Editors’ Note: The writers misquoted the first half of Mr. Cohen’s quote. The information has been corrected to “Mastery learning is the idea that what you can demonstrate matters way more than how much time you spend learning it or how you get to the point of knowing it,” Cohen said.
64,800 minutes. 1080 hours. 180 days. That’s the minimum annual requirement for all California high schools’ instructional time, according to state mandates by the California Department of Education, second highest in the United States.
During these long hours, high school students often suffer. They are constantly battling the strive for academic excellence and in turn impairing their physical and mental health.
According to the Journal of Adolescence, there are many “correlations with academic stress” including “teachers having excessively high expectations, difficulty with academic subjects, [and] keeping up with schoolwork.”
Palo Alto High School senior Arun Tamura said he feels the ever-growing pressure from school.
“I have a lot of work in all my classes and on top of that I have college essays to write,” Tamura said. “Plus with my extracurricular activities outside of school, it’s really difficult to find time for everything and I end up staying up late at night trying to finish my work.”
High school is a stepping stone for students to excel in college, with teachers to remind us of the rigor and independence expected in university and using college expectations as an example to justify the abundant workload and exams assigned. However if the workload we receive mirrors the amount in college, shouldn’t the hours spent in school do so as well?
Instead, high school students have to attend scheduled classes for nearly 30 hours a week compared to the average 15 hours of a college student, according to North Central College.
In an article from the New York Times, United States Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy talks about how pushing the values of hustle culture can impact an adolescent’s mental health.
“Young people tell me they feel caught up in hustle culture,” Murthy said. “Not only did many of them say that they were exhausted, but they weren’t sure that [hustle culture] was going to bring them happiness.”
The mandated instructional time requirement is the root of the issue. Instead of schools adapting their schedules to accommodate egregious requirements, states and school boards should be re-evaluating their rules and the effect they have on students’ and their mental health.
David Cohen, a Paly English teacher and author, says that there are other ways to gauge how well students understand and comprehend the material being taught to them
“Mastery learning is the idea that what you can demonstrate matters way more than how much time you spend learning it or how you get to the point of knowing it,” Cohen said.
We believe that the instructional minutes minimum should not be a requirement for schools. Overloading students with these excessive conditions can cause harm to their phycisal and mental health, especially if they are unable to find a work-life balance in college or their career after high school.