The Unfortunate Normalization of Achievement Culture in America

The normalization of achievement culture: what is the role that elite college admissions and elite college culture plays and to what extent is achievement culture impacting American students’ mental health?

The concept of achievement culture has been plaguing America more and more for the past decades and it is now that we are seeing the ramifications. It’s a social concept that has been ingrained into teenagers and this mindset is starting at an earlier age than ever before. The normalization of achievement culture is something that elite American college admissions and elite college culture perpetuates and consequently, there is an impact on the American psyche. It is for this reason that my thesis is that achievement culture at its core is detrimental to the young American psyche and elite college culture perpetuates this. As students, we should not be forced to physically and mentally burn ourselves out but instead be encouraged to genuinely try our respective bests and still feel like we have the tools to self-actualize our lives. This means that the educational and professional environment should allow for this. Combatting achievement culture matters because it means recognizing the importance of mental health more than we currently do and understanding the contemporary educational system from a student's perspective in order to help advance our generation. It’s even reasonable as to claim that the American student’s thirst to achieve is exactly and ironically the reason that is keeping the vast majority of them from succeeding the way that they desire.

Before discussing the idea in which achievement culture is detrimental to the American psyche, we must first define out terms. By denotation from the online Google dictionary, achievement is “a thing done successfully, typically by effort, courage or skill” and culture is “the customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, or other social group”. Achievement culture as a collective term is “[a culture where] people work hard to achieve goals and better the group as a whole” (Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship). Looking at these definitions, they are all innately positive, however through the American educational system and their use in language today, the connotations have become innately negative and achievement culture has become destructive. Often, the connotations of a loaded word have more meaning that the denotations of a loaded word in today’s society as the connotations of words are the ones that teenagers internalize. As such, the connotations of achievement culture and the way that it is perceived will be the scope of the utilization of this term in my essay. Achievement culture for the purposes of my essay is the common culture of being pushed to achieve for the sole purpose of achieving. It’s for this purpose rather than achieving for personal growth purposes. This causes mental stress and a deterioration in the mental stability and health of American students starting at an earlier age.

Within this essay, the word normalization means that a concept - in this case, achievement culture - is well integrated into society both on a shallow level and on a deeper level - into the ingrained expectations that American students have of themselves and in the way that they were taught to understand secondary and tertiary education. Lastly, the term elite college culture as used in this essay is one that pushes students to their limits and creates a high stress, almost restrictive environment that inhibits personal growth. Lastly, defining an umbrella term such as mental health for the purposes of this essay is necessary. We are regarding mental health as something positive and arguing how achievement culture has impacted it. Mental health is the wellbeing and stability of a person’s thoughts and feelings. While not manifested physically all the time, it remains a very important part of someone’s holistic wellbeing - especially in education - because it can be argued that it directly affects how someone performs academically.

In the American educational system, in order to implement achievement culture into the system, there is a routine use of the slippery slope fallacy (among other methods) to give students a twisted motivation to achieve. Based on several accounts of anecdotal evidence of students’ perceptions, the slippery slope fallacy that some teachers use to motivate students is through the way that they connect all the academic measurement tests to make it seem like everything leads to one another. This can cause the student to catastrophize their future based on one bad grade thus the motivation is grounded on anxiety and fear. The truly terrifying part is that we are seeing this happen earlier and earlier. From anecdotal evidence, gone are the days when one was asked “are you going to college” and it is replaced with a question with an expected answer: “where are you going to college”. Now, here are the days when the phrase “you will never believe the doors that will open for you if you make the top 10” when one knows upon being in the professional scene that employers and college admissions do not care about 1 difference in high school ranking. In high school, your academic ranking supposedly is emphasized. Your SAT score is put on a pedestal. Your test score and relative grade curve are implemented. The educational system’s focus on quantitative measurement and nuances in language not only encourages but facilitates this competitive and exhaustive culture that students push through in today’s educational system. This routine experience is why perpetuating unhealthy achievement culture at its core is detrimental to the young American psyche.

In both the American college and college admissions cultures, it is well known that college admissions are getting more intense every year and consequently, this is putting students under tremendous pressure. This dystopian sounding quote from current presidential candidate Andrew Yang illustrates the almost robotic repeat that students feel like they have to go through every day: “When I was growing up, I’d study for days trying to get good grades. When I’d get an “A”, I’d feel elation for about 30 seconds, and then a feeling of emptiness. Rinse and repeat.” (Yang, The dark side of America’s Achievement Culture). This is tiring and builds a very mundane look at education. This also separates the notion of achieving from the thing achieved, which leaves a very empty view of the thrill that should come from achieving your educational goal. It inhibits a growth mindset that successful - by the measurement of personal and academic growth - education strives to achieve. Unhealthy achievement culture which is perpetuated in the educational system is bad because it rewires the way that students achieve and reflect upon achieving now and in their future as well as stunts their personal growth and resilience to failure – all of which lead to mental health instability.

In response to the implementation of this achievement culture, American’s average mental health has dropped. It can be argued that the rigor and stress of the American culture is preparing students for the professional scene however, this is weakly grounded because that would be using a 'strawman' fallacy to deconstruct this argument. In trying to find a cause for the decrease in adequate mental health in teens, the professional scene and job loss has been found to not be the main cause of mental health drop considering the economy has surged in recent years and unemployment has dropped. In addition, the academic pressure has not been found to be a leading factor – though a factor nonetheless – as the students often have adequate academic ability. It should be considered that mental health is dropping in part because students are developing a negative and almost fearful view of education. The systematic pressure that the educational system puts on the students is the main cause for the drop in mental health. Thus, if we want to promote a healthier society starting with the educational system, we must push for achievement culture to be dropped or integrated healthily. Between 2009 and 2017, major depression among 20 to 21-year olds rose from 7 to 15% and major depression in 16 to 17-year olds surged 69% (Twenge, The Mental Health Crisis among America’s youth is real - and Staggering). That is a skyrocketing percentage which indicates a fundamental fault in the way education is perceived in teenagers likely in junior and senior years. According to the Law of Hedonic Asymmetry, positive emotions naturally fade with time however negative emotions naturally stay with us for longer. As more and more students today associate education with their negative experiences, how does that paint the view of education for the future and what ramifications may that have on the mental health and satisfaction of the professionals in the next generation? Will we be left with a working populace who produce simply mediocre work stemming from systematic unhappiness in their jobs? An unhappy adult does not produce good work, work that will revolutionize and improve the economy or change the world. Unhappiness with education and profession breeds systematic stagnation in an economy. Also, through high school and college, achievement culture has developed an innate competitiveness in students, and this only leads to a destructive professional environment. An environment where the workers are competing against one another least of all promotes net productivity. Instead, it breeds individualism and stress and “57% of employees who were under more stress said they felt disengaged and unproductive” (G.I Sanders, Employee Productivity Statistics). As such, it’s necessary for an educational system to encourage students and allow them to focus on their strengths as well as aiming to have students reminisce about their high school education in a positive light.

The counterargument of this paper lies in the fact that America’s colleges are becoming more and more prestigious and because of that, it requires a more intense and rigorous educational system. It also stands to reason that for growth according to the traditional American mindset, one must push themselves to the limit which high school and college admissions cultures do promote. The similarities between Korea and America’s capitalist mindset as a method for massive economic growth in the last decade promotes individualist achievement, which by nature is competitive and also increases employee productivity to an extent. Thus, it can be argued that the achievement culture is heightened in these countries naturally. One could use this mirroring of current successful country economies as a position in favor of continuing achievement culture in America as this does lead to a successful economy. However, to refute this argument, one could look at the fundamental differences in Finnish education though yielding the same result in high achieving students. For example, through measurement of high achievement is through graduation from secondary education, Finland’s percentage of students who do that is 93%, 17.5% higher than the USA. In addition, if the measurement is by test score, according to the first results of Program for International Student Assessment came out, “Finland was first out of 57 countries (and some cities) in science”. This is an example of the success that can also be achieved through a more skill based and student growth focused educational culture in America where achievement and the value gained from achieving are still intact rather than separated.

In conclusion, American achievement culture is deteriorating the American student’s psyche and it is accelerating with elite college admissions, elite college culture and the general professional environment. This is a difficult problem to tackle as achievement culture is thriving as it is today because students normally agree with the premise: to achieve the best that you can by being pushed to do your best. However, the problem lies in which it is communicated and perceived. Through the examination of the very different Korean and Finnish educational cultures yielding the same result reached of high achieving students, I provided a backing that a more positive and empowering educational system with motivation not in fear but in the students’ own strength is a viable shift for America. Through reasons such as misperception of achievement culture, elitist college admissions, and empirical evidence outlining the effect that the systematic implementation of achievement culture has negatively impacted mental health, I can rationally deduct that achievement culture is, indeed, detrimental to the American psyche. Combatting this misperception of achievement culture would not only improve mental health in teens but also correlate with and provide a factor for future economic growth and of the professional environment due to increased worker satisfaction.

Works Cited:

1. “Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship.” That’sthe Way We Do Things Around Here, southernlibrarianship.icaap.org/content/v07n01/martin_m01.htm.

2. Sanders, G.I. “Employee Productivity Statistics: Every Stat You Need to Know.” Dynamic Signal, dynamicsignal.com/2017/04/21/employee-productivity-statistics-every-stat-need-know/.

3. Twenge, Jean. “The Mental Health Crisis among America's Youth Is Real – and Staggering.” The Conversation, 8 July 2019, theconversation.com/the-mental-health-crisis-among-americas-youth-is-real-and-staggering-113239.

4. “Why Are Finland's Schools Successful?” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Sept. 2011, www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/.

5. Yang, Andrew. “The Drive to Achieve Is Paralyzing and, Ironically, Keeping Us from Success.” Quartz, Quartz, 25 Feb. 2015, qz.com/346693/the-dark-side-of-americas-achievement-culture/.