The Pot's Boiling Over on Ontario's Mental Health Crisis

Never before has the pressure to perform on high-stakes tests been so intense or meant so much for a child’s academic future.

 

Political campaigns, among everything else, are pressure cookers of stress.  There's lots of moving parts, little time to make them gel and constantly changing environments.  Everything is high-stakes, because small slip-ups can be fatal when they trickle into the grand arena.  As such, campaigns offer a fascinating opportunity to see how people react under high pressure over long hours with little food, sleep or even breathing space.  Some crack entirely - others quit, or tune out, or become bitter.  The vast majority of campaigners adapt to the unsustainable nature of campaign politics, leading to uncomfortable wind-down periods when the campaign is over.  The real world simply doesn't function at that high level - it couldn't.

 

It couldn't - but it's starting to.  There's a slow creep of demand for more, faster, better, constantly.  Employees are being kept at their jobs for longer hours and bringing not just work, but colleagues and bosses home via cell phones and personal computers.  The bar for academic success keeps rising - marks alone aren't enough, successful students now need a host of extra-curriculars to meet the standard, which kinda means the extras are now necessary.  Pressure is on parents to be all things to all people, including transportation hubs.  Accountability has bled into personal life - you now are judged by every action you make on social media in addition to work performance. 

 

Critics argue that all this test-taking is churning out sleep-deprived, overworked, miserable children.  Adults, too. 

 

It's all enough to drive you to distraction - or to drive you nuts.

 

Fortunately, when a window drops on your fingers, it sometimes shakes open a door.  We're beginning to understand stress better.  Turns out that it's a bit like fat:

 

Stress turns out to be far more complicated than we’ve assumed, and far more under our control than we imagine. Unlike long-term stress, short-term stress can actually help people perform, and viewing it that way changes its effect. Even for those genetically predisposed to anxiety, the antidote isn’t necessarily less competition — it’s more competition. It just needs to be the right kind.

 

Fortunately, as we start to wrap our head around mental health and mental illness, we're also starting to branch out into mental fitness and broader environmental impacts, like at the workplace.  When even Tim Hudak starts talking about mental health in terms of social support and proactive accommodation, you know that things are changing.

 

The change required is massive, though and requires collaboration at all levels - and a bit of courage at the political level.  Leaders have to be willing to forgo quick partisan wins at the expense of collaborative change, because we can't afford to dally much longer with the structural transformation needed.

 

No pressure, though - we're all in this together; we can only move forward successfully when we leave no one behind.

Christina Blizzard: Education Hypocrite

 

 

For some youngsters, the only thing that gets them out of bed and off to school is the notion that there’s a basketball practice at the end of the day.

 

 

Cognitive Dissonance: The state of holding two or more conflicting cognitions (e.g. ideas, beliefs, values, emotional reactions) simultaneously.

 

 

Christina Blizzard thinks Full Day Kindergarten is bad.  To her, FDK is a luxury that carries a whopping $1.5 billion price tag and comes at at time when it's not business as usual any more for Ontario's economy.  She has referred to FDK as full-day babysitting.  What's more, she has made it clear she believes becoming a parent shouldn't be a lifestyle choice.  Children, after all, aren't fashion accessories.

 

Tell me if I'm wrong, but what I get from this is that parents need to be responsible for their kids and shouldn't expect the public dollar to support the out-of-school care for their children.  If you're going to be a parent, you should be accountable for the well-being of your own child.  Right?  

 

Unless, of course, Blizzard is talking about extra-scholastic activities, traditionally referred to as "extra-curricular" because they aren't part of the mandated curriculum (and are therefore voluntary).  These are things like basketball practice that give kids motivation to get out of bed in the morning. 

 

While it's wrong for parents to expect the public sector to provide full-day babysitting to their kids on the public's dime, when it comes to after-school time, it's the teachers who are using students as pawns in their battle with government over the Putting Students First by suspending extra-scholastic activities.  Teachers, according to Blizzard, are focused on the financials, not the kids. 

 

So, when it comes to FDK, the government should focus on the financials and not be paying for daycare; that's the parents' job.  When it comes to post-school activities, though, the teachers are wrong to focus on financials and should be doing the parent's job of providing extra-scholastic activity for their kids.

 

These two positions are not in agreement.

 

But there's more:

 

My children suffered through the strikes and bans on extra-curriculars during the Mike Harris years. A whole generation of young people had what should have been a fulfilling school experience turned into a spiteful standoff that put them in the middle.

 

Were her kids the ones yearning for after school basketball as a reason to get out of bed in the morning?  If that's what it took to get her children out of bed, why should public sector teachers be responsible for motivating them?  Many Jewish parents are happy to pay to have their children educated according to their beliefs.  If it's commendable for some parents to pay out-of-pocket to ensure their children are educated according to their beliefs, shouldn't parents who want their kids to play sports after school be willing to pay for them, too?  This includes teachers who are parents; I know many a teacher that still pays for daycare while they're providing extra-curriculars to other people's kids. 

 

In fact, when you pay for private after-school activities, you help create jobs and support the economy.  When you expect the public sector to pick up your slack, you deny private-sector opportunities and add to the burden on the public purse.  Finance Minister Dwight Duncan suggested this very thing when, asked who was responsible for Ontario's massive deficit, he said “It’s everybody’s fault. We’ve all done this.”
 

But Blizzard disagrees.  "Well, count me out, Dwight. I have no comfy government pension. I don’t make it to the Sunshine list of $100,000 earners. Speak for yourself."  It was the fault of teachers, unions and government that her kids didn't have a fulfilling school experience; she's not on the sunshine list so perhaps can't afford cushy after-school activities.  But it's the fault of people not her that we have a deficit; people like single mothers looking for government to give them welfare to care for their kids.  Care for their kids during the day, that is - not after school.  That's clearly different.

 

You can't have it both ways, Ms. Blizzard.  You can't object to parents having the choices they want to make for their children disregarded if they expect someone else to take responsibility for enacting those choices.  Either parents are individually responsible for the well-being of their kids or society is a collective effort that we all have to take responsibility for. 

 

Which is it?

 

 

But ARE They Extra?

She said many students are worried that missing extracurricular activities might affect their chances at university admission.

 

“On university applications, they look at that,” said Tomasov. “If I'm tied with another student with the same marks, extracurricular activities could make or break it for me.”

 

 

Which is absolutely true.  The same applies to volunteer activities, the kinds of things you do for free that serve as an expression of what your personal values are, as well as how committed you are to those values/what you will bring to a job.

 

Why?  Because the sorts of jobs we're hiring for these days don't involve punching clocks and building widgets.  They require creativity, focus, critical thinking, communication skills - things that you don't get to turn off when the whistle blows.  It's a fact, although a decidedly uncomfortable one, that you simply can't leave your personal stuff at home or leave work at the office - it's the same person society is now expecting to be a dedicated employee, a good parent, a social friend and yes, an engaged citizen.

 

Relying on the traditional models of motivating labour - financial carrots and sticks - is breaking the bank and isn't demonstrably getting the job done.  Pushing kids to be fully-formed students before they even get to primary school is adding an unsustainable pressure on everyone involved.  Worse, the friction society is facing by trying to force open a closing door is having a host of negative social impacts, including the well-recognized mental health crisis that's racking our workforce, our military, civil society and yes, our schools.  By trying to make every issues about salary and insisting that fights over wages is completely separate from other social woes, we're band-aiding the symptoms and ignoring the disease.  It's like spending billions trying to cure lead poisoning, yet ignoring the lead pipes we're drinking from.

 

We are increasingly demanding more from employees than just 9 - 5 paid labour; we want their passions, their spare moments, their social communication.  We don't want them to do a job, we want them to live a profession.  Even students are expected to be constantly absorbing skills if they want to stand a chance of success in life.  That kind of commitment can't be bought with dollars - it has to be earned with inspiration, accommodation and participation. 

 

There are lots of canaries in the coal mine adding credence to the notion that the work/life model we're relying on is past its best due date.   The question remains - are we paying attention, or do we still consider that planning ahead piece to be an extra-curricular activity?