Rabbi Janet Marder

June 22, 2010

Putting Kids First

Once upon a time there was a man who seemed to have everything. He was wealthy, well-respected, regarded by everyone around him as an expert in his field. His consulting practice was lucrative; he was invited to lecture around the world. He prided himself on being quick-witted and insightful; visionary, the first to spot future trends and turn them to his clients’ advantage. He was silver-tongued, as well; so eloquent and inspiring that he could easily sway a crowd with his words. He was at the top of his game, he was living on top of the world, and his business ran like a well-oiled machine.

But in middle age the man came to see that his gifts were a sham. Keen of sight in his professional life, he realized that he was blind and stupid when it came to what was happening close to home. He had lived in arrogant denial of unpleasant truths; he hadn’t seen what was right in front of his eyes. Suddenly his life stopped being easy and pleasant, and the man lashed out, angry at his impotence and sudden helplessness. His blindness led him to rage.

In the end the man was forced to admit that he was no better than anyone else. He was a human being, flawed in his understanding, limited in his powers, subject to realities he could not control.

Humbled in the deepest sense, the man went on with the rest of his life, determined to see more clearly, if he could, and to do his best, and to speak the truth in the time he had left.

The story of this man, whose name was Balaam, is brought to us by the Torah this week as instruction and inspiration. Balaam was a prophet and seer who found that his vision was impaired. A man who was used to being in charge, he found that the world was more complicated than he had ever dreamed, and he was very far from running the show. The Torah laughs at him by showing that Balaam, the wisest of sages in his own eyes, needs to be instructed by a talking ass.

At the end of the tale, the wiser, now chastened prophet uttered words that entered permanently into Jewish worship. He “turned his eyes toward the wilderness,” says the Torah, he looked at the Israelites encamped before him, and he said this:

“Word of Balaam son of Beor, word of the man whose eye is true… prostrate, but with open eyes: Ma tovu ohalecha Ya'akov, mishkenotecha Yisrael — How lovely are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwelling places, O Israel.” Later Sages saw “tents” as a reference to Jewish schools, and “dwelling places” to our homes – the two united in beautiful harmony.

The prophet went on with his description of the Israelite camp: “Like palm groves that stretch out, like gardens beside a river, like aloes planted by God, like cedars beside the water; their boughs drip with moisture, their roots have abundant water" [Num. 24:3-7].

Balaam’s words live on as an idyllic description of what Jewish community can be. He turns his eyes towards the wilderness – a place that is desolate and barren – and he sees the tents of Israel as symbols of oasis. Their camp spreads out like lush green palm groves, like fertile, well-watered gardens. The camp itself is a source of nourishment and protection. It recalls the regal cedar tree, upright and strong, whose aromatic forests provide shade and whose beautiful wood built the palaces of kings. Its branches are heavy with rain and drenched with dew– as Rashi says, like a man carrying two brimming buckets of water, which drips down to saturate the ground below.

An essential word-play is at the heart of this vision: Israel’s ‘ohalim (its tents) are likened to ‘ahalim (aloe plants, source of healing balm and refreshing fragrance). In the dry, harsh environment of the desert, the community of Israel nurtures and heals, shelters and sustains its members. That is why, Balaam predicts, this community will endure forever.

That hope and that vision bring us together this evening. We turn our eyes to the wilderness – to that place where too many of our children live, where they painfully make their way through days that are long and exhausting, tedious, lonely, oppressive to the soul and, often, destructive to the body.

Let’s turn our eyes first to our neighbors, in East Palo Alto and Ravenswood – where the schools fight for financial survival, academic performance and test scores lag behind the state average, graduation rates, with a few exceptions, are low, and the students often face a myriad of personal and family problems. At Costano Elementary School, for instance, where Beth Am has for several years been working to build bookshelves and provide books, 72% of the students are classified as socioeconomically disadvantaged; 60% are English learners; and only 23% tested at or above proficiency level on the 2009 4th grade state reading test. At schools like these, the challenges are basic and right out in the open: school safety, access to health care, literacy development, parents with few resources to support their children’s learning. In other schools, where the statistics look better, the problems are lurking beneath the surface.

Six months ago a study was published in a journal called “Health and Learning” that profiled “an epidemic of student stress in top U.S. schools” [see Jerusha Conner, Denise Pope and Mollie Galloway, “Success with Less Stress,” December 2009/January 2010 | Volume 67 | Number 4 ,Health and Learning,pp. 54-58]. Its authors studied 3,645 students who attended seven high-performing Bay Area high schools. These students met all the criteria we usually use to measure success. 85% had a grade point average of 3.0 or higher, most said that they often or always worked hard in school; 89% participated in extra-curricular activities; nearly all intended to go on to a four-year college. “By most indicators,” wrote the survey authors, “these are the kinds of students we would like our high schools to produce.”

But the story behind the shining façade of success was quite different. “More than 70% of students reported that they felt often or always stressed by their schoolwork, and 56% reported often or always worrying about such things as grades, tests, and college acceptance.”

Some people, I know, see nothing very wrong with this. Isn’t stress a normal part of life? Don’t students need to experience stress in order to cope with the challenges they’ll face as adults? Some level of stress is indeed healthy and necessary, say the survey’s authors, but they cite evidence that “chronic student stress has been consistently associated with negative outcomes.” In other words, constant, nagging worry and anxiety take a serious toll on our children. “For the majority of students in this study,” they write, “academic stress is a constant condition.”

Students were asked: “Right now in your life, what causes you the most stress?” “School,” said one, “because it takes up all of my time. I wake up, go to school for 7 hours, go home and study for 3-4 hours, go to sports, and go to sleep, then do the same the next day.”

“Homework load,” said another. “I rarely make it to bed before midnight and wake up early to finish it.” A third said: “Tests are the worst because you don’t know what to expect, and it affects your grade so much. I usually have at least one or two tests or quizzes every day of every week.” And another said: “Grades. They are all that matters. You don’t need to learn, you need to get good grades because grades are everything here.” Academic pressure far exceeded other sources of stress in students’ lives, such as divorce and family issues.

On average, these students said they did three hours of homework a night, not including “time spent online, chatting with friends, or browsing the Internet.

Another study, this one conducted by the Lucille Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, found that 70% of Bay Area parents report that their nine to thirteen year old children experience moderate to high levels of stress. The leading cause? Parents say it’s schoolwork and homework. In the KidsHealth Kids’ Poll of 2005, children aged nine to thirteen said they were more stressed by academics than anything else, including bullying and family problems.

Are these students and parents just whining, reflecting what some observers have called “a culture of complaint”? The truth is that the life of children and teens today is very different from what it was just 25 years ago. Six to eight year olds spend 33% less time playing today than in 1981. Kids today have 12 hours less free time each week than they did in 1981. Between 1981 and 1997, time spent on homework increased by 51% [2004 national survey of more than 2,900 children done by the University of Michigan].

It’s not just homework that eats up our children’s time. Students in the study of top Bay Area high schools spent on average two hours each weeknight on extracurricular activities, not including commuting time. 28% reported that they have six or more hours of afterschool commitments, including homework, every single night.

We all know what is sacrificed to these intensely regimented schedules: downtime, time with family and friends, time spent in relaxing but “nonproductive” activities that won’t necessarily enhance a college application (including religious education), time for day-dreaming and deep thinking, and especially rest and sleep.

The National Sleep Foundation says that 5 to 12 year olds need 10-11 hours of sleep each night, and teenagers need 9 hours and 15 minutes each night to function at their best. High school students in the Bay Area study reported sleeping on average 6.8 hours on weeknights; more than a third said they got 6 or fewer hours of sleep each night.

Sleep deprivation is not just a symptom of stress; it constitutes a major source of stress in itself. 56% of students in the Bay Area study said they experienced “exhaustion due to academic stress.” Said one student: “There are times I do schoolwork from 3 PM to 3 AM even when I DON’T procrastinate.” Another said: “I just want more time to sleep and maintain a healthy lifestyle, but school keeps inundating me with work and tests at such a fast and constant rate that I’m always tired and stressed.” “Just this week I had three all nighters in a row,” said another.

In addition to exhaustion, 44% of students said they had experienced three or more other physical symptoms of stress such as headaches or stomach problems in the past month. There were serious mental health symptoms as well. Almost a quarter of the students said they had felt frequently depressed in the past month. 7% had cut themselves one or more times in the same period – statistics similar to those found in other studies.

Academic stress is associated with other problems: compromised health, due to high use of alcohol, stimulants and prescription drugs. Moral compromises, reflected in extremely high rates of cheating. But for me the most chilling statistics are these. Consider this: in 2007 14.5% of American high school students said they had seriously considered trying to kill themselves in the previous 12 months; more than 11% went so far as to make a plan about how they would commit suicide. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people between 10 and 24.

I encounter two basic kinds of parents at Congregation Beth Am. One kind says and believes that their kids are doing fine – they are thriving, in fact, managing their demanding academic schedules beautifully and excelling at their multitude of extracurricular activities. The other parents have discovered that their kids are not doing so well – they abuse drugs or alcohol, they have an eating disorder, they are anxious or depressed, they hate going to school, are struggling to keep up their grades or won’t do their homework.

One kind of parent sees no need to change the performance pressure-cooker culture of our community. They think their kids are handling that pressure with ease and will reap the benefits when they go off to a top college, followed by a successful and lucrative career. Most of the other parents are too exhausted by the strain of trying to handle their own kids’ problems to worry about the bigger picture.

The truth is that this is more than the problem of certain kids and certain families. It’s a systemic problem. Even the healthiest and most academically successful students are affected by chronic stress, and when some students suffer more significant harm, all of them feel the impact.

The authors of the Bay Area study of high-achieving students at high-performing schools write: “Ultimately, [these findings] raise questions about whether a student’s grade point average, frequently used as a marker of student success, is a good indicator of what students are actually learning and accomplishing in high school.”

Most of these students are proficient at gaming the system – what Dr. Denise Pope of the Stanford School of Education calls “doing school.” But by and large, they take no intrinsic joy in learning. Bored, disengaged, and prematurely jaded, rushed from task to task, they have little opportunity to reflect deeply and creatively on what they study. As one 16 year old girl said, “This school turns us into robots. I have been thinking about it a lot. I am a robot just going page by page, doing the work, doing the routine.”

I suppose, on one level, all the stress might be worthwhile if it really led to producing healthy, thoughtful, enthusiastic, loving and fulfilled adults who will make this world a better place. But I don’t know any parents who aspire to have their children turned into robots – do you?

Here at Beth Am, it’s time to stop looking at kids’ problems as reflections of the pathology of particular individuals and families. Tonight we’re stepping back to look at the big picture – at the culture and the system in which all of us live – parents, grandparents, teachers, concerned adults who care about the next generation.

Tonight we turn our eyes to the wilderness and ask what we can do, as a community, to intervene in the lives of our children. The biggest mistake would be to underestimate our own power. We need not be passive victims of the culture. If we mobilize, organize and act together, we can change it.

Consider the Oakland Community Organizations, which brought together parents, teachers and concerned community members in a campaign to improve that city’s crowded, under-performing public schools. Ten years later, this campaign has created 48 small schools, which boast higher graduation rates, stronger parent-teacher relationships, and a safer, more supportive learning environment for students.

Consider the Challenge Success program, based at Stanford, which aims to bring together “multiple stakeholders” to implement school programs that “reduce student stress and promote greater student engagement, academic integrity, health and well-being.” The Challenge Success program asks all of us to broaden our definition of success beyond GPA and Ivy League credentials, urging us to consider such vital components of success as moral character, good health, creativity, independence and human connection.

Its website presents many strategies that have reduced academic pressure and improved student well-being in participating schools – all without “dumbing down” the curriculum or diminishing student achievement. For example, some schools have provided more staff training and more support for students from staff; some got teachers to coordinate tests and class projects to help ease students’ workload, some revised homework and grading policies. Some changed the school schedule to reduce the number of classes each day and allow for more free periods, tutorial time and advisory periods; some moved exams from after the winter break to before the winter break to give students some relief.

Where these changes were instituted, administrators commented that: “student grades, test scores, and college admissions all stayed high, but the stress went down.” An AP Biology teacher cut the homework load in half in his course, eliminated summer work and engaged in frequent dialogue with students and parents about students’ well-being. For two years in a row, his students’ scores on the AP Biology test have gone up; his students report “higher levels of engagement with the material and less stress.” An AP Calculus teacher at another participating school reported similar improvements when he cut back on homework and reduced the number of problems he asked students to do each night.

Once upon a time, there was a community that seemed to have everything: perfect weather, lovely homes, affluent and accomplished residents, fine schools with smart, high-achieving students. But then some of its children began to kill themselves, and others began to harm themselves in visible ways, and others suffered inside, where nobody could see.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story. Deeply humbled and shaken, the residents of this community opened their eyes; they faced up to unpleasant realities and resolved that from this time forward they would see more clearly, if they could, and do their best, and speak the truth in the time they had left.

It occurred to them that, busy as they were, there was nothing more important they could do with their lives than to better the lives of their children. And so they determined to band together, and to stand together, and to let nothing lead them to paralysis and despair.

A group of them made this vow in their synagogue, recalling the words of an ancient prophet who taught them that they could create an oasis in the desert; a source of strength; a place of shelter and love. They determined to make their tents expansive and generous, with room for all children, no matter what their GPA. They promised to make their homes and schools beautiful in all the ways that matter; and to nourish themselves with hope; and to believe that together they could make change that would matter. And they decided that they would start tonight.