took over.
And so this is where you get, I think, um, all the reading comprehension stuff where you're reading only passages and not entire books, because "Common Core" is really into what they call sort of "close reading," which kind of exists in like a liberal arts college, but I don't think is, you know. So anyway, they're trying to prep you for college. It's not Proust. It's not Proust, yeah, but they're trying to prep you for college and they have a very particular sort of set of standards.
And the standards, there's a lot of controversy at the time about who was making the standards and why. And in the moment, I went back and look, there are definitely people, there are educators asking questions. They're like, are educators having enough input in what these standards are? Because for instance, we're seeing now in kindergarten a demand for reading, and we as educators and early childhood experts know that that is not always going to work for a child.
Like, some kids are going to be able to read at this level by the end of kindergarten and some will not. And in our experience as educators, that's okay. Some kids just learn later.
And I think the more I think about it, again, I view all of this as very well-intentioned because again, who doesn't want accountability? But when you imagine metrics coming all the way down into the classroom with money and budget attached, you can imagine distorting effects, right?
So suddenly, let's just take the reading question, right, which is really controversial because as we know, the literacy rates are really low. It's like we did all this and the literacy rates are really low. So you take reading. Okay, now, so says a national standard, kindergartners need to read at a certain level by the end.
Now teachers are kind of like, "Oh God, we've got to get this kid reading." And a highly trained teacher who's really good at teaching reading knows that teaching reading is about using sort of the latest understanding of the pedagogy plus an environment for young children that's like really playful and exciting and fun to be in. And interrelational, like there's a lot going on aside from just like literally teaching the reading.
But you can also, but you can imagine that if somebody is not highly trained necessarily or has time to kind of update how they're teaching reading, all they hear is, "There's pressure to teach these kids how to read." And so we've got to get them reading, right? And so suddenly you can imagine really rote teaching.
I don't have to imagine it. It may be every classroom's different, but like I can imagine — of course, you're a teacher, you're like, "I got, the administration says I got to get them reading. How do we get workbooks in here?" Right? So suddenly kindergarten is not like kindergarten before. Kindergarten is from the German for "garden for children."
It's supposed to be prep for school. And life. And life. It's not supposed to be a thing that you — I don't know if you've heard, but like I've heard the words like "kindergarten ready" for preschool. Oh yeah. Because then of course, once you're like, okay, by the end of kindergarten, they got to read. Well, that that's not just about kindergarten anymore, is it? That's about what happens before in preschool. So kindergarten under this gets more rote. It's not obvious that that's actually going to teach kids how to learn. And I think one could begin going down a road of asking if this has actually backfired and created learning environments that are actually harder for kids to learn reading in because if you don't make it fun, if they don't feel, um, cared for, right? If they don't feel like they're having fun and enjoying it, especially at that young age, they're not going to be, you know, every expert in this knows they're not going to really learn it. So then preschool changes too.
(16:18) High-stakes metrics leading to less playtime and more pressure
Rae: This pressure to meet metrics earlier, faster, and more consistently also meant that kids had more homework, more tests to study for, less downtime, less playtime, less time to just be kids — something every expert Jia Lynn talked to said didn't match up with what we know about learning and child development at all.
On top of that, the need to pack as much learning — and I do use quotes on that — into the school day as possible has begun to crowd out time for kids to move their bodies.
Jia Lynn found that by 2016, only eight states still had required daily recess in elementary school, and even more troublingly, that kids have an average of 20 minutes to eat lunch, which anyone who's ever tried to get a kindergartener to eat knows is not enough.
And hungry kids who haven't gotten enough exercise? Not exactly the most receptive audience a teacher could ask for.
Things don't improve as kids grow either. Denise Pope, one of the experts Jia Lynn interviewed, shared how bafflingly impossible the expectations of middle and high school students felt.
Quote, "You've got seven different homework assignments that you've got to remember each night. Think of the cognitive load of a sixth-grade boy," she said. Quote, "I challenge many adults to do this."
Jia Lynn: So all of this is happening, and I think these early years are just a useful way to imagine that it didn't used to be this way.
I think the other challenging thing too for us is that kids are just historically in school for more years of their lives.
You know, we had very different family structures before for better and for worse. Kids did not enter school until later ages. They weren't in school as long, as this many hours. And so they also aren't always going to college, right? So you're just imagining a person going from like some of their life is about school, but it's fewer years of their life total.
It's fewer, um, you know, the hours in the day, I think the school day has basically been the same over history, over like the 20th century, over like the mid-20th century to now. But to your point, they're doing more homework after school. So like you're in school, more of the day is spent in the classroom trying to sort of shove this information into yourself. There's less time for recess, less time for art, right? And music and all these other things that just sort of made, I think school before a more balanced experience.
I mean, I'm not going to say that people loved school before necessarily, but it wasn't quite so high-pressure, right? And I think the thing to think about with "No Child Left Behind" and the "Common Core" is again, there's all these good intentions to create accountability. Our kids should know how to read, of course.
But if you look at countries like Finland, first of all, don't teach reading as young as we do. And they also have teachers who, I think there's just more time given to train them on how to teach something like reading. It's a very delicate thing to learn.
And they don't test constantly. Right, so they're testing every now and then. It's almost like you want to sort of, you know, you're testing the water just to be like, "Is this working?" But I think we've entered into a system if you listen to teachers where like we're testing so much that the testing becomes the point and not a check on whether what's happening in the classroom is really working in a holistic way.
I mean, from everything you're saying, it sounds like we tie school metrics to school funding, and in doing so, we make it basically impossible for schools to be flexible and to think of kids in like this "education rather than success first" way.
Right? We no longer have time to be like, "Yeah, like she's figuring it out, you know? We've tested and there's progress and that's okay." It's like, "She's got to meet this score. If she doesn't meet this score, we're not going to get the funding that we need to even provide services for the kids who we know need them, or like the lunches that we need to offer."
All of those things combined with the "Common Core" classes mean that there's no longer the garden of kinder that we — The garden of kinder is, is like, it's been raised to put a parking lot. Yeah nothing. There's no, there's no like little — you don't have like little green shoots coming out, right? Like it's like a cliche, but the analogy I think is so useful for children is like, or I think as a parent, you know, you are like, you have soil, right? You have water, you have sunlight, you're trying. But you can't like yell at a plant to grow. You can't like — You can't test a plant to grow. It's like it's not going to grow faster if you test it more. You have to know is the pH in the soil okay? Are you watering too much or too little? Like it's a very like, it's really an art. It's a process. It's a process. And I just think, I just think adding that kind of pressure, I think, so I think what surprised me writing the piece is that like I I began thinking about this for the kids who were considered the outliers. But as I began to imagine it for everybody, I was like, "I don't think this is —" This is working for anybody. Like, is this working for other people? Like genuinely? Like, I mean, and maybe some people again will say, "School always was terrible. No one ever liked it." But I guess can we dream a little bit bigger?
I think that dynamic is really hard on everybody.
And I think with the diagnoses, it's funny, when I began working on the piece, I actually was not even necessarily looking at schools. I was looking at the whole, the whole diagnostic world.
And, you know, I have read entire like manuals for professionals about how to diagnose certain conditions. I'm just like, "What are we talking about?"
And I think the challenge there too is that there are no, there's not like a blood test for ADHD or autism or any of these, um, disorders. And there's no MRI you can take. It's all based on accounts of behavior.
And so, you know, again, we have a range of how people are, but at the point that you're calling it a disorder — and these are disorders according to the "American Psychiatric" — like I I — ADHD is real. Yeah, I love — We are not suggesting that it is not real. Autism is like these are like very clear. And I and I love and respect the neurodivergent community, but like the way we got these categories is that doctors and psychiatrists decided that they were disorders. And there's an entire giant book called the "DSM" to tell you whether you have the disorder or not. And it is a, it is a book of disorders. It's not a book of, it's not a book about beautiful human like flourishing and diversity. It's like — Straightforward. Yeah, there's something wrong with you.
(24:31) The pressure to diagnose complicates everything
And so I think that once you understand that these are categories that are also changing over time, you know, as I was learning about that, I was really stunned to learn that like the "DSM" gets revised every so number of years, right? Of again, how do we decide what's autism, what's ADHD, and the rest.
And for autism, there has literally been parents lobbying to keep the definition broad because they need a diagnosis for services in school.
And so — So break down a little bit what you mean, what you say when you mean "services in school." It's not just like someone to be a little bit helpful. That unlocks a whole suite of things that kids desperately need. Entire. Yes. So in the 90s, there's a new federal "Disabilities Rights Law" that's passed for basically education. And I want to be clear that in the past, schools basically refused to educate children with disabilities. And it was absolutely, um, horrendous.
And over time, you know, thankfully, civil rights laws were passed that say every child in America, uh, needs and deserves a public education. And when that happened, they had to decide what disabilities count to receive the support needed to receive said education. And in the 90s, ADHD and autism are added to the list of the disabilities.
And so right away, again, these diagnoses don't exist in like some sort of perfect glass petri jar studied by scientists. It's all connected to the culture and society around it, right? So once you say you can get OT and speech if you have this diagnosis, well, the diagnosis is helping your kid then. The services are helping your kid. You don't want to get rid of the diagnosis, and the diagnosis itself becomes sort of litigated by parents, patients, everyone, because there's so much attached to it. And so I think that was my other clue that again, school and the diagnoses are connected because if you're saying that you have to have a diagnosis to get this help in the school, the diagnosis is about school on some level too, right? It's like you need the, you need to have a diagnosis to perform in the school.
And I think that's where, again, we're getting a little distorted about what we're talking about because yes, the child has certain needs, but they have certain needs in school in particular. And so what does that mean about school and what's being asked? And are these also services and accommodations that everyone could benefit from? I mean, if everyone is getting a diagnosis because it's helping them, yeah, doesn't that just mean that more people will want these — I mean it's like when you learn about what the accommodations are, right? Often it's like, my child needs to get up and move. They can't sit in the chair for this many hours because they have this diagnosis. That's another example of like, could other kids benefit from this?
Rae: This idea of accommodations for all has a name: universal design.
This just means that when you create an educational environment that supports all kinds of learners, everyone benefits.
For example, a kid with ADHD who has trouble staying in his seat might have an accommodation that says he's allowed to take movement breaks.
But if you think about it, wouldn't every kid benefit from that? Does anyone like sitting for long periods of time? Who doesn't think better, work better, feel better when they have the chance to move their body?
But this can also go the other way.
The less accommodating the general environment, the more people feel the need to seek out specialized accommodations or support.
This is true for everybody, but especially for people who are neurodivergent.
Jia Lynn: That's the point about all of these things to me, often, is that I have ADHD. I use the word "disorder" because for me, that's what it's been. But it's largely been that because I have to live in a world that requires things of me.
And it should require things of me. I don't want to opt out. I want to be able to go to the same school as my friends. I want to be able to learn the things that I want to learn and to have a job so that I can feed my kid. And I want my kid to be happy and be able to go to school.
In order to do that with a brain that doesn't do things in the way that is the typical expected way, I honestly feel like I've like cleaved to the word "disorder" because I'm like, "I need you to take me seriously." Yes. This is real for me. This is not something that I can negotiate my way out of or like be better my way out of, you know what I mean? And like, I find that one of the things that is so hard about all of this is that like, you do want kids to get help and to get backup, but when it's every kid — When the numbers are this high. That's the problem. Yeah, when the numbers are this high, we're failing children because we're not saying kids can, like there is no diversity of brain period, let alone neurodivergent. Like it is you are not allowed to be in any way different than what's required of you. And what's required is not reasonable. Yeah.
And I think that's where I was just stunned to learn about preschool expulsions. That blew my mind. You know, that has been going on for a while and I fear to say no surprise, it's often low-income kids, it's often Black kids. It's like just any — when I hear that, I just, I just imagine overwhelmed teachers, teachers who just don't know what to do. And those same studies and experts have found that when the teachers receive some training in sort of like how, what is reasonable behavior to expect of a child at this age who's like 2 or 3, things get better.
But again, it's like, I think that some of the power of the neurodivergent rights movement to me is about not just accepting people for who they are, but also kind of a demand for the world to meet them too, right? It can't just be like everybody is trying to sort of bend themselves into a certain shape. It has to be that everything around is also should think about — there need to be two parties to this, right? Like there is the person who's struggling, but also a world that sees the struggle and tries to imagine ways to change to better accommodate a wider range of people, right?
Otherwise, we're just dealing with a sink or swim society. And I don't know why you would do sink or swim for small children. Or any child. Why would you do sink or swim for anybody, honestly? It's just like, it's just not again, not a world I want to live in. Like just not. It's not going to work. I mean, at a certain point, if you can't educate this many people in society, it's going to affect your democracy. Like it's just, it's just, it's not just an individual problem anymore. And I just think the numbers, I mean, especially ADHD, they just keep getting higher. And this is the thing, schools are sort of like, not pushing for ADHD diagnoses, but they are creating the need for parents to go seek, like you said, these billable, insurance-claimable, service-based diagnoses. I'm going to need, I'm going to need a label for this. Yeah. I'm not seeing an IEP here, so I can't really let your kid get up, which is like, that can't be right.
But you know, that pushes people into this clinicalization of things that would otherwise be traits. But for kids for who there is no way around it. Like they are going to struggle. There could be a million different things going on, you know, maybe it's like the world's freest school and they're still having a hard time because that's just the brain that they have.
You hear, and you went through this, I've been through this, we know so many parents who've been through this, people who are also fighting tooth and nail for months, years, like you said, it's like a full second job to get that help for their kids. And it feels very like, uh, what's the, you know, Ouroboros, like the snake eating its tail thing to me, which I did one time see a meme, which was a picture of the Ouroboros and it just said, "Never understood this lizard. Is he stupid?" which I think about it all the time.
And that's what's happening here. It's exactly what's happening here because it's just like, you have kids who really need help, but that help is tied to the school being able to have the funding to provide the help. So the school also has to meet these wild and unreasonable expectations that don't work for kids and don't work for teachers and don't even really work for the thing that they want to do because education and school success are not the same thing.
It's totally mind-bending. And I think with the medication debate, I just feel — it's like, of course people end up medicating, needing medications for their children. You're saying like, "Either you can participate in school or you can't." And then where does that, where does that leave people?
Well, it's like everything, right? If you pathologize everything, then nothing means anything, right? There is such a thing as ADHD. It is a thing that you can get help with that has specific things that like you can get better at or you can get medication for or you can like work around in schools. That's what a real IEP should do. Yeah.
If everything, every deviation from the norm becomes a clinical problem because it's not doing what we need to do so that the school can get the things that it needs, where, what are we doing here? Like what is the point? Yeah.
(33:11) The goal of education is fostering a love for learning
And I think if the bottom line about education, and people differ on this, but I think, you know, you want kids to fall in love with learning. Yeah. Full stop. Yes. Like nothing else comes after. If you don't, if you do not check off that box, nothing proceeds. You're not going to learn how to read, you're not going to learn math, like it all becomes a chore. It all becomes a chore.
And so that to me feels like something widely understood by educators and childhood experts that you have to fall in love with learning and you have to feel like the school wants you to be there. Like these are all like — And you're not a problem. And I just think if we've lost sight of that and we now have a system where children are feeling like they're getting, they're getting diagnosed with disorders, I just think that sets a person up to feel like they're not, there's something not right with them. That's not setting up a child to fall in love with learning.
Rae: As Jia Lynn and I were talking, I was struck again and again by how huge the implications of this experience are. Because what is school but the place where we begin to shape our ideas not just of the world, but of ourselves, what we're like, what we're interested in, where we fit, what we're capable of, who we are.
And if the message that kids get from this place where they spend so much of their time is that they are broken, that they need fixing, that they are failing, what does that say?
Jia Lynn: It just breaks my heart to think about that, that you are just starting out as a human being and the message you're getting from the adults around you is that you're a failure. I just can't, um, it's just, it's just the worst outcome imaginable to me.
I think longer term, I think that makes people really distrust authority, really distrust so-called experts. You know, in a way, your first exposure to the world of like learning and expertise is school.
And if that environment is making you feel like you're not good enough, I think that can make a person really distrust, distrust authority and feel like they are on their own, right? Because the system has already spoken and the system has sort of said you're hopeless. When that's your experience of school and all of these sort of national political leaders are saying, "Well, if you can't cut it at school, you can't cut it in life." And yet we see so many examples of people every day who are doing great. And not only doing great, like they are the greatest at what they do, right? All kinds of people. They are running businesses, they are podcast hosts, they are athletes, they are artists. Like, there's just so many different ways to be in the world.
And I think we have to just somehow — what we know as adults, we know as adults that that is true because we see examples around us all of the time. I think about this as a parent all the time. Like, what do my kids actually need to know?
And I think about my day. Like I actually don't, I'm not like in their world when I think about that question. I think about my world, right? It's like, what do I need every day to live the kind of life I want my kids to have? And none of that involves math level. It's like, it's like, nothing involves like how fast are you reading today? Do you — my 3-year-old like, does he know his letters? Who cares? Nothing that I'm talking about that are thinking about for myself as an adult that is really like vitally, vitally important skills has anything to do with any of that.
And so I think we just have to actually in a way reflect on like as adults. What are we needing to get to live a full life? And I think those things just have a lot more to do with, you know, belief in yourself, right? Like a knowledge of yourself, confidence, a love of learning, an openness to all kinds of ways of doing things. Like that, I just feel like if we just — that's just me, right? Those are sort of my value sets of what I think some of the things that matter to me most as an adult.
Like, how do we get that into the school system? Because otherwise we're sort of telling people, "Okay, you got to get through this so you can get to — so you're in preschool to get to kindergarten. You're in kindergarten to get to fifth grade. You're in fifth grade because, 'Oh, middle school, oh, in middle school they're going to ask more of you. You got to be ready for middle school.'" Don't want to be the only kid in middle school who can't do extra. You got to track your homework in middle school. You got to, "Oh, here comes high school. Oh, here comes college." It's like we keep telling people that like on the other end of this, there's something waiting. And that something is more homework. More homework. And I am just one person on the other side. I'm a I'm a 43-year-old woman. Like I'm on the other side and I am here to say for my kids like they don't need — like that's not what we need right now. I mean, learn it. I think every day about how much I don't use algebra. Just think about it all the time. Like, make, make the conditions where if a kid wants to learn — like, you know, make it fun to learn a different thing, right? That's fine. And it's okay to learn something that you don't use every day, right? But certainly don't leave aside those core values in pursuit of a thing that's just like one subject in school, right? There's like, there's just a price. If you sort of chase it so hard that you lose everything else, you'll both lose everything else that's sort of the values part of school, right? And you even lose learning the algebra. Like you're not going to learn the algebra if you hate school. It's not happening.
So I think all of that is like what I think about as a parent, you know, and what it would take to change it that we should be getting back to what I look for schools for my kids is like, do they understand that we're trying to raise a whole person? And do they understand the conditions that you need to really make people feel, you know, good about themselves, about being a learner? Like that's, that's kind of the bottom line. Is my kid going to love learning after being in this environment? And that's kind of the one and only question. Other things may follow, but if that's not, if step one is not being established, it's going to be really hard to get to steps 2, 3, 4, and 5. And there's no algebra in that. There's no way to get to the algebra. I actually loved algebra as a kid. Like it made my brain happy. But it only worked because I loved learning and I was around teachers who inspired me. And I don't use it, but it was a positive experience. But there's no need to make a person feel horrible about themselves. It's so bad out of the gate. And I think people do carry it well into adulthood. I have to imagine. I can attest. Yeah. And then what are we doing? At that point, we've really, we've, we've gone way past "do no harm" and we are actively harming, um. And if you, you know, honestly, if you step way, way back, right? Like what is the point of compulsory public education?
Rae: Thank you so much to Jia Lynn for coming on and talking to us and being very patient when I badgered her about writing a book on this topic. Still want you to. If you want to read more of Jia Lynn's work, you can find her on NYTimes.com.
"Hyperfocus" is made by me, Rae Jacobson, and Cody Nelson.
Our music comes from Blue Dot Sessions. Our research correspondent is Dr. KJ Wynne. Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Alyssa Shea.
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