Students in schools across the country are given a workload to manage throughout the week. Whether it is a heavy, moderate or light workload, students are given assignments in school to help them learn and help prepare them to manage workloads when they are adults. Over the past couple of years, students have seemingly lost work ethic, as more and more often students do not complete assignments on time or at all. The question is, why is this the case? Are schools giving out too much work? Are students still feeling the effects of losing a year due to Covid? In my opinion, the overemphasis on mental health and the lack of desire to push yourself past what is easy has caused this recent lack of work ethic.
I do believe in the care of your mental health. Feeling good and being strong in your head is definitely something very important. There are very hard things that people go through in life, and they need to have ways to cope with all the difficult things. And for people with diagnosed mental health conditions, this is even more important, as they cannot control the way that they feel. Schools are very understanding of this, especially since Covid, as many students were very vocal about the issues that they needed to take care of and schools acknowledged that those things needed to allow this to happen. Caring and taking measures to help yourself is of utmost importance, the problem comes when people use this benefit to their advantage.
Students, and teenagers in general, love to take the easy way out. It is so clear that if something does not spike their interest, they will not usually put effort towards that thing. Whether that is a subject in school, a job, extracurricular, etc, students do not push themselves into the uncomfortable. This directly results in assignments in school not getting done for weeks, months and a lot of times not getting done at all. I strongly think that this is a direct product of the message that schools feed their students about mental health. Mental health is treated as something that is super important, rightfully so, but it has been dragged out to the point that whenever someone doesn’t feel completely good or completely comfortable doing anything, they shy away from it. The problem with this is that students will use this to their advantage and when faced with any type of adversity, they use mental health as an excuse to not have to do assignments, go to class or do anything that involves what they do not want to do.
In schools, students are able to choose what classes they desire to take, and for the most part are asked to be self-sufficient in their work. Even with this self-sufficiency, there are so many help opportunities and ways to collaborate with others in schools, and students simply do not take these opportunities. Students are constantly saying that they receive no help when they actually just have no desire to ask. Complaining about teachers and staff not helping does not get you anywhere when you never asked for help and gave up before you even tried. It is ultimately on the students to choose how heavy of a workload they take, with the exception of parents and guardians forcing heavy workloads onto their kids, which is very common. Nevertheless, there is help available.
Inconveniences and adversity are a guaranteed thing to happen to every single person in the world. It is the truth of living. This is something that every person needs to be able to deal with, and schools need to do a better job of helping people manage this. hen a student faces adversity, schools let them do whatever they want to get out of something, even if all the school is doing is ignoring the assignment, class, etc, they are not providing a proper preparation for the future. Going through adversity and managing workloads is something that people have to do in adulthood, and they have to learn how to do that as students.
Ultimately, students need to learn to handle adversity better. Schools need to encourage this more, and put higher expectations onto their students. If the expectation is that students simply pass and graduate, then they are selling the students short of their excellence. Schools need to put their money where their mouth is and better prepare students for their futures, starting with the message that they give, and how much slacking they allow the students to get away with. However, the main thing that needs to change is the mentalities of students. Students should no longer be able to take advantage of the system and shy away from adversity and challenges they do not want to face. This will lead to better personal success for these students, and for a more successful society in the future.
