edms3
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Post by edms3 on May 5, 2016 16:48:36 GMT -4
Reading this article bought made me think about the the pressure students face from their parents in order to succeed and excel in todays world. It makes one think why do have to strive so hard as students to make a difference in this world. When was the bar raised so high that achieving a good job, nice home and comfortable lifestyle was only something the elite can ever imaging having. Students now a days have either no interest in going to college and think they may become a famous rapper or on the other hand there are those students who are pushed by their parents who believe the only way they will succeed is if they go to an Ivy league school. What about those students who are in between. The approach the high school in silicon valley took to give students time off from study and play I believe send a powerful message. There is more to life than school, just relax,you will get there.
ESMS-3
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Bisola Fakorede (BF)
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Post by Bisola Fakorede (BF) on May 5, 2016 17:05:49 GMT -4
'Suicide', this has always been something I don't fully understand but yet very concerned and sad about. The thoughts of teenagers picking suicide as an option when faced with some difficulty or failure should be something of great concern to parents. From this article , I understand that the reasons for many of these suicide is likely the amount of pressure parents put on their children. It is sad how much pressure some parents put on their children. Yes, children need to learn, yes they should excel academically but they don't need to think that the world ends when they fail a course or have a problem in other activities in school. The most important thing and knowledge parents need to impact on their kids is that life is filled with ups and downs and never rosy, you work hard but when you fail you pick yourself back up and move on. You don't always get it right the first time and most if not all parents never got it right the first time either.
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Fernando J. Del Valle
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Post by Fernando J. Del Valle on May 5, 2016 17:11:40 GMT -4
I think in most cases, one cannot pinpoint just one particular event or reason as to why suicide was the choice. Unfortunately, I find that it is sometimes a mix of feelings from different aspects of their lives, adolescents or adults, and they keep stacking on top of each other until the mind cannot handle it anymore. Adolescent and young adults are constantly going through changes in their lives, from a physical stand point, to an emotional one. This is why I think that parents have an obligation to talk to their kids, make sure that they are not holding too many things inside and let them express themselves, as this will allow them to know that what they are experiencing and going through, is something normal in a person's life. Instead of sitting down with them and reiterate the importance of school, getting good grades and eventually pursuing the "ideal" profession with the ideal income, they should counsel them on the importance of being happy and doing what they really love. Even if they survive the educational years and end up pleasing basically their parent's wishes for them, who will guarantee that suicide will not be attempted later or in life as a consequence of having a job and a life they don't enjoy? Do not get me wrong, I do think kids should have the right amount of push in order to become a better person, but in a universal way, concentrating not just on their professional future, but on morals and values, and most importantly, letting them choose the path that will make them happy.
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Post by Delmaya Generette on May 5, 2016 17:17:55 GMT -4
Parents always want the best for their children. They create their own future for them, without really finding out what the child see for themselves. This brings on stress for the child, because they want to make their parents happy. As pressure and stress increase, the first thought of escaping is dying. This article addresses the upperclass student life. It shows how competitive their world is to hold success, which ends in suicide, by many, or mental issues. Growing up in a middle class single parent home, I had options. My mother's main goal for us was to be able to take care of ourselves without owing her anything. She also instilled in us that the sky is the limit, any thing is possible when relying on God to direct our purposely filled lives. Without the stress of being what she thought I should be, I was allowed to explore what makes me happy and never having the thought to escape through dying. In conclusion having a realistic relationship with your children, can greatly impact their life experience and visions in a positive way.
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Post by Tanya Joseph on May 5, 2016 17:56:00 GMT -4
Let the children be children. The author brought to light a great catastrophe that many would overlook. In this competitive world that we live in today, it is clear that everyone wants to succeed. But, everything in life needs to be done in moderation. It is sad that children from affluent families would feel that their grades are of more importance to their parents, than their well-being. So much so, that they become consumed with school, extra-curricular activities and ravaging their way up the social ladder. It is rather unfortunate though, that these parents fail to recognize the damage that it is causing their children psychologically, socially and emotionally. However, it is clear that measures are being put into place at various academic institutions to help their students cope with these pressures; and that is commendable. Losing a loved one to suicide is never easy. Each parent would ask the dreaded question - what could have been done differently? Well, let the children be children.
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Post by Keyvan Amini on May 5, 2016 23:03:34 GMT -4
In this article Mrs. Rosin has touched on an ever rising statistic of adolescent suicide. By going into the community that has one of the highest adolescent suicide rates and humanizing the statistical values and numbers, she has given some very valuable insight into the disconnect there is between children and the parents regardless of socioeconomic status. In this growing world of competition, most parents think that securing their child's future lies with better food, house, school, and materialism. However, the parents are very preoccupied with the said goals that they forget to include emotional needs in the equation. Emotional attention is what school adolescents require at this critical time in development. Most students at Gunn high school are from families of high socioeconomic status, yet the suicide rate is very high. It is a well known scientific and common knowledge that the adolescent years are the years that teenagers go through a variety of unstable emotional stages and developments. These are the years that they will be looking to build peer interaction skills, explore the idea of romance, while having an emotional stability to fall back to, which is their family. However, the article states that with increasing economic status parents seemed to demand higher academic performance of their children. By placing the teenagers into such stressful environment where every aspect of the child's life is built upon their academic achievement, the adolescent loses that emotional connection that is needed between parent and child. For these teenagers, a failure or any shortcoming is equated with a feeling of worthlessness and despair. Feelings that, without emotional support from family, can serve as the final push toward suicide or homicide. Even those who thrive in their academic environment, the excessive pressure could bring about the feeling that life is too tough to live, therefore, it would be easier to end it. In my opinion, it is great that parents are trying to give their children the best the world can offer, but they need to understand that without emotional support from family, the child may develop into anything but successful.
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Post by Min Song on May 5, 2016 23:38:51 GMT -4
This article reminds me of a news I read few years ago about a man killing his two kids, his wife and attempted suicide. This elite man always had been a top student growing up, went to an elite college, had a high paying job in one of the top companies, and lived in a wealthy community. However, one day he got fired. He feared his failure which he never experienced before, worried about his reputation being damaged and pretended everything was fine. Eventually, he "only" had one million dollar left in his bank thinking it's not enough to raise his kids and maintain his life style he decided to kill his family. In this article, these wealthy kids are under pressure to exceed in school to satisfy their parents by trying to live the standard that was set by their parents. Often these kids learned to hide their failures from fear of disappointing their parents like this elite man did. It is important to do well in school to live a successful life but the most important thing is for these parents to define successful life with their kids by having close relationship through communication, letting them know that life isn't about not failing but overcoming failure and understanding hardships that they face. This will help these teenagers to achieve their goal in a healthy way.
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Post by Clifford Thomas on May 6, 2016 11:27:33 GMT -4
Suicide rates for the upper-class along with medicine are higher than that of the general population. Suicide rates for upper-class or elite schools are higher as well, which isn't surprising. It's easily arguable that the stress of modern life outweighs the stressors that humans faced before the formation of civilizations, different people need to deal with stressors differently. Parents should be counseled that not all kids will be capable of maintaining honors or straight A's during periods of their life - doing so may make them unstable, even suicidal. Even if a teen does poor during high school, it doesn't mean they'll do poor during college, the same is true for if they do well in high school - they could still crash and burn during college. Parents who are avid about their children getting straight A's may set their kids up for disaster as the child unwittingly adopts their parent's extremism. Basic physiology teaches us increased cortisol levels lead to irratic behavior and emotional lability. Stress levels should always be a concern to both adults and children, and people chronically stressed, regardless of how much money they make, if they have family, or friends, are still at risk without proper coping mechanisms. Outside of this, one must also consider any child with any developmental differences, whether it be autoimmune, neurological, etc., these problems should always be considered when pushing a person to achieve something.
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Post by Michelle Parisi on May 8, 2016 15:21:12 GMT -4
The stories of suicide told in this article are tragic but by no means new. While reading that the 10-year suicide rate for the two Palo Alto high schools had been between four and five times the national average this reminded me of another suicide epidemic. In one of Malcolm Gladwell’s books he discusses how epidemics begin and how ideas and behaviors like a disease move through a population. One such epidemic Gladwell discusses is the teenage suicide epidemic in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia in the 1970’s and 1980’s. At that time in Micronesia the teen suicide rate was ten times higher than anywhere else in the world; prior to this epidemic teen suicide in Micronesia was almost unheard of. The reasoning behind the Micronesia suicides were different than the reasoning behind the Silicon Valley suicides nevertheless the similarities between the two suicide epidemics is jarring. Many students across the United States are faced with a great deal of stress yet suicide rates do not reach those of the Palo Alto high schools. To simply attribute these suicides to academic stress and a parent’s desire and push for their child’s success grossly misguides the understanding of the problem at hand. What I found most interesting was the behavioral paradigm shift that has occurred in the generation that Hanna Rosin discusses. Is personal freedom a concept of the past? With the near machine-like nature this group displays and the ultimate and almost innate loss of autonomy one can’t help but reflect on whether the foreshadowing tales of “Brave New World” or “1984” have been realized.
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Post by Babak Izadi on May 12, 2016 9:30:42 GMT -4
Suicide is always a difficult topic to discuss but this article is flawed. The author did go into massive detail regarding suicide rates and clusters in affluent districts, but these districts as she stated are flooded by people from all over the world to gain access to the "premium" schools. This will throw the curves off just by the fact that it's not the same reflection from all over the country, plus the density and population of California is much higher than any other state with exception of NY. Suicide although extremely unfortunate is common and happens to all age groups, ethnicities and classes, when you add the stress of paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for grade school, have parents who demand the world, and have parents who are just as strung out higher rates of suicide is to be expected.
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