The Toxic Consequences of Attending a High Achieving School | Hacker News Reader

The Toxic Consequences of Attending a High Achieving School

petergray.substack.com

64 pointspasswordoops69 comments

Back when I was a grad student, we'd have this afternoon program for kids that excelled in math. A lot of that was training towards math competitions, both regional and national / international.

I'd 1/3 of the kids were there because they loved math, and solving math problems. Another third were there because they felt like they had to have something competitive on their resume and application letter, while the last third were there because their parents forced them to - and they seemed miserable. The same last third were also forced to play some instrument, or some other extracurricular - they basically followed a strict program that their parents had made for them. Check off the "correct" boxes.

A couple of years ago I curiously checked up where these kids had wound up later in life, and many of the kids that loved math had become math or physics Ph.Ds, or were on track to.

The rest seemed to work in tech, engineering, consulting, finance, and such fields.

With that said, kids these days have it tough. To competition is INSANE, and you have to excel at pretty much everything, to even have a chance. Having a perfect GPA is not enough, you also need a slew of other accomplishments. And even then, there's no guarantee.

And it continues like that into higher education.

The irony of it all is that the work these kids tend to pursue, does not even require 1/10th of the work they've put into their education / academic life. One exception would be for those that decide to pursue research - but far too many whip-smart overachievers will end up working on the dullest shit imaginable...but they do get paid.

EDIT: One thing you'll notice is that overachievers with such backgrounds need constant feedback, and any criticism goes straight to their heart. There's this name - "insecure overachiever" - and it rings true for many kids that went through that grind.

Some of them really need to be re-programmed, when they enter the workforce.

> you have to excel at pretty much everything, to even have a chance

That can't possibly be true. By definition, only a small minority can excel, and as a practical matter, to excel at something requires specialization and focus. So to "excel at pretty much everything" is a practical impossibility. If anyone who didn't "excel at pretty much everything" had no chance, most people would be on the street. This idea that you must excel to have a chance is necessarily a myth. And it's a pernicious and dangerous myth. It's this myth that is driving young people to burn themselves out, not anything in actual reality.

op probably means to have a chance getting in to a top tier university. To that I agree, a HS student is competing with the whole world to get one of the very few spots in one of the top universities. Given the pool of applicants, all of which are very high achieving kids, the competition is very wide and deep.

That might have been what he meant, but it's not what he said.

The competition to get into top universities has always been fierce. The only thing that has changed AFAICT is the wide-spread promulgation of the idea that if you don't get in to a top-tier university that you're a failure, your life is over, you're doomed to be destitute. It's no wonder that if we tell kids that, that they will be pretty unhappy if they don't get in to a top-tier university. But the only thing we need to do to solve that problem is to stop telling kids that, especially since it isn't actually true.

Most of the millionaires I know certainly did not graduate from top tier schools and many didn’t even go to college.

That's almost by definition true. Something like 8-9% of the USA's population is millionaires, lots of times just from housing and 401K appreciation. 8-9% of the population didn't graduate from top tier schools.

The people I’m referring to are business owners, people who made money vs just passive investing.

The other thing that changed is a couple billion more families are trying to get into the same American schools, and many of them have substantial money and resources plus determination to do it.

That’s just wildly different than what it was like when I was applying in the 1990s. It’s substantive.

> By definition, only a small minority can excel

I have interviewed multiple head pupils, valedictorian and captians of the football team and rowing crew from the same school & year on a few occasions.

As some bellow wrote - I meant for getting accepted into a top school.

It's a brutal competition, and those that get accepted are just excellent at everything they touch. Top grades, top test results, top extracurricular activities.

Also, to have a chance at what? Admission to the best colleges in the country? Highly exclusive jobs? It’s not clear what the poster is even talking about.

That was implied, as the topic is high achieving schools.

High achieving schools primarily work as "feeder" schools for the most prestigious schools.

The vast majority of prestigious jobs will first and foremost hire grads from such prestigious schools.

In the conclusion, this article rather clumsily introduces 'Common Core' as a causal factor, without having engaged with it in any of the preceding discussion. One might argue that the Common Core represents a baseline of common educational material, yet here it is deployed as a rhetorical flourish, an afterthought devoid of substantiation.

The argument navigates through a series of points about High Performing schools, only to suddenly invoke the specter of Common Core at the end. This abrupt shift is problematic, as it positions Common Core—an endeavor to standardize and elevate educational content—as a lowest common denominator, a diluted and reductionist framework.

Such a leap demands more rigorous reasoning. The article should interrogate the implications of its own critique: Are we suggesting that certain students should be exempt from foundational learning because it imposes stress? Are we advocating for a system where basic mathematical literacy, as defined by Common Core, is deemed too onerous? The absence of a cohesive argument leading to this conclusion undermines the critique and leaves us questioning the coherence of the proposed educational standards.

It seems like this is all compatible with the root cause being parental/family values of achievement rather than the school per se.

As a parent, I’m always super conscious that one is tempted to praise the achievement, but this is good summary of why that is a bad idea. Instead we try hard to praise the effort, especially when our kids fail. Not always easy!

I second this, ultimately a large part of who we all are is who we are surrounded by(you run with the wolves, you get fleas). Sure 40 hours a week is spent on school grounds with various teachers and students but the other 60+ plus waking hours is often with family.

> 60+ plus waking hours is often with family.

I chuckled a little because I know so many high achieving families where one or both of the parents get home at bedtime or after bedtime quite regularly. This is especially exaggerated at younger ages when the kids go to bed earlier. Extended-day childcare can go 10 hours or longer for toddlers.

The teachers of such a school aren't there because they want to change the system either. And the administration wants the school to stay a "HAS". So no incentive for anybody involved.

There was a quote from Winston Churchill that I saw once: “ No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.”

When it comes to sports, school — anything really — I try to tell my kids that all they can do is prepare and do their best. They might win and not deserve it. They might also lose. But if they came prepared, did their best, and handled themselves with class, then they deserved victory.

>Instead we try hard to praise the effort, especially when our kids fail.

That type of advice depends on particular circumstances so you have to explain the different situations so kids are not confused by getting mixed messages.

(1) sometimes the effort is more important than the result. E.g. kids attempt to cook a meal for Mother's Day and they burn the food a bit. Or one is self-learning dancing or pottery and the results are not professional quality and it doesn't matter.

(2) but sometimes, the result is more important than the effort. The "real world" out there such as job performance reviews, college entrance SAT scores, etc cares about the results. If the judge finds the results unacceptable and the only comeback is "but I tried really really hard", it will be perceived as just making excuses.

Each situation above has also been misapplied. The infamous "Tiger Mom" focused too much on (2) and criticized her daughter for a amateur hand-drawn Mother's Day card and told her to do it again. Likewise, employees are sometimes blindsided and shocked for being fired for "underperformance" because they misapply (1) to the employer/employee relationship.

It’s a very difficult problem to know what your children are capable of. Both extremes are likely to build resentment. Believing that your children are always capable of more, and not celebrating success can lead to a black hole of success chasing. Underestimating your children and overvaluing minor successes can lead to insecurity and lack of work ethic. Being a parent is hard.

My wife and I listened to a podcast on this subject a few months ago. My son got into a fairly high achieving magnet school (for DISD anyway), Townview SEM in Dallas, so we were interested. It really boils down to home life and how hard you push and what values you instill in a child. Attending a high achieving high school isn’t the real problem, it’s how you setup a child’s perspective of their own self worth.

Completely concur. Setting high standards and then providing a supportive environment to get these sets kids for success rather than failure.

I would have been more charitable to the author if I read this a few years ago but of late, there's been so much negativity against any kind of pressure and a "glorification" of mediocrity and doing nothing done, it's almost like being an achiever is something to be ashamed of. Of course it has costs, of course there are risks. The point is to tackle and overcome all that and achieve something great. Not to sit idly being "safe" all the time.

> a "glorification" of mediocrity and doing nothing done

There is a large spectrum between "high achievement" and "mediocrity". Opposing mediocrity (even worse "doing nothing done") to high achievement is a false dichotomy.

Depends what you call a 'success', what you list provides no success on my list, maybe some high paid high pressure career but thats not a definition of successful life well lived.

I'm suggesting that any definition of "success" requires hard work and high standards.

Academic/professional is one and you can choose to opt out in which case you're not the target audience for this discussion which is fine.

One of the biggest struggles with high achievement comes from having to choose which activities to be an achiever. Sometimes you have to explicitly decide which activities to exclude. You have to learn how to be okay with not being the best at everything. You have to be tactical. Otherwise, you end up chasing your tail and get easily lost in details.

> it's almost like being an achiever is something to be ashamed of

this is definitely a thing. I know people that when a child does something great whether it's academics or sports or something else it's hushed away like "what will the neighbors think?". I can't get my head around it.

I’m curious: what was the podcast?

I'll followup here, it's really good but will have to ask my wife. This will take a few hours, she's a teacher and at a workshop so unavailable ATM.

https://www.goodlifeproject.com/podcast/never-enough-dismant...

> When one controls for background factors, such as parents’ income and indices of ability, it makes no difference what college a person attends. But that research has been ignored and the belief persists.

I personally think this is a bit of a stretch, a person from a middle to low-income background will certainly get a boost in their life if they get accepted somewhere prestigious like MIT, Harvard, Cambridge etc, heck even the relationships that you build in such places on their own could be worth it, they can prove very valuable.

I'm interested in seeing the research mentioned by the author about this.

Has anyone read the underlying studies for the first section? I tapped out but I find it somewhat hard to believe that rates of hard substance abuse are higher in places like Cupertino than in some ghetto school (the author specifically implies this with their vagueness).

I can see high achieving kids having an unneeded Adderall prescription or binge drinking, but am I really being led to believe that rates of crack abuse are similar? Did they look at kids who drop out/never attend (probably not)? Just feels a bit off.

This not surprising at all. The stories of suicide in High Achieving School in Asia is common knowledge. Same can be said about "High Achieving Jobs" and "High Achieving ______"

Do we want to live or just be high achieving in life?

To many people it's virtually the same thing, TBH...

We want status. Like, we want it so much.

I'd say the good approach is to set high standards and then work towards achieving them in a supportive environment. Every the pursuit brings happiness.

I teach adolescents at a Montessori school. The families are higher SES but they value holistic education and the wellbeing of their kids above academic performance. The programming reflects these values, so it works all around.

IMO there is a way forward for schools. It doesn’t need to be Montesssori but it does need to reduce the extrinsic manipulations of students from within the school as much as possible. Those manipulations lead to many of the maladaptive effects discussed in the article.

This is exactly why i now agree with homeschooling or unschooling.

I do think - with my experience as a counselor who taught science and did experiments with children of all age and background - that unschooling is overall worse than homeschooling (which relies less on the parents to be great), and homeschooling was overall worse than a public, normal school with a normal number of children per class (no more than 28, so that half classes are 12 to 14 max).

However, the number of "normal" schools is lower than ever, and diminishing, and i now think if you average everything, homeschooling seems better, at least since Covid in my country, probably earlier in other.

BTW, circa 2010-2013, I've met a homeschooling community that basically reinvented school (and who were pretty close to unschooling as they re-did the curriculum to shove kids from different age together) and called external volunteers from education NGOs (i was one) on some subjects. I think they regularly invited a microrocket guy, my NGO, and local guys (a farmer and a warden/ranger/gamekeeper, whatever the english translation is). I do think this is a great alternative model, but i understand that this can only happen in small villages (i think they did this because the school was closed and the bus took too long), and not in suburbia.

I’ve seen plenty of failed homeschooling outcomes as well. Families that are well resourced and have a supportive, positive culture will generally see their children do well no matter what type of education they choose.

Something feels off about this. I mean, it can go both ways, no? Perhaps, pressure from attending a HAS might push one towards substance abuse and more. But couldn't pressure from attending an elite institution and being an elite also make push one against activities like substance abuse?

If we assume that the type of school affects lifelong outcomes, then we should also control for something like parent's latent neuroticism, which would affect both what school their child goes to and (I presume) also life-long probability of engaging in substance abuse as a coping mechanism.

> Something feels off about this. I mean, it can go both ways, no?

man, it can go every way imaginable. Childhood is so short and no on worries like a parent does. Every parent wants to get it 100% right but that's an impossible task yet there's very serious consequences for your child when you get it wrong. Further, parents are just regular people who get misinformed or are ignorant of the path forward and have to just do their best at every crucial step in a child's development. Parenthood is an impossible task to get perfect and you have to give yourself grace but you have to work and learn from your mistakes and improve because a life is at stake.

It's very hard to strike a balance. On one hand you want your kids to be successful, which on it's own has many nuances, and on the other, don't let them waste their potential. Make sure that you provided them the opportunities to achieve their potential. And be happy in life. But also be able to sustain themselves without worrying about tomorrow. And so on.

There is also the fact that if we all live and no one wants to be a high achiever, we'll still be in the dark ages.

> On one hand you want your kids to be successful

How about wanting your kids to be just _happy_, regardless of what _you_ consider to be "successful"?

If you don't instill the proper values (and I'm not saying you can, but you have to try), your kid will grow up and think he/she could have done better, and be unhappy. As the parent comment says: it's a balance, and it's a difficult one.

Success and Happy, while not perfect bedmates, cross paths quite often.

because there's a necessary baseline to be considered an adult ?

if you can't manage to earn a living after I'm dead how will you survive ? if you're not alive, how will you manage to even try to be happy ?

I say this as someone who seen relatives and acquaintances try the just be happy approach with their children. now the children are close to their 40 and still not self sufficient and nowhere close to happy either.

The point of the studies is that this kind of parental pressure makes it harder to earn a living. Not easier.

But when these parental and educational practices are clearly linked to addictions and emotional/mental health issues, parents and schools should certainly be asking themselves what they're doing. And why.

Of course there's a balance between pushing too hard and not pushing at all, and between worthless-if-you-don't-win culture and get-a-prize-for-breathing culture.

A friend of mine used to say that the perfect job was just challenging enough to be interesting, but not so challenging it was overwhelming, and not so unchallenging it was boring and pointless.

Parenting is similar. There has to be some challenge and some unconditional support, but not an extreme of either.

It's hard.

Yes, I agree.

What I wrote was in defense of GP commenter who was downvoted at the time, not against the article.

As with most things in life both too little and too much can have negative effects. The Hard part is figuring out where that middle values range lies for each task.

I truly do. Providing them opportunities and encouraging them to be their best version of themselves it's not contradicting happiness. Even adults need to be challenged to progress. The trick is knowing when to stop...

In my opinion (which might be wrong) your duty as a parent is to equip your kid with the tools it needs to be able to face the challenges life throws at him/her.

What would make your kid _happy_ would be to play all day and do nothing about their future (I'm yet to see a kid who would rather study than play).

Wanting your kid to be _happy_ means you need to prepare him/her to be _successful_ (aka to be able to face the challenges life throws at him/her) which might not be _fun_ in the short term. As the OP mentions, striking a balance is a tricky part.

The philosophy that I have as a parent, and try to impart on my son, is "always do your best, and always do better next time"

It's alright to fail, but when you have the next opportunity, improve.

Yeah it’s a very delicate balance and no parent gets it perfect 100% of the time.

> On one hand you want your kids to be successful

> on the other, don't let them waste their potential

Those are the same hand.

Yeah, the other hand should be something like "don't define their worth by some achievement score, and just be happy".

It's hard to even put in clear words, let alone actually do the balance between these.

And the third hand, I suspect, is "the world is fast growing crueler than it was when I was young and I'm terrified of what may happen to my child when I'm old or dead and they're all on their own, so I'd better do everything I can to frontload everything they'll need while I'm able."

I don't know for sure; that all rather passed me by, though for where the state of the world seems heading I'm not actually sure I regret that too much. But they do also say the spectator sees more of the game.

I think what you are describing is the socializing of the burden of raising children, only to have mega-corps privately reap the output of their potential and your efforts raising them.

Pretty much, modern-day serfdom. Just see how we still discuss sustainance as a non-given.

Maybe we should instead start instead working on improving the society, so it better caters to develop the potential of its citizens and also give them better equity in return of their high achievements?

I think that the consequences of the opposite of "high achieving" needs to be put into the proper perspective. Let's call that "low achieving". The article focuses on the problems of HAS (high achieving schools) without really categorizing what the alternatives are.

Many folks don't understand what "low achieving" can ACTUALLY mean. It's not just slightly below grade level performance in reading and math. In many places it's 25%+ drop-out rates, half of the graduates not reading at a 5th grade level (illiteracy), overcrowded classrooms and forget about college except for small populations of exceptional students with driven parents. How prevalent are schools like that? Very. Most major metro areas have public school districts like this. This is what "neighborhood school" means for many people.

To make it worse, many of these troubled schools have no "safety net". If a student in a low achieving school has a mild learning disability, or even just a little more hard knocks than they can handle there's no way for them to get accommodated and as a result their learning goes off the rails and never recovers. And the resultant behavioral problems negatively impact their peers who are unlucky enough to share their classroom.

Because of what "low-achieving" can mean, the following suggestion by the article is an ABSOLUTE HARD NO for many parents, especially immigrant parents, regardless of what "the facts" say.

    [...]If parents knew the facts and behaved reasonably, they would deliberately avoid an HAS for their kids. They would move out of that high-achievement school district. They would use the money otherwise spent on tutoring or tuitions for more enjoyable family pursuits. Here I present some of those facts, as documented by many research studies[...]

I came here to say just that, but I think you have covered it.

"Toxicity," that most first world of problems, rises up to make "news" again.

Can't we just give the elite some safe spaces and fainting couches already?

Just leave the US until the American Dream comes back to life; European companies need more forces and their pay is actually good, because the cost of living is not so high - in most places and countries.

I don't get the whole societal focus on these 'grade school kids attending college classes' type of "genius kids". They are advanced for their age, but that's about it. When you get in the real world, nobody cares about your age, just what you can do, and nothing seems to indicate that those kid wonders are any better off than anyone else.

In the conclusion, this article somewhat just drops in 'Common Core' as a cause, while not having discussed it in any of the earlier points.

My understanding is that Common Core is a name for baseline common material.

This is leaping from a series of arguments around High Performing schools, then at end brings in Common Core which is a lowest common denominator of material.

It seems a leap, there should have been some more reasoning to lead to that conclusion. What is the option? That some kids should be allowed to progress without learning material? Because it is stressful to learn the basic math in Common Core?

This is absolutely my experience. “Good schools” are genuinely awful environments.

Not to get too dark, but I wonder why Cornell needs suicide nets.

Mo money, mo problems.

So, bit of a side question here, and I was hoping that HN could help.

Background: We've come into some money, we're in the 1% now. We did not grow up rich at all and had a HS experience and college admissions experience like the ones described in the article and the comments here (cutthroat). We have kids. We're still new to having 'escaped capitalism'.

Question: Um, how do I raise rich kids?

Like, do we even bother with the crazy college admissions process?

As long as we don't really touch the principle much, this thing will likely grow faster than my family. My kids aren't going to want for anything real, nor will any of my descendants, if they're not really stupid. Which is a pretty low bar to pass.

I don't want my kids languishing away like some of the rich kids that I have known. That usually leads to ennui and, honestly, a lot of drugs a booze. Knowing my SO and I, they are going to need 'meaning' in their lives. But who knows.

So, if anyone has any tips or tricks here, I would love to know.

Sorry for derailing the conversation here, if I have.

I don’t think this is a derailment. You’re asking how you might raise your kids in a way that promotes their well-being, probably contrary to the achievement culture discussed in the article.

A nice model to consider for well-being is “PERMA” from Marty Seligman, a pioneer of positive psychology. The letters stand for five foundations of well-being: positive emotion, engagement (including flow), relationships, meaning, and accomplishments.

From this model, I would explore questions like these:

- Are there schools near your family that focus on mastery rather than performance, and approach education more holistically?

- Do you and your SO have a community of friends that live nearby and have similarly aged children?

- Do you and your SO already find a higher meaning in your lives in ways that can be modeled and conveyed to your children?

I’m a developmental psych guy, so if you want more detail it might be helpful to know roughly how old your kids are or if there’s a developmental stage you’re more or less concerned about. Anyway, maybe this gives you something to chew on.

Can confirm.

My children are too young for school right now, but my wife and I constantly go back-and-forth on this exact issue. To a large extent, I think you have to consider each child's individual personality and how they are likely to respond to a high-pressure environment. I suspect there is (unfortunately) a strong genetic component to this—some people are able to shrug off others' expectations of them with ease, whereas for many "failure" in the eyes of their peers or family is mentally crippling.

There's also an environmental component on how a "high achieving personality" manifests psychologically (i.e., whether in a healthy or unhealthy way) that is due to upbringing and expectations. Personally, I've always felt a significant amount of pressure to achieve certain goals, but this pressure has always been self-induced / intrinsically motivated. I've never felt pressure from others to "succeed", and my parents always placed a strong emphasis on the actual learning rather than playing the grades game. As a result, my personal vision of "material success" (as opposed to the much more important "moral success") is quite different than society's: I want to achieve financial independence as quickly as possible so I can spend 8-10 hours a day working on moonshot research projects that would never be funded by a company or lab due to the high likelihood that the research goes absolutely nowhere. The fact that I ended up working at a FANG company is merely an incidental byproduct of what I consider an efficient path to achieving my primary objective—it was never the objective itself. I would gladly take a job as a window cleaner if I thought it helped me reach my goal quicker (perhaps a horrifying notion to many students at high achieving schools...)

On the other hand, my wife has told me that her motivation is primarily extrinsic. When she was in high school, her parents would take her siblings out to restaurants to celebrate their academic achievements (both were valedictorians) and leave her at home. Despite being very intelligent, she remains extremely insecure about the subject—her mom used to call her "the pretty one" and her sister "the smart one". This seems to have permanently damaged her self-esteem, and she told me she is often scared to try new things in life due to an intense fear of failure. It's hard to fail at something you never attempt, right?

We currently live in an area where the schools aren't considered that good by conventional standards, but we do have the ability to move when our children are old enough to attend school. I think we're going to take a wait-and-see approach. It's also worth considering that schools have a strong influence on what children consider culturally normal or socially acceptable while growing up, so there are non-academic considerations that we have to weigh as well. I know of many students who committed suicide while attending high achieving schools in Palo Alto or Cupertino. But I also know of students who ended up in low paying and dead-end careers due to a desire to stay near their family in areas of the country where merely graduating is an achievement. It's a delicate balance that's hard to get right, but the decision of where to send children to school is probably one of the most important ones that parents can make.

It would seem to always come down to money. Western economies have become so brutal these days that parents fear their children will be significantly less secure than they were. And, since things like housing (everywhere) and healthcare (US) have the capacity to wipe one out, they see financial advancement as a way to set their children up with some degree of safety. For some immigrant communities, the memory of how hard it is to leave everything and start over is fresh, and the symptoms are the same.

So, when you squeeze that tube, what comes out the end? An intense drive to put children through anything that might give them an edge. School excellence? It's a way to get to college. College? Its a way to get a job. Degree? Its a way to get a lucrative job.

In the 90s everyone wanted an MBA or a law degree and the CS and math kids were ignored. Then the Internet happened and suddenly CS was the pathway to riches (it wasnt, but the perception was there). Then it was data science. Now its AI. I guarantee that theres a ten year old out there being made to learn about GANs.

In parallel we have the giant mess that is the university sysrem. If college is the target for parents, colleges are woefully ill prepared. They vacillate on admission standards (exam based, or test blind?). They cant decide who they want (is is ok to let in mainly rich kids so that a few poors can get a free ride?) They cant decide between requiring hard thinking of their students and all opinions are valid freedom. And, more sympathetically, they could 10x their admission pool and still not meet demand.

TL;DR the kids are factory employees on a pipeline they do not control.

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