(In the last two articles I’ve written, I’ve discussed achievement culture and its effect on elementary and middle school children. This article will address how achievement culture has permeated high schools.)

As mentioned in a previous article, until my mother was sixteen, she came home from school and stayed there until the next day. When she was sixteen, she began taking piano lessons once a week. She also worked about four hours a week as a lifeguard at her local YMCA on weekends. Sometimes she had French club or choir rehearsal after school, but not often. She was second in her large high school class. And she also got a full-ride scholarship to a local university.

My high school resume included 10 hours a week as a cashier at Walmart, member of the marching band, choir, historian of National Honor Society, cast member in a mix of community and school productions, captain of the scholars bowl team and maintaining a 3.9 GPA while taking advanced and college-level classes. I know people more involved than me who somehow got better grades (and probably much less sleep.) While I was not second in my class, I still managed to hold my place in the top ten percent of it.

So what changed?

First, I think college began to be touted as the route to success as an adult, an American, and maybe even as a person. Not just the best route—the ONLY route. Therefore, more people began to compete for not only admissions, but scholarships as well. The race to stand out began. Suddenly, it wasn’t just enough to have good grades. You needed extra-curricular activities, lots of them, and ideally at least one leadership position in the lot, to even be considered for admission into certain colleges.

Second, I think American society began to change. Educational rankings came out showing that Americans weren’t top in the world anymore, and if it’s one thing Americans hate, it’s not being first in something. Thus, the push to achieve—higher standardized test scores, high school graduation rates, and spots on “World Educational Powers” list—began.

Third, due to a combination of these above factors, I think people began to place more stock in school education for further academic purpose than education for the sake of being educated. First grade prepares you for second, and so on, until the basic purpose of high school became to prepare people for college. Which, in theory, sounds good. But what about the people who are truly not cut out for higher education? Or those people, who have been pouring their soul into education since they were five, reach the Mecca of college only to burn out?

I honestly think the largest victims of achievement culture are high school students: teenagers who have had their childhood all but stolen from them for the sake of education and are then expected to know what they want to do with the rest of their life. They spend so much time and effort reaching college, they don’t know what to do when they get there. An article my mom read in a well-known magazine years ago (TIME or Reader’s Digest, one of the two,) said that colleges were discovering two types of students coming into them: teacups and crispys. The teacups had never had to handle any decisions or adversity on their own, and they cracked under pressure. The crispys had been under so much pressure previously, they burned out when they had to push themselves even further.

If college is seen as the endgame of education (which I disagree with, but it seems to be the status quo regardless) we are doing a horrible job of preparing students for it.