Race to Nowhere (2010) - full transcript

RACE TO NOWHERE is a close-up look at the pressures on today's students, offering an intimate view of lives packed with activities, leaving little room for down-time or family time. Parents today are expected to raise high-achieving children, who are good at everything: academics, sports, the arts, community-service. The film tackles the tragic side of our often achievement-obsessed culture, with interviews that explore the hidden world of over-burdened schedules, student suicide, academic cheating, young people who have checked out. RACE TO NOWHERE asks the question: Are the young people of today prepared to step fully and productively into their future? We hear from students who feel they are being pushed to the brink, educators who worry students aren't learning anything substantive, and college professors and business leaders, concerned their incoming employees lack the skills needed to succeed in the business world: passion, creativity, and internal motivation.

- I can't really remember

the last time I had a chance

to go out in the backyard

and just run around.

- School's just so much pressure

that every day, I would wake up,

and I would wake up dreading it.

- There's definitely been times

when I've sat doing my homework,

you know, and then

just started crying.

- Not eating made me

have more energy,

and I could get

so much stuff done at night,

but it still was not enough time

to get everything done.

- My mom checked me

into a stress center.

- You think

you know your children.

I thought I knew my little girl.

- We definitely, at college,

we still do whatever it takes

to get the A,

Just like in high school.

- Things that actually

get our students to think

are pushed aside.

- How come no one's insisting

that it change?

♪ - When I was a child ♪

♪ Everybody smiled ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Very late at night ♪

♪ And in the morning light ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ I got lots of friends ♪

♪ Yes, but then again ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Very late at night ♪

♪ And in the morning light ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ And, oh, ♪

♪ when the lights are low ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ With someone I don't know, ♪

♪ oh ♪

♪ I know how you feel ♪

♪ No secrets to reveal ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Nobody knows me ♪

♪ Nobody knows me ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

- I came from a family

where my parents were divorced.

My mother

was a single parent

raising four kids

on very little income.

That drove me

to work really hard

so that I could be independent.

My mom taught me

from a very young age

that an education

was something

that would help you

go far in life,

and it was something that

couldn't be taken away from you.

"Good night, moon.

Good night,

cow jumping over the moon."

When I had kids, I wanted

to be a really good mom.

- Dada.

- Yes, Shelby?

- Dada.

- Yes.

- I wanted to provide my kids

with the security

of a stable family,

and I wanted my kids

to have a good education.

I wanted to give them

the opportunities

that I didn't have growing up.

So what do you think?

- It was fun.

- Was it good?

- Yes.

- I also really wanted

to have time together.

- Everybody wave.

What are you growing this year?

- Corn.

- Corn? What else?

Pumpkins?

- To the sky.

- And that worked out well

for a few years,

but as my kids got older

and the pressures on them

from school were greater

and the time commitment

for extra-curricular

activities increased,

it became much more complicated.

- Zakary.

Let's go.

Let's go. Here.

- I didn't think when I had kids

that the only time

I would see them

was for 20 minutes at dinner.

In all three of my kids,

I started to see the toll

that the schedule and the stress

was taking on them.

Our oldest daughter

looks like all is fine.

She's doing really well

in school,

but she doesn't have time

to sleep at night

or to hang out with friends.

For Jamey,

when she started seventh grade,

the workload really increased.

No matter how much time

she spent doing homework,

she wasn't getting the grades

that she expected.

In Zakary's case,

when he started

fourth grade this year,

the homework level increased.

Every evening became

a battle around homework.

Right now?

- Yeah.

- Well, you need help

'cause you weren't doing it.

- No, I didn't!

- Let him do it himself.

- Do your-do it.

- All three of my kids started

complaining about headaches

from school or stomachaches,

or they would wake up

in the middle of the night

worried about a test

the next day,

and I didn't really know

how seriously to take it.

At that same time,

a 13-year-old girl in

my community committed suicide.

She was the exact same age

as my oldest daughter.

When something

like that happens,

you can't help but start

worrying about your own kids.

I started checking

more often on them.

There was a night where

I found my daughter out of bed,

doubled over in pain.

Doug and I took her

to the emergency room,

and after a series of tests,

the doctors concluded that her

condition was stress-induced.

I wanted to understand

what was going on.

I started talking to parents

in my community, to students,

to experts, and visiting schools

across the country.

I was determined to find out

how we had gotten to a place

where our family

had so little time together,

where our kids

were physically sick

because of the pressures

they were under,

and where a 13-year-old girl

had taken her life.

- These kids are so

overscheduled and tired.

We are always looking

at the next step,

and this is what the kids say.

They say, "In elementary school,

I was worried

about high school."

We've stolen 11th

and 12th grade from them.

I'm afraid that our children

are going to sue us

for stealing their childhoods.

- We're a New York City suburb,

high-powered parents,

who are very competitive

themselves, many of them,

and, you know, and they'll go

to parties and things,

and they want to be able

to talk about their kid

is going to be going to Harvard

or the equivalent,

and I worry.

What happens when their kid

is not going in that direction?

- You have a system

that is trying

to further robot-icize students,

mechanize them, if you will,

to be, you know,

these academic competitors,

these producers.

The very nature of it in itself

is very dehumanizing.

- I put so much pressure

on myself.

- I definitely felt a lot of

pressure to have perfect grades.

- The stress definitely

first comes from home.

- Because my mother

wasn't able to graduate,

she puts extra pressure on us.

- You need to have

the best grades.

You need to be able

to afford the college.

- My family is low-income,

so there's no way I could afford

college without financial aid.

- Until senior year,

I haven't had any free periods.

I haven't had lunch periods.

- I didn't want to take out

loans, not for my family.

- When I was in middle school,

I would sometimes stay up

till 1:00 in the morning.

- I would spend

six hours a night,

at least, on my homework.

- It's not just your homework.

- I have soccer practice

every day from, like,

after school to 6:00,

and then from 6:00 to 8:00,

I have my

outside-of-school practice.

- We're in so many

different clubs.

- Now it's all about

preparing yourself

to look good for colleges.

- High school is about

learning how to pass tests.

- You try to stuff

as much information

into your brain as possible,

then as soon as you're

done with it, out it goes.

- You start out in,

like, kindergarten.

- You have to get into

the top schools.

- You have to take tests

and do interviews

to get into public high schools.

- And then AP,

and then a four-year college.

- If I don't get into college,

you know,

my mind-set is basically, like,

you know, I'm screwed.

- And then graduate school.

- Now, how are you

gonna get into

a top-tier medical school

or law school?

- And then what?

People get caught up in this,

like, race to nowhere.

- I'm Jessica Vaughn,

and I'm a senior.

I just wanted

to put it out there

to parents and teachers

that the worst question

you can ask your child

in high school is, "And?"

Like, they'll say,

"I'm in three AF' classes."

"And?"

"Well, I do sports."

"And?"

"Well, I work at the theater."

"And?

Well, what else are you doing?"

"I'm in three clubs."

"Well, you know what

looks really good?

"Community service.

"They're looking for all of this

on college applications.

Why aren't you doing this,

this, and this?"

And I find that that question

comes up all the time.

Everyone expects us

to be superheroes.

We need to be doing more.

Why aren't we doing more

for our community?

We need to be doing more.

Why aren't you

working harder in school?

And I think sometimes parents

need to just step back and say,

"You know what?

You've done a really good job."

- Some of the pressure

that is out there is real.

If you want to have

the same opportunities

that your parents had,

to attend those kinds of schools

and all, you have to do more.

You have to have

better test scores.

You have to have better grades.

You have to have

more activities.

So there is definitely

some part of the pressure

that's created

by the demographic.

- I can't help it,

I mean, you know,

when you start

their freshman year

and you go to the orientation

at the high school

and all they talk about

is what is necessary

to get into college.

People are raising their hands

and asking about AP courses and,

"How do you get into UC?"

I mean, you look around,

and you think,

"I guess this is what

everybody's gonna be doing."

- I think if you ask them,

they'd probably say that we

did pressure them in some way,

because we did want them

to have a choice.

That was my, you know,

feeling as a parent,

that the better you do,

the more choices that you have.

- I want them to be able to do

what I wasn't able

to accomplish.

Me, as a young parent

having four kids,

I wasn't able

to go back to school

and get myself an education,

and so I want them

to have the things

that I never was able to have.

- Even though we know better,

even though we know we shouldn't

be pushing our kids,

inadvertently, we are, you know?

I'm just as guilty of saying

to my daughters

when they get in the car,

"So how was school today?

"Did you get your test back?

Do you have any homework?

"How much homework do you have?

How are you gonna study

for that test?"

Because I am also feeling

the pressure

that they need to work really,

really hard.

- We want the best for them,

but that, in the end,

is causing us

to put pressure on them

to be whatever we think

they ought to be.

Even though we send them

to all these sports camps

and all their private lessons

and the tutors and the-

we would drop anything

any time for our kids,

but in my mind,

it's gone way to the extreme.

- We're all caught up in it.

We're all afraid

that our children

won't be able to be

as successful as we are.

- And so you have a fear

from the parents that,

"My kid needs to be able

to get a job.

"Okay, I got 'em

in the accelerated program.

"That's the first step,

but now they need to perform

and compete so they can

get into a 'good school, “

And it's out of love.

It's out concern.

It's out of fear.

It's out of all these things

that parents normally have,

but it ends up turning kids

into little professionals.

All: I Oh, light the candles I

I All around the world I

I Let them shine I

I Let them shine I

I Oh, let them shine I

- We live in a society today

where, like,

oh, you have to be smart,

but also, you have to be pretty,

and also, you have to,

you know, do sports,

and you have to be involved

in the arts,

and amongst all that,

you have to find something

unique about yourself,

and you have to know yourself,

because if you don't

know yourself

before you do all of that,

you're gonna lose yourself.

- I have grown up

in Oakland, California.

I'm 19 years old.

I went to a private school

starting in kindergarten.

It was a very competitive,

small school.

A lot of homework started

probably around fifth grade,

but middle school started about

an hour per class a night.

I participated in soccer,

took tennis lessons,

went to Hebrew school

three times a week,

plus the homework

on top of that.

It was a very hectic schedule.

Home life in middle school

was difficult.

It was the time when my parents

and I had the biggest fights.

I was expected

to get straight A's.

I had so much homework.

They would want to know

when I had tests

and tell me to study for them,

and I wouldn't want them to know

anything about my school life.

I figured out that not eating

made me have more energy.

I would stay up later.

It gave me insomnia.

So I wouldn't sleep at night.

I could get

so much stuff done at night,

but it still was not enough time

to get everything done.

In tenth grade,

my anorexia flared up.

I had so much homework

in tenth grade,

so many papers,

so many projects.

I would stay up all night.

I remember coming up

to my history teacher

the day my history final

was due.

I came up to him crying.

I had a huge coffee in my hand,

and I was sobbing,

and about ten other people

did too.

I got very sleep-deprived.

When you are sleep deprived,

your concentration is off.

Instead of taking notes

and remembering everything,

you're kind of just

staring off into space.

I was sent to a facility for

eating disorders specifically.

I was admitted

to a medical hospital twice.

When I returned to school

in 11th grade,

my weight had plummeted.

The workload had increased,

and the head of the school

told me

she did not want me coming back,

because she could not have

students and teachers

worrying about me.

I was too much of a distraction.

Another high school was really

hard to go into senior year,

so I took my G.E.D.

Good boy.

- The common force

that drives kids

towards so many negative

behaviors is stress.

It's coming from schools.

It's coming from colleges,

and it's coming from

all the places

that it's always come

from during adolescence.

Don't forget,

adolescence is a tough time.

You know, you worry

about what you look like,

what you feel like,

what you act like to your peers.

The media tells you exactly

what you're supposed to buy

to be acceptable,

what you're supposed

to look like

and how you're supposed to think

to be acceptable,

and you're trying to answer

this fundamental question

of adolescence,

which is, "Who am I?"

- I think it's captured by this

girl that came into my office.

She's got all the great

social skills,

but she's wearing

a cutter T-shirt.

That's a T-shirt

that's pulled low over the wrist

to hide cutting.

And by the end of the session,

she sort of pulls it back,

and that morning,

she had taken a razor

and incised the word "empty"

into her forearm.

And she's emblematic, to me,

of the kinds of kids

that I'm seeing more

and more frequently,

and that's kids who look

terrific on the outside,

terrific presentation,

but you roll up their sleeve,

and metaphorically,

and in her case, literally,

they're bleeding underneath.

- When success is defined

by high grades, test scores,

trophies, we know that we end up

with unprepared, disengaged,

exhausted,

and ultimately unhealthy kids.

- I've gone through bouts

of depression,

just because

you feel so swamped.

There's so much work.

It feels like there's piles

and piles of work to be done,

and it's all kept in your head,

and you don't know

how to sort through it all,

and you don't ever think

you're ever gonna get it done.

- Sometimes

when I get stressed out,

I feel a little sick.

Like, I actually get headaches.

- Usually when stress

gets really bad,

I get a lot of stomachaches.

- I think it was in November

where I almost, like,

had an emotional breakdown,

because at the end of November,

that was when UC's application

was due, November 30th,

and I was also applying

for a scholarship.

I wasn't eating.

I wasn't even

taking care of myself.

You care so much

about getting in,

about making people proud of you

and living up

to that expectation

and that standard that, like,

you start neglecting yourself,

your health.

Everything gets focused

on that piece of application

that you're putting in

for people who never meet you.

- I was really stressed, and I-

all my joints swelled.

- In sixth grade last year,

I had a lot of homework

one night,

and it got really late,

so my mom told me to go to bed,

but I thought my teachers

would get really mad at me

if I didn't finish my homework,

so I woke up in the middle of

the night to finish my homework.

- These kids are growing.

They need 9 to 11 hours of sleep

in elementary school.

The high school kids

are still growing.

Some of them

get six hours of sleep

because they're taking

six AP classes.

It is a form of neglect

of the children

that they don't

get enough sleep.

- I visited a high school once

that had a drug problem.

Well, I assumed

it was recreational drugs

like I knew about in my youth,

but no, I'm talking about

stimulants and things like that

that help you stay up all night

or tranquilizers

that help you come down

after you've been taking

too many stimulants.

Those are the kinds of problems

that we're seeing on the rise.

- I took Adderall my first time

as a junior.

I knew a lot of people

that took it,

and I would ask them for it

every once in a while.

It seems like everyone

has ADD now,

so most anyone you talk to knows

someone that takes medicine.

I was a really well-rounded

person in high school,

and it's hard to be the

vice president of your class,

play on the soccer team,

and do homework.

It made me feel focused

and almost better,

because, "Look, I can keep up

with everyone now.

I come to school,

and my homework's done."

My senior year, I started

doing it a little more,

'cause it was easier to get;

all of a sudden, my-

I couldn't breathe as well,

and it was hard

to catch my breath,

and I'd be trying to breathe,

and it was scary.

Like, I'd be sitting there

trying to catch my breath.

I couldn't fall asleep at night.

- I've often wondered.

I mean, why am I doing this?

I'm doing this so I can go

to college and get a job I like,

ultimately so I can be happy,

but if I'm not healthy,

then none of that

really matters.

Why am I-it just doesn't

really seem to add up.

- We do have a sense that both

depression and anxiety

are rising among adolescents,

and if we're seeing it

in childhood, you know,

if we're seeing the stomachaches

and the headaches

that clearly are related

to stress in childhood,

then what do you think they're

seeing in adulthood?

You know, this translates

into the same stomachaches

and the same chest pains,

but it also translates

into high blood pressure

and heart disease,

and all of the other

manifestations of stress.

- We do an awful lot of talking

about kids who are stressed

and are working too hard,

but we sort of forget that there

are just as many, if not more,

kids who have taken a look

at this crazy system and said,

"I'm not interested in this."

I think we lose boys

in particular,

because boys tend to act out,

and we lose girls to depression.

- Ever since middle school,

basically,

I've felt bad about school,

because I don't like

to disappoint people.

You feel bad about yourself.

You feel guilty.

You stay up at night.

I remember this all too clearly

about not doing homework

and coming home from school

and being like, "I'm sorry, Mom.

I didn't do homework,"

And I would cry.

- I felt basically

like a prison guard,

that I had to constantly

be asking,

"Did you do your homework?

Are you done

with your homework?"

I personally felt

a lot of anxiety

about what they

were supposed to be doing.

Sam had trouble with school,

really, from the very beginning.

He struggled through

elementary school,

and he also struggled

through middle school.

He always was

at grade level or above,

but I think the struggle

was always just the homework.

- Last year was gonna be

my redemption year.

I took a bunch of hard classes,

and I was like,

"I'm gonna pass

all these classes."

- And so we would

have heart-to-hearts

at the beginning of every year,

at the beginning

of every semester.

"I'm gonna work harder

this time.

I'm gonna do it.

I promise."

- Halfway through the year,

I was like, "This is ridiculous.

Like, no student should

be put through this much work,"

and I dropped

some of the classes.

Really, the only thing

that kept me in high school

was the sport wrestling,

because I've been wrestling

since my freshman year,

and I just fell in love with it.

Wrestling was

a very intense sport.

Like, last year,

l weighed 160,

and I cut down to 145 pounds,

but that means, every day,

you're starving.

Every day after practice,

you don't get to drink.

You stand on the scale, and

you're looking at the number,

and you're like,

"Do I get to drink?

Do I get to have

a piece of lettuce tonight?"

The school is like,

"You're dedicating

your whole life to your grades."

And then the sport is like,

"No, you're dedicating

your whole life to us."

- I started to understand

more and more

what was actually

going on with him and that,

you know, it just wasn't

physically possible

for him to do the work.

Not that he wasn't

bright enough.

It's just-that type of work,

hours and hours of sitting still

just wasn't gonna work for him.

- I have school for seven hours.

I get out of school at 3:10.

I go to my sport until probably,

generally around 7:00.

I come home tired,

wanting to go to sleep,

and then I got to stay up

till 12:00 or 1:00

to finish all my homework

and then wake up the next day

and do it all over again.

Yeah, eventually,

school was so bad

that the negatives

outweighed the positives

of being at the school

just to wrestle,

and I couldn't do it anymore,

so I left that school,

and I left the sports team.

- When you have students

that just have three hours

of homework,

four hours of homework after

soccer practice or after work,

and they're gonna have that

every night,

and they have weekend homework,

and it's all-

their whole future

is on the line at that moment,

it's no longer about learning.

- Jamey has always been

such a lighthearted,

fun kid with

a great sense of humor.

She always loved school

up until fifth grade.

- The last time I was

really excited to go to school

and excited about learning

was in fourth grade.

When we got to middle school,

I think expectations

changed a lot.

- In sixth grade,

the workload increased.

She would come home

to hours of homework.

I started noticing

that she was really, you know,

a duck trying to paddle

as quickly as she could

to keep her head

above the water,

and she wasn't

having a really easy time.

- It's ironic,

and here's the thing

that not everybody understands.

The countries

that outperform us,

many of them,

on the international tests,

actually give less homework than

we do here in the United States.

There's almost no correlation

between academic achievement

in elementary school

and homework.

When you get to middle school,

there's a slight correlation,

but anything

that you're doing after an hour,

pretty much,

that correlation fades.

And in high school,

there is a link,

but really, we see a fallout

after two hours.

So you have to look at

the options of homework and say,

"What is developmentally

appropriate?

"What can these kids handle?

"And what is the purpose

of homework?

Why are we doing it

in the first place?"

We have parents who do their

homework for their kids.

We have parents who edit

their kids' homework.

We have parents who correct

their kids' homework.

If the teacher is using homework

as a gauge for understanding,

that's not gonna work.

- I know you had a Japan quiz,

'cause you made me quiz you

last night, so we know that's-

a large part of our time every

evening is trying to manage

all three kids

getting their homework done.

That's the question every night.

- So you do-finish this one

and do your math page,

and then that'll leave you-

- And last night, you know,

my wife had to leave

for a couple hours,

and my youngest was supposed

to be doing homework,

and I wasn't quite aware of it,

and so when she came home,

she asked him if he had done

his homework, and he hadn't,

and so immediately, I mean,

the minute she walked

in the door,

we were having to discuss

whether he did

his homework or not.

You know, I get pulled into it.

I should have been aware

and maybe applying the pressure

for him to have done it

and done it well,

and we ended the evening

with some turmoil about-

surrounding homework.

- This is what you do is,

you have a mock one that you-

- At what point did it become

okay for schools to dictate

how students live their lives

once the bell rings?

Because that's sort

of a private time.

That's family time.

There's some weird,

interesting,

like, molecular

communication here.

When I first started

teaching AP biology,

the first thing I did was,

I cut the homework load in half,

and what happened

to the AP scores?

They went up.

Now, that's very telling.

When you cut homework in half

and AP scores improve,

what's the value

of the homework?

- So there's a couple of things

that drive homework

at different grade levels.

There are the standards,

and literally,

there is so much content

to teach that the teachers feel

that they have to then

load up the homework

to try and get

that content across.

Parents expect homework.

It's going to seem like you're

not doing your job as a teacher

if you say, "No homework today."

Parents need

to educate themselves

about the fact that homework

is not going

to make their kids any smarter.

The schools have our kids

for seven hours a day.

That should be plenty for them

to impart the kind of knowledge

that they want to do,

and then the kids

should go home,

and there's so much more

to a child's life

than just what's going on

in school.

There was kind of

a real lull period in homework

that went from the 1900s

almost up to the 1950s,

and at the same time,

the labor laws were changing.

Those two things

went together very nicely,

and kids started to have

more of a childhood.

And then there was Sputnik,

and all of a sudden,

we were falling behind

in the space race.

And then it kind of faded out

again, which makes sense,

because when you think about

what this country was like

in the late '60s and early '70s,

it was much more

of a free-thinking time

and a big change

of social ideas.

The upswing in homework has

been going on since about 1983

with A Nation at Risk,

but I think the level got upped

after the passage in 2002

of No Child Left Behind.

- So the principle behind

the No Child Left Behind Act

is to set high standards,

believe every child can learn,

and measure to see

if we're getting results.

- This overwhelming feeling

came down

from the federal government,

from the state saying,

"No, no, no, we need to push

our kids academically,

because we're not competing

with other countries."

So all of a sudden,

they're being forced

into this one mold

that we never, ever had had.

- Our students don't do well

compared to many other nations,

particularly in science

and math,

primarily because the way

we teach science and math

is to prepare for the test.

- When American students

encounter questions

that are not just like what

they've seen in their class,

they fall apart, partly because

the strategy for teaching math

in the United States

tends to be more formulaic.

- So Wilson's 14 Points

offered these groups

the premise

of self-determination.

When you did the review sheet,

this is something

that was on there

that I just gave the answer,

but this is gonna be

on your test,

so you should know about it.

- No Child Left Behind,

what we know is,

the measures

don't necessarily measure

what they're supposed

to measure.

It becomes literally

just drowning in content,

and the teachers are cutting out

things that they know

to be very developmentally

appropriate or very successful,

like project-based learning.

Wonderful projects,

we no longer teach them,

because they're not on the test,

and everything becomes

about the tests.

- We're told, "Either you do it,

or you don't have a job,"

And we've just kind of gone

with the flow, because our job,

our bonus money was based

on our test scores.

If your kids did well, you got

bonus money from the state.

Well, you know,

everybody pushes,

because it means a bonus check.

- One of the craziest things

about No Child Left Behind is,

like, so your school's

doing a bad job,

so we're gonna give you

less funding

and less time and less support.

So these fairies are arguing,

and all of a sudden,

winter's turning into spring,

and spring's turning hotter,

and so what does that tell us

about those two?

Ah, they're sort of powerful,

right?

These fairies have some power.

I grew up in the Bay Area.

My dad was born and raised here.

So I feel very tied to Oakland.

I always knew I wanted to teach.

I went to graduate school.

I found a program at UC Berkley.

You get your masters

and credential at the same time

in two years,

so l joined that program.

This was the school

that hired me.

I just really dove right in

and loved it.

I wanted to teach

social justice,

and I wanted

to really change the system

and change these kids' lives

and get them to see learning

as a lifetime skill

that's important for them

to move out of their

sort of socioeconomic strata,

and it's really hard to do

in education today.

I mean, I pretty much was,

you know, fighting

and was working hard

and was feeling like

I was making a difference,

but it's gotten harder

and harder to feel like

I can teach the things

I believe in versus be a yes-man

and sort of do what all the-

what the district

and the state-

and, you know, federally,

all the pressure's on us.

Demetrius ditches Helena

in the forest,

where she finds Lysander.

The standards very much

go along with the testing

and this whole idea that,

you know, there's certain things

that kids need to know.

I believe that one

of the main things

we are doing in schools

is socializing,

and the jobs don't necessarily

need you to know

how to use a semicolon.

They need you

to be a critical thinker.

They need you

to be a problem solver.

They need you to be-you know,

be able to work in groups

with other people.

So things that actually

get our students to think

and work together and care

are pushed aside.

What's happened more and more

with No Child Left Behind

and the testing craze is,

instead of, you know,

professional developments

or making teachers

more accountable

or working on getting rid

of the teachers

who don't actually

do any teaching,

they decided that they need

to give more tests.

These tests

that they do horribly on,

it's not related

to my curriculum.

You're testing them

on their culture,

and they are

from a different culture

than this testing culture.

- CAHSEE is basically a test

that determines whether or not

you will get a diploma

for high school,

and I feel like I have

set many goals for myself,

which is to graduate

from high school

and go through college

and become a lawyer.

I'm really thinking

about Harvard.

I'm really trying.

I've been getting 4.0s for

three marking periods already,

and so hopefully

I can keep that up,

but when I heard about

this CAHSEE test,

I became really nervous,

because I felt like this CAHSEE

might, you know, end my dreams.

- My philosophy was, you know,

to get these kids

to love learning,

to get them to see learning

as power, you know?

Learning as power.

Like, if you want to have power

in your life

to do whatever you want to do,

you have to be a learner.

You have to read the paper.

You have to care.

From day one, it was very clear

that that is not what

the district wants me to do.

If you aren't teaching things

that you love,

you cannot do this job.

- Wake up.

- So what's gonna happen now?

- He's gonna

fall in love with her.

- Oh, okay, Lysander.

Wake up lovingly.

I realize

that my educational philosophy

and what I believe is just

and efficacious.

I couldn't reconcile that

with all the inefficiencies

and what the district believes

I should be doing.

I just couldn't

make that balance

and felt like the fight of that

is just killing me.

It's sucking the life out of me.

I ended up resigning,

but it's been the hardest

decision of my life.

I've always been a teacher.

I've always wanted

to be in East Oakland,

and I love these kids.

I mean, one of the things

that I never knew

about teaching was,

I'm a mother.

I'm a friend.

I'm a mentor,

and I don't want to leave them,

and, I mean, I see these kids

more than their parents

half the time,

because I'm with them every day,

and because

I'm an English teacher,

they do all this writing for me,

and so I learn about their lives

and their fears

and their beliefs,

and I don't want them to feel

like I've just given up on them.

- Clearly, the first thing

we need to improve education

in urban schools,

in schools

that are serving students

who are

economically disadvantaged

is greater equity,

because right now,

students in more

affluent communities

are going to schools

that have more resources

than students who are

in low-income communities.

It doesn't make sense to me

that we don't invest up front

and then are willing to pay

the costs through prisons,

welfare, health costs,

and all the other ways

in which individuals suffer

and society suffers

when we don't invest up front,

but I don't think the problem

is really just with kids

in low-income schools.

I think the United States

really needs to rethink

how we do schooling

and how much we want to invest

in our next generation.

One of the things

we know from research is,

it's the quality of the teaching

that matters most.

I think countries

that understand that

and have invested

in quality teaching

are the ones that are killing us

on these

international comparisons.

In Singapore,

just as an example,

the government selects the top

20% of their high school class

and offers them a full ride,

basically,

and a stipend to be trained

to be a teacher.

It's very high-status,

and there's no opportunity cost,

whereas in the United States,

you have to go a fifth year,

and you have to pay tuition,

and you forgo a year

of being able to work,

so the financial cost

is quite great,

yet the financial reward

is very small.

- Okay, so imagine you've got

a long sequence of numbers.

Being a math teacher is

something I always wanted to do.

I got close to adulthood

and said,

"Wow, my life is really gonna

be hard if I choose to do this."

How is that possible?

And you can only do it

for the love of it for so long.

You can only fight

the good fight for so long

if you feel that you don't have

any reinforcements behind you,

that culturally,

that financially, societally,

the fact that we don't have as

great respect for our teachers

as we do for some

other professions means,

well, why should I go on

doing this thing

if it's clearly not very valued?

I do love this thing.

I do want to do this thing,

but I'm gonna have to find a way

to do it on my own terms,

because the most popular way

to do it is a way

that's gonna burn me out

inside of five years,

like it does for most teachers,

so I became a private tutor.

- The tutoring industry is

a multimillion-dollar industry,

and when I say tutoring, I mean

individual private tutors,

but also the enrichment programs

like Kumon and Sylvan

and the learning centers,

and sometimes this starts

really young,

like with Brilliant Babies,

and the problem is this,

what you're sending the message

to the kid is,

"You cannot do this alone.

We need to help you."

- So what unit

is this first mark?

- One.

- Good, and what's the value

of the second one?

- The reason that kids

are seeking tutors

is because we are teaching

the majority of our kids

as if they were in the top 2%.

You'll see that at every level.

Everything has been pushed down,

and we're really putting kids

under a great deal

of pressure to be there.

When the kids feel like

they're under pressure,

the parents are even worse.

They feel a huge amount

of stress.

"Is my child

where they should be?

What's everybody else doing?"

There's a huge worry.

- Zakary started feeling

at the beginning of fourth grade

like he was disappointing

his teachers,

like he wasn't measuring up to

what they were expecting of him.

- He started developing

headaches and stomachaches.

There were nights

that he came home this year

with math homework

that I could not help him with.

It was clear that he was getting

really frustrated.

It was suggested that he start

working with a tutor,

but he spends

seven hours a day at school,

and then we're asking him

to do more sitting at a desk

after school with a tutor

and then to come home to another

hour or two of homework.

That's not how I want to see

Zakary spending

his young years,

but I didn't want Zakary,

in fourth grade,

to convince himself

that he wasn't good at math,

and my worry for him is that,

if, at age ten,

he's already convinced himself

that he's not good at anything,

how is he going to get back

to a place where he's excited

about learning

and where he feels confident

in his abilities?

- So you multiply by three,

so what's it gonna be?

How many groups of three?

- Mmm...

I'm not sure yet.

- My worry is he'll rebel

and he'll check out,

as so many of the boys

that I've met have done.

- When I want to school,

a very small number of kids

were expected

to be really super smart,

and they went on

to great colleges.

Now every kid is expected

to be that way.

That's just not

the way it works.

There's a bell curve, and smart

has many different meanings,

so there's academically smart,

there's kids

who are incredibly creative.

There are kids who are totally

hands-on kinds of kids,

and we're ignoring

this great group of kids

because we're so focused

on this narrow group

of highly achieving kids,

and we're trying to turn them

all into that.

- We know it's absolutely

developmentally appropriate

for some kids

not to be proficient readers

until the end of first grade,

beginning of second grade,

but we have schools now

who are told they must have kids

proficient in reading

by the end of kindergarten

or they go to

a mandatory literacy camp.

You can send them

to literacy camp,

and they can get completely

turned off to reading

because they

are literally not ready.

- Even younger, you know.

When you're doing flash cards

with your six-month-old...

- Good job.

- Your six-month-old

is supposed to be

sucking on his toes and thumbs,

and there's reasons for that.

It's not just mindless work.

It's learning about their body.

All along the way, we're missing

the developmental tasks

with this tremendous

preoccupation with performance.

- This issue of perform

and produce, perform, produce,

produce, produce,

produce, perform,

produce leaves out processing.

- Because of how much pressure

and how much stress

is put on getting that A

so that you can get into

an Ivy League school,

people don't know how

to deal with that besides,

like, cheating.

That's what they have

to result to,

because you're getting, like,

five hours of homework a night,

and you just can't-

you can't do it.

- We have a study where

there's eight different ways

to cheat on our study.

Copying homework is one of them,

cheating off of a test,

plagiarism, et cetera.

In our study, less than 3%

of the 5,000 students

have never cheated.

- Cheating has become

another course.

You learn how to do it from 9th

to 12th grade,

and it continues,

and you get better at it.

- I ended up getting a B

in a class, and then I cheated,

and it really ended up

backfiring on me,

but a lot of people-

and I learned my lesson,

because I was caught

and et cetera,

but a lot of people

in this school aren't caught,

and there is a very high level

of cheating going on.

- Kids cheat

for a lot of reasons.

Most of the time, it's because

they have too much work to do

and too little time to do it,

or the pressure on them

is so great,

they feel like they need to get

the grade by hook or by crook,

but we also have kids

who are cheating

because they think the teacher

doesn't care.

"It's busy work.

Why can't I just copy

my homework?"

- How are you expected to learn?

Like, how do you expect us

to do well

when you can't even

make mistakes?

And it just motivates you

to cheat more.

- We're producing children who,

all they know how to do

is cut corners and cheat.

I mean, look around

at the business world

and what we've done, okay,

because we were cutting corners

and we were cheating,

and we're gonna

pay the price for it.

We are paying the price for it,

financially, right now

in the country.

- The point of education

is to learn, not to memorize.

That's when you have to resort

to cheating or stressing,

you know, your sleep and

sacrificing your love to eat.

You're just molding yourself

and buying into the thought

of being a better worker,

that I'm teaching myself to

be able to live without sleep,

to be able to live

without eating,

to be able to live

with some bald guy yelling at me

to do his work.

I've got this message

where because I'm black

and because I'm living

under the poverty line,

you know, there's so much

expected of me to excel

and try to be more mobile

in terms of status in society,

you know, and that too much is

riding on my grades, you know?

That outside of sports,

education's the only way I can,

you know, earn money,

and, you know, live a happy,

you know, American life.

Yeah, there goes me

being funny again.

This is my older brother Justin,

my older sister Courtney,

and my little sister Ashley.

There's me, my second

oldest brother Cameron,

who's actually

in the military right now.

I think he's serving a tour

in Iraq, and my mother.

Middle school, I was, like,

the dude to go to if you needed

help with your math work.

Like, I was a 4.0 student.

But now that you come

to high school,

it's been really hard

in high school.

It's been really hard.

My counselor said,

"if you want to be competitive,

"you know, if you want colleges

to look at you, you know,

taking the AP classes is

a big thing on your transcript,"

and the transcript is almost

as if it's a resume for us.

You know, going to college

is like a job.

The harder my classes are,

not only does it mean

the more looks I will have

but also the wider range

of scholarships I can apply to,

you know.

Being an African American

and taking AP classes

is what people are looking for.

People want to give money to me

and colleges want to accept me,

'cause they,

especially in California,

are having a model of being,

you know, diverse campuses.

In the past four years...

I've done a lot of cheating.

The homework given by AP or

honor classes is time-consuming,

so you can't stay up, you know,

11:00, 12:00,

1:00 in the morning

doing homework each night.

I know that I want the A,

I want that B,

I want that 3.5, that 3.8,

that 4.0, and then this year,

I'm now taking

an AP government class,

and I've gotten a D

every marking period,

and even though it's bad

to see it, it's all me.

When I got that D,

I couldn't cope.

I wanted to get

out of the class so bad.

I felt so ashamed.

And I wouldn't say

I wanted to resort

to dropping out of school,

but I was really close

to not caring anymore.

Existentialism means

pertaining to existence

or it can also apply to a vision

of condition

and existence of man.

Well, right now,

we are at Youth Radio,

one of the studios

broadcasting the show

that I co-host with my friend.

Youth Radio is a media-based

nonprofit organization

that provides youth

such as myself an outlet

to voice our opinions

and thoughts.

We have another break.

I'm gonna try to come on

and deal with this

and get back to you guys.

Doing Youth Radio for

about 18 months, and I love it.

The biggest challenges for me

going from high school

into college would be financial,

whether or not

I can afford college

and whether or not

I'm academically prepared,

and I just have a fear

that I'll spend all this money

just to fail, you know?

That I'm gonna be

at a high level of learning

and not be prepared to...

be there.

- In order for students to have

a more valuable experience

from their high school years,

they're gonna have to decide,

you know,

"I don't need to take

five AP classes.

"Here are some classes

I'm really interested in taking.

"I'm gonna take

AP English

because I really

enjoy literature."

A majority of my students will

sign up for my AP biology course

because they get a GPA boost

on their transcript.

The course is a runaway train.

There's no way we can cover all

of the material in one year.

It's impossible.

What do we do?

We go as fast as we can.

And the students absorb

some of it, maybe.

- High school now

has become preparation

for the college application,

not even for college,

just the college application.

And it creates a mentality

that was expressed very well

by my daughter.

After her French AP test,

she said,

"I never have

to speak French again."

- I don't think

what I'm learning

will help me that much

in my college classes.

I think that college is gonna be

a place where I start to learn.

- I'm never really thinking hard

about the meanings

of any of this.

I'm just thinking about

how to get done.

- Because the standards

are organized

in sort of component skills,

they often lead to teaching

which is very fragmented,

sort of compoted teaching.

"We can check this off now.

We've done this in the class."

It also reinforces

what Americans

are often criticized for

in their education system,

of having an education system

that's a mile wide

and an inch deep.

Whereas, if you really think

about what adults need

to be successful in life,

it's not knowing

a whole bunch of things.

It's really having

critical thinking skills

and analytic skills,

being able to learn.

- I've been teaching

graduate school

and medical school and dental

school for over 30 years.

In the last decade or so,

they have this entitlement

that they need to know exactly

what's gonna go on the test

and not have to think about

anything beyond that.

So what is that going to mean

when we have a whole population

of dentists and doctors

who've been being trained

from a script?

How are they going to approach

new diseases

as they emerge

in our populations?

How are they going

to diagnose people

who have the nontraditional,

non-scripted kind of illnesses?

- We've created

a couple of generations now

that have grown up

in a world of training wheels,

and when you always have

training wheels on your bike,

you don't have this opportunity

to fall off

and realize that you

can pick yourself up

and dust yourself off

and you're gonna be okay again.

- Fire it in there.

- Kick it low. Kick it low.

- They have been coached

from the time

they were very, very young.

They were coached

by T-ball coaches,

by their soccer coaches.

They have been coached

by their parents.

They have been coached

by their teachers,

and in my experience,

they are very much looking

for their employers to provide

the same levels of coaching.

- Make sense? Okay.

So anything else?

- I'm sure there will be.

- Okay. Yeah. I'm right there.

- Thank you very much.

- No problem.

- The longer I was a lawyer,

I felt like the kinds

of newer lawyers

that were coming into the office

or the kinds of students

who were my interns

didn't seem to have

the same kind of thinking skills

as the ones from years earlier.

They seem to be so focused on,

"How many cases do you want,

"and how many paragraphs

should I write,

and what should I cite?"

rather then going out there

and saying,

"This is the problem,

and how am I gonna find

the answer to the problem?"

- Kids are our future.

These are many of our leaders,

and without creativity,

they're not gonna be prepared

to lead us,

and the bottom line is that

what creates the opportunity

to be innovative is to say,

"I'm gonna think

outside this box,

"and if I get a C,

that's all right.

Maybe he just

doesn't get it yet."

Maybe he just

doesn't get it yet."

- We are known

for being innovative thinkers,

and I think it's because

we had time,

or we used to have time

as children to be bored,

and it's really important

just to have that downtime.

- Every minute of

our kids' days are scheduled.

They go from spending

their days in school

to their structured activities

after school

to hours of homework

in the evenings.

The only unstructured time

seems to be the time

they spend on their computer.

I worry about the addictive

nature of the time

they're spending

on the computer,

and I worry about the isolation.

- If we take play

away from childhood,

we're taking away the very tool

that has always worked

to have kids figure out

how to exist in the adult world.

- Play is children's work.

Play for older children teaches

them the rules of the game,

teaches them that all structures

have rules around them.

Play is just a critical part

of a growing mind

and a growing body.

- I feel like I've missed out

on a lot of my childhood

because I've been

inside doing homework

instead of being able to go out

and play in the street,

draw on the street with chalk,

and I think that's sad.

I think that the teachers

are slowly

taking away your innocence,

and what you have as a child,

you're not gonna ever, you know,

have a chance to get back.

- I think what's happening

to kids these days is,

they're not being allowed

to find what it is

that they love to do,

and it's really important,

because we're driven

by our passions.

To be successful,

you have to really, really love

what you're doing.

- If you're four

and you're resume building,

if you're eight and you're

resume building,

you lose all of that time,

the wonder,

the joy of childhood,

which should be full of zest

and adventure

and, you know,

sort of a joie de vivre,

and I think it's lost

for these kids.

- A lot of people say

that you have to do well now

so you can get

into a good college someday,

but I'm in third grade,

so I have a long time.

- We don't have time

for you to be a child.

We just don't have time.

You're playing.

No time for play.

It's about business.

You have to get into

a good school.

No school other than a good

school is gonna be good enough.

- This is

a numbers-driven society.

We have ratings

of all of the colleges,

and those ratings are largely

driven by numbers.

- Every school has

to have a good yield.

They have to show their donors,

you know,

so that their endowment

continues to grow,

that they are recruiting

amazing kids.

- College now

is more competitive

than it has ever been,

partly because we have a bulge

of the children

of the baby boomers.

They are in a very

competitive situation,

but they don't have

to make students feel

like they have to go to Stanford

to be happy or Yale or Harvard

or some of the other

handful of schools.

It's like going through

the eye of the needle

to get into these schools now.

- For those who don't

get into their dream school,

that rejection letter

is like death.

If you don't get

into a four-year university

and you're going

to a junior college instead

or a community college,

it's, like-

there's such a stigma

around that.

It's like you're not

good enough or...

- You're stupid.

- You're not rich enough.

- The world is really run

by C students.

You start looking at top CEOs

across the country,

and few of them

were from top schools.

Few of them were the top grads.

They're just people who were

very, very persistent.

- The notion that there

is a best school,

it goes against everything

that educators and psychologists

and psychiatrists know.

There is no best anything.

It's a match between children.

- College is really,

at this point in time,

it is big business,

and I think that colleges

have gotten so savvy and have

really become major companies

that are selling their wares

and their goods to kids,

because the more kids

apply to schools,

that's going to increase

a school's reputation.

Now we have over 48,000 students

who are applying,

and we're only gonna

accept 12,000

to enroll about less than half

of that number.

The average weighted GPA

is a 4.35,

but the average

unweighted GPA is a 3.87,

so I say that to tell you,

of course,

we're gonna always take

the top students

who have taken

every AP and honors course,

college-level course

that they possibly can.

I feel that I've been

a perpetrator of the madness

in a sense,

because I've gone out,

and I've told kids, you know,

"You've got to take this AP,

this, you know, honors.

"You have to take

as many as you can,

"because we want to see

if you've taken total advantage

"of the opportunities

that are available to you

at your high school,"

and I don't think that we really

realize the pressure

and the stress that

is on these kids to perform.

We just know what the ultimate

goal is that we want,

and we want the top students,

because we are

a top institution,

but I wonder sometimes,

at the expense of what?

- So this is

a really striking statistic.

The University of California,

which is a tough school

to get into,

and Cal State schools

in California,

you need B average

for the state schools;

you need, sometimes,

over a 4.0 for the UCs.

They have to remediate 50%

of their admits.

What that means is,

almost half of the kids

who get into

the University of California

have to retake basic high school

level math or English

just to get to where they need

to be as university freshmen.

So how are they getting

these really high GPAs

and yet not being college ready?

They're doing school.

They're cheating.

They're spitting back but

not retaining the information,

and the schools

are not teaching, necessarily,

in a way that's preparing them

for college work.

- In high school,

I was definitely doing school.

I was in a situation

where I wanted to get

a good grade on a test,

and what that meant was learning

everything I needed to learn

the night or two nights

before the test

and making sure

that I could memorize it

and throw it back down

on a test,

and I would-l can't say

that more than two weeks later,

I knew what the information was,

but I know that I got

a good grade on that test.

When I got to college,

I was burned out

from high school.

Freshman year

was very difficult,

just adjusting to a new level

and knowing that no longer

was I getting ready for tests

like I was in high school.

I actually really had to know

this information inside and out,

and, you know, my grades

didn't reflect that I knew that,

and I ended up

getting really sad about it.

- I think there's a lot of sort

of hidden depression on campus.

I think a lot of students

will maybe secretly

take a quarter off,

or they'll take a quarter off

and only tell

their closest friends.

I've had a couple friends

do that,

and when they're here,

you have completely no idea

that they're

this stressed out or depressed.

- We have folks that are going

in the psych ward.

My dad works

at a psychiatric hospital

in Berkeley, California.

He said,

"I know when finals are.

I always know when finals are,

because we have to clear-

"we get all-our beds start

to fill up

with students

from the local university."

Parents come in and say,

"Well, they need to get up

and go do their work."

And my dad's like, "They can't."

"Well, they were a good kid."

No, they were a good performer.

You never knew

if they were a good kid.

You never found out if they were

a good, solid kid.

You knew they were

a good student.

- I would get very good grades

in elementary school

and junior high.

I was considered

to be very intelligent,

and my parents expected me

to get straight A's

and go to

a very prestigious college.

I was a cheerleader, a gymnast.

You know, I've played sports,

like, every year of my life.

I was getting my academic honors

diploma to graduate.

I had been working

really hard for that

up until my sophomore year,

and a teacher-

I've never been good in math,

and I needed his help.

I came in after school,

and he wouldn't help me,

so I failed that class and lost

my academic honors diploma,

which, you know, I needed,

'cause I wanted to go

to a really good college.

I wanted to make

my parents proud,

and so after that was gone,

I kind of gave up and stopped

attending school regularly.

It was definitely a huge blow

to my self-esteem

that I did not get the grade

that I wanted in math.

I had a tutor.

I was trying so hard,

and I still couldn't do it,

so I stopped trying, because if

you don't try, you can't fail.

I just thought everything that

I worked so hard for was over,

so it was really hard for me

to get up in the morning

and go to school.

My mom was worried about me

being expelled,

because I wasn't

going to school,

so she checked me

into a stress center

where I went for two weeks all

day until it got under control.

- I hope that taking some

of the pressure off

of Allison going to college

helped her make some progress.

Just because you don't

go to college

doesn't mean

you're a failure for life.

There's other options.

Maybe you go part-time.

Maybe you wait a couple years.

It's not the end of the world

if you don't fit the same mold

as everyone else.

So I'm glad if that helped her.

I wish I could help her more.

I just don't know how exactly.

- I am very disappointed

that there's no artistic,

right-brain kind of measurement

of talent and knowledge.

The SATs are about English

and math.

There's no standardized test

for art or just different ideas.

There's absolutely

no appreciation for that kind

of interest or thinking

or talent or knowledge.

I think success in America

is definitely defined

by how much money you've made,

not by how happy you are

with your life.

I mean, I just felt this

enormous pressure to grow up

and get a really big house,

but I don't know.

That's just not how it is

in other countries.

They're like, "Oh, okay,

so they have a modest living.

Cool."

But here it's like, "Okay,

well, if you don't earn

a lot of money,

something went wrong."

- The reason why kids want

to go to great colleges

is to get a great job

and to make a lot of money,

and I think people place

so much emphasis on making money

and watching TV and seeing

all the famous people

with their huge houses,

and everyone wants to be that

and have all of that,

and that's not really

what's gonna make people happy

in the end.

I think the whole culture

just kind of needs to revise

what is important

and what is not.

- The environment and

the culture is so competitive

that kids don't ever feel

they can let anyone

really see their true selves.

You can go online very easily

and start to understand

how success is defined

in our culture.

Part of it, I do think,

is this media

and technology-driven culture

where kids are creating

these identities online,

whether through Facebook or I.M.

or through

their YouTube accounts,

and it's very easy for them

to compare themselves

to their peers.

Kids are so trained

to say everything is good

and to look a certain way.

- It's hard for parents to see

when their children

are having difficulty.

It's not easily observable

when kids are in trouble now.

You go down

to the local supermarket,

and everybody's on line

talking about how fabulously

their kids are doing,

and I know it's not true,

'cause I see

a lot of their kids,

so, you know, there's, again,

even with the adults

in this community,

there's a tremendous need

to look as if, you know,

all is right with the world,

and that's really not

what community is about.

Community is like family.

You have to be able

to be who you are.

- I think we live in a culture

where all of us are trained

to say everything is good.

Jamey had been struggling

for a long time

and not letting anyone

really know.

She was feeling really bad

about herself.

- When a teacher tells me

that they don't like the grade

that I'm getting in that class,

it makes me feel kind of like

I'm not that smart.

- When this

all started happening

and I would go

into Jamey's school to say

that Jamey's struggling

and she's having these issues,

the response

I'd get over and over again is,

"She looks fine to us."

I so often was made to feel

like I was the only person

experiencing these issues

and that everybody else's kids

were doing soccer and juggling

their homework just fine.

- Recently, the stress

has been so bad at school,

sometimes I would come home

feeling really sick,

and one night I went to bed

at 5:00 p.m.,

and I didn't wake up

until the next morning.

- When Jamey was having

a really hard time

going to school one day,

you know,

I was trying to talk her

through it and said,

"We have to find a way

and a school

"that's gonna work for you,

because you have a lot of school

ahead of you,"

And her answer to me was,

"That's why I don't want

to live anymore,

"because I think about all

of the school

"that I have and how much

anxiety I feel being at school,

and I don't want to do that."

The doctor that we saw

in December, the pediatrician,

told us that we weren't getting

the same Jamey back.

And so I worry about that,

because I worry about-

for Jamey-

Jamey feels really

frustrated and angry,

and she doesn't always have

the ability to look long-term

and say, "Okay, this is

a really bad time,

"but I'm gonna get through this,

and there's still really good

times to look forward to."

- There's an increase in suicide

for the first time in decades,

a significant increase,

particularly among young girls.

We're seeing the fallout

of many things.

You know, you can never say

suicide is simply

about pressure,

but we do know that pressure

makes kids anxious

and depressed.

We do know that depression

leads to suicide,

and there's a higher rate and

a very worrisome acceleration

of suicide in this country.

I think we need

to pay attention to it.

- Devon, in sixth grade, she was

my very first lab partner.

I thought that she was

probably just,

like, the most perfect person,

and there were times

where I thought,

"Wow, I wish I was like Devon,"

'cause she is someone who was

just really good at everything.

What I noticed about her

was her great talent in music.

She played violin, and she also

played piano in jazz band.

I only realized she died

at the funeral.

I felt like she was gonna walk

through the door.

- Everything seemed

so very normal,

and the difficult thing is,

in many ways,

I thought I knew Devon

really well,

and, well, Scott would say,

"I don't know

what's going on with her."

I'd be like, "I do.

I was that child."

Scott actually went

to the school counselor,

and he said,

"I don't know my daughter.

What's happening?"

They said, "Oh, it's being 13."

And they're like,

"Oh, get used to that.

You've got another

five years of this."

So honestly,

we thought everything

was very, very normal.

Both: Eight, nine, ten.

- Jump!

- She always got great grades,

and she always

learned things easily.

Until you get to a certain age,

and it's just tough,

so even for smart kids,

I think sometimes

they put pressure on themselves.

If you've always had A's,

there's only one way to go,

and it's down, and so that B

feels like a failure.

Devon had always

been very good at math.

She really wanted

to be in advanced math,

and she did start

having a difficult time.

This was eighth grade algebra,

and she went

from having 100% to-

she came home one day,

and she said,

"I had this test,

and I got an F,"

and it was hard for her.

The weekend before she died,

she was literally

gonna be doing math homework.

That's what she was gonna be

doing on the Saturday morning.

You think that with suicide

that there are signals.

People tell you

there are signals.

I mean, they've said,

"Well, was she doing this?

"Was she doing-

did she give everything away?

Was she-

were there mood swings?"

And the answer to all

of those questions were no,

and that's what made it and

continues to make it so scary.

I looked at every phone call,

every email, every chat to say,

"What did we miss?

How could I possibly

have let this happen?"

And the only thing

I can think of is,

she did have

this internal pressure.

She was torn up about this math.

She was torn up about-

"I can't do it."

And here is a child who

had always been so successful

on so many fronts,

and a stupid math grade.

All I know is, it's a lot harder

being a teenager

than I think it ever was for us,

and whether it's grades,

whether it's, "Are you popular?

Are you fitting in?"

l just - l don't know.

- Seeing how Jamey had changed

from being a happy-go-lucky kid

to not being able to

get out of bed in the morning,

it became clear we needed

to change her school.

Right now, for me, success

is just getting her health back.

- At the new school, I was

really excited to get there,

and then a few weeks later,

I guess I figured out-

like, it clicked

that it was still school

and I still had to do

lots of work,

so now I'm still

kind of stressed out.

- I started to wonder whether

when I was trying to ensure

that my kids had

a stable and secure future,

we had gone too far

in one direction

and had been doing

more harm than good.

It's only after you've been

a parent for a while

that you can look back and say,

"I wish I had this

to do over again."

Doug and I have implemented

a lot of changes in our home.

We don't ask about homework.

We don't ask about grades.

We advocate at our kids' schools

for less homework

and more time

to play after school.

We've always made sure

to have family dinners together.

I really hope that these things

have a positive impact

on our kids and the way

they feel about their childhood,

and yet, it's really hard

to do this alone.

- We have an opportunity

to change the way

that we conceive

of being successful for kids,

and it takes bravery.

You're swimming against

the popular culture.

You're swimming

against the stream.

- Why did we want

to start a school?

First of all, you start with,

you've got to be crazy, okay?

So we qualify there.

Our question is,

why can't we have children

who love going to school

all the way through 12th grade?

Why can't we have happiness

be as important a metric

as reading skills

and math scores?

It's something

about respecting the child

in a different way

than our existing system.

The idea of having a kid

sit at his desk

with his hands folded

staring out for X number

of hours a day

just being so antiquated.

- Then, Charles,

what's going on up here?

- That's the blue guy's

spaceship.

- These kids come to the table

with this creativity

and this drive and this love

of life and love of learning.

Let's just not

take it out of them.

How about that?

- The model that we're using

at Blue School

really takes the best practices

that exist

in many different contexts.

We looked a lot at Reggio Amilia

and emerging curriculums,

so a lot of the theories

and the threads

that our teachers explore come

from the children themselves.

- We want our kids

to be great readers.

We want them to be able

to do math at high levels.

It's just, how do you get there?

- We're also looking

at Howard Gardner's

multiple intelligence theories

and infusing a lot of values

of creativity

and entrepreneurial thinking,

and then, of course, the social

and emotional component,

which is, you know,

one of the core values

that we have at our school.

- The schools of tomorrow

may not resemble a lot

of what they looked like

the past 100 years,

but, hey, the world

is not resembling

what it looked like

the last 100 years either.

- So our first task, I think,

is for people

to really understand

that we have

a very serious problem

and that the economic future

of the country,

the well-being of the country,

depends on our addressing this.

The second thing I think

they have to understand

is that it's not an easy fix.

It's not fine-tuning this

or an extra year

of teacher training

or teach for America or KIPP

or vouchers

or any of the things,

which all of which

may contribute to the answer

but none of which alone

is going to be the solution.

- It's the complexity

of the problem

that people

get overwhelmed with.

You know, we could fix it,

but it requires really being

willing to do a lot of things

pretty close together

and change our culture

in some pretty substantial ways

and our expectations

and put large resources in.

- There's a school in Wyoming

that abolished homework

after reading

the two homework books

that came out two years ago.

The elementary school principal

just read them.

She thought, "That makes sense,"

and she did it.

She started with a trial period,

and then it worked so well

that she just eliminated

homework for K through five.

So I think that an educator

has an ethical responsibility.

I think a parent

has a responsibility

to really care

about the child's physical,

mental, emotional well-being,

and so they have

to stand up for them,

'cause they can't

stand up for themselves.

- All over the country,

there are parents

that are fighting this.

You know, there are schools

who have eliminated AP courses.

1/3 of the colleges in America

have now either eliminated

the SAT or have modified

the use of the SAT.

There are changes

going on everywhere.

- It takes somebody to say,

"Maybe we'll stop grading

the kids, you know?"

That sounds radical,

but in reality,

if you get rid of grades,

then you can really start

to assess what students know,

and you can really start

to think about education

as more than just a grade.

- Why can't there

be something like that,

where you're evaluated

by students, teachers,

the principal, and there's sort

of a compilation of sort of

what you've done

and what you've accomplished,

a portfolio system.

- You can put as much money

as you want into schools,

but if you don't change

the ideology

of what makes

a good educational system,

what type of individual

are we trying to create?

If you don't prioritize,

you know, classes,

agendas

that do character development,

that give kids free time,

unscheduled time,

if you don't prioritize

making cities safe enough

so that parents can let

their kids have unscheduled time

to roam around

in the first place-

taking the responsibility

for raising kids

out of advertisers'

and corporate hands,

giving parents

more time off work.

It's a social issue.

- The biggest thing

that needs to change is,

we need to look at kids

as individuals,

and we need to redefine

success for kids.

You know, I have two wonderful,

early teenage daughters.

I got to tell you

that I have anxiety sometimes

because I'm like,

"So they're really happy,

"but are they gonna still get

into the good college?

Am I making a mistake?"

I'm having trouble with this,

and I'm writing books

on this stuff.

The reality is that we can

create a system

that will still educate

our kids,

probably

educate our kids better,

without stressing them as much.

We have to get off

this treadmill together.

We need to really think,

"What does it take

to produce a happy, motivated,

creative human being?"

- I think music is good

for anybody.

Any type of artistic activity

is healthy.

I plan to, like,

be a teacher and then, like,

kind of do this on the side

as a hobby.

- A couple weeks ago,

there was a homework-free night

at Zakary's school,

and it was like having

a different kid on my hands.

He was excited.

He could go out and play.

And later that night,

he commented to me

that if every day

there wasn't homework,

he would love school.

- Letting Sam choose

to leave Sam Ramon High School,

it was hard.

It was harder for me

than it was for him.

He knew he was gonna

graduate from high school.

He knew he was gonna go

to community college.

So he's going now to Venture,

which is an alternative

public school.

It's self-study, where they

meet the teacher once a week.

I think the fear is there that

if they don't take that path,

they may stray,

but then sometimes straying

is what they need to do.

- If everything goes wrong,

there's still something I can do

to get where I want to be.

Learning that took a long time

and a lot of visits

to the hospital,

a lot of therapy,

but it was definitely worth it.

I'm really happy

now not having to worry

about what other people

think of me

and what kind of success

I'm supposed to achieve.

- I took a couple years off

after high school

before starting college.

I'm actually applying to college

as a freshman this year.

A lot of my friends were

burned out after high school,

but they went straight

to college,

and I'm finding that

a lot of them are dropping out

to take their time off now.

- When our son comes home

from school now,

where in the past,

we would have said,

"What homework do you have?"

and so on,

I deliberately ask him,

"So how was school?"

And he'll tell me all the work,

and I'll say,

"What did you have for lunch,

and who did you play with?"

and try to put the focus

in an entirely different area,

because otherwise,

it's all about the math test

and the homework,

and we forget about being a kid.

♪ - When I was a child ♪

♪ Everybody smiled ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Very late at night ♪

♪ And in the morning light ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Now I got lots of friends ♪

♪ Yes, but then again ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Kids and a wife ♪

♪ It's a beautiful life ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ And, oh, ♪

♪ when the lights are low ♪

♪ Oh ♪

♪ With someone I don't know, ♪

♪ oh ♪

♪ I don't give a damn ♪

♪ I'm happy as a clam ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Ah, what can you do ♪

♪ There's nobody like you ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ I know how you feel ♪

♪ No secrets to reveal ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Very late at night ♪

♪ And in the morning light ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪

♪ Nobody knows me ♪

♪ Nobody knows me ♪

♪ Nobody knows me at all ♪