Nowadays, the strenuous efforts and struggle that students face are masked by the norm of accomplishment, greatness, and prosperity. Instead of an education system focused on learning, America has turned to a practice that relies on performance and competition, prompting students to believe that their identity is measured by their academic output.
Academic validation, the act of basing one’s worth and happiness off of academic achievements, is a prevalent but overlooked issue that occurs in classrooms today. The increasing dependency on academic validation is a crisis. It creates heightened pressure, forceful change, and corruption of the education system itself.
The placement of one’s worth in the hands of academics leads to mental health issues, since already existing pressure is elevated. For example, when a student receives a poor grade, they will feel as if they are not enough, increasing stress. This produces an unrealistic perception of the student’s worth. According to the American Psychological Association, students who depend on academic validation “reported more stress, anger, academic problems, relationship conflicts, and had higher levels of drug and alcohol use and symptoms of eating disorders.”
When such emphasis is placed on getting a good grade, more anxiety initiates, because the student depends on scoring to fulfill their identity. This is not healthy; tying your character to numerals is impractical, as humans should not be represented by integer amounts.
The same report showed that “college students who based their self-worth on academic performance did not receive higher grades… than students who did not rate academic performance as important to their self-esteem.” Not only does academic validation create mental health issues, but the pressure also has no scoring advantage. The mental health consequences make it detrimental to depend on academics as a validating source.
Additionally, academic validation fuels the need to change oneself in order to fit into academic standards. New customs of the “ideal college applicant” force students to compress themselves into a falsified mold, making change a necessity for acceptance.
As stated by Forbes, “Over half [of high school students] rank applications as their most stressful academic experience…nearly one in eight abandon their college plans due to application anxiety.” This is caused by the fear of being rejected, which stems from academic pressure.
High-achieving students believe they need to maintain a perfect GPA and a compilation of extracurriculars due to the template they force themselves in. Not only this, but standardized testing is another stress-inducing factor, making students believe they must achieve a certain score to be valued. The need to change is a symptom of academic validation, which consistently makes students feel as if they must do more.
Due to the normalized stress placed on students, the education system itself has become an advocate of academic validation. What once used to be a model of learning and instruction has become a corrupt mind game. Schools have adopted distorted priorities, where they favor statistical scoring rather than creativity and problem-solving.
In an Economic Policy Institute study, the author explains how schools, “to devote more time to math and reading, spur reductions in…cooperative learning and other character-building activities.” Students are told that obtaining high scores is necessary to succeed, which only leads them to believe that they are defined by the number on their screen. Shouldn’t students be assessed by their talent and grit instead of tests that do not even represent their wisdom?
Comparison is another issue caused by academic validation. Students who are regarded as less “smart” may develop comparative tendencies and feel inferior to their peers. The class rank system, which ranks students based on their grade-point average, additionally fuels this comparison, as students unhealthily obsess over their ranking. Academic validation has become regularized, and it has corrupted our education system. This is a problem that needs to be acknowledged.
Though unspoken, students everywhere are relying on academic validation and are struggling because of it. Some claim that academic validation is a useful way to produce motivation, but it is ultimately unhealthy for our society. The negative consequences–anxiety, burnout, poor self-esteem, and coerced change–overshadow any motivation that is enhanced.
Academic validation should not be something that is relied on, because statistics are not a determining factor of how much you are worth. In the end, it is okay if you do not get the mark you had hoped for; you are not a number or a college application. You are a human with character and importance.
