Schools and Mental Health
What responsibility do schools have for the mental health of young people?
“I'm getting complaints from teachers who say they want to teach academics. They want to teach chemistry, let’s say. They didn't sign up to be a psychologist and deal with feelings.” —Tom Horne, Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, via ABC-15
“In the high school classroom you are a drill sergeant, a rabbi, a shoulder to cry on, a disciplinarian, a singer, a low-level scholar, a clerk, a referee, a clown, a counselor, a dress-code enforcer, a conductor, an apologist, a philosopher, a collaborator, a tap dancer, a politician, a therapist, a fool, a traffic cop, a priest, a mother – father – brother – sister – uncle – aunt, a bookkeeper, a critic, a psychologist, the last straw.” — Frank McCourt, from his 2005 memoir Teacher Man
There are several signs of a deterioration of mental well-being in today’s youth. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has been ringing the alarm bell for a while now. He presents evidence that a teen mental health epidemic began around ten years ago. The CDC just released a report detailing evidence for this growing crisis. Among the findings is that 42% of teenagers in 2021 reported experiencing “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.”
We might point to pandemic-induced social isolation as causal factors for the mental health crisis, but the downward trend seems to outdate the pandemic. I will offer a few thoughts on possible causes in the final segment of this post.
Young people spend a lot of time in school.
Should schools try to address this crisis? Or should schools narrowly focus on academics, leaving mental health concerns to parents and outside providers?
One way schools have tried to take on the mental health responsibility is through a curriculum supplement called social-emotional learning (SEL). The five “core competencies” of SEL are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. SEL proponents say that academic coursework should also include activities in the SEL core competencies. Newer versions of textbooks may include SEL supplemental activities or side-panels alongside the academic content.
Tom Horne thinks SEL is a waste of time. He has described the implementation of SEL as “playing games” in the classroom. He wants teachers to teach academic subjects “bell to bell.”
(SEL is only tangentially related to the issue of “critical race theory,” which Horne also opposes. Horne sees CRT as a left-wing ideological attempt to hyperfocus the school curriculum around racial identity and to instill the belief that systemic racism is embedded in today’s institutions. SEL is not about race, although some critics see iterations like “Transformative SEL” as a partner in a left-wing indoctrination scheme. A document about SEL still found on the Arizona Department of Education website discusses “Transformative SEL Using an Equity Lens.” The document connects “identity” with the core competency of self-awareness and says that SEL can help students “critically examine root causes of inequity.”)
One of Horne’s first acts as Superintendent was canceling presentations on “trauma informed” and “culturally relevant” instruction that had been planned for an educators conference. He replaced them with presentations on improving academic performance and preventing suicide.
Trauma-informed instruction follows the SEL rubric that says teachers should take on the task of helping students cope with emotional issues. Culturally relevant instruction is again tangentially related to SEL, seeking to modify instructional approaches in ways to connect with the various cultural backgrounds of the students in class.
SEL proponents point to this meta-analysis of studies showing school-based SEL programs have a positive impact on student achievement and social behavior while reducing emotional distress. Critics of SEL point to validity problems of the studies: the SEL practices of the research findings might not reflect the actual practices in the schools today, especially with the creeping “transformational” aspect of SEL altering the original framework.
I can see how the basics of SEL could be effective for student achievement. For example, the practice of cognitive reflection might help students better process their learning. What did I learn today? What did I not quite understand? What can I do to improve?
But I am wary of the full-blown curriculum approach of SEL. If teaching is to be valued as a profession, teachers need to be trained as academic professionals, not pseudo-therapists. Instead of training teachers on how to embed a curriculum within a curriculum, I would rather see teachers hone the craft of teaching their subjects well.
Of course, there is no avoiding the reality that students are human beings. Every day in the classroom can bring a new adventure in the range of human emotions. In Frank McCourt’s book Teacher Man, he describes his first day on the job in 1958, when a student threw a sandwich at another student and the class started cheering for a fight. McCourt searches the memory of his pedagogical training, and, finding no guidance on how to respond to sandwich-throwing behavior, ends up eating the sandwich in front of the class.
Good teachers spend years learning how to build positive and constructive classroom environments. If you don’t want to deal with human emotions and behavior, teaching isn’t the best job for you.
This naturally follows that teachers will sometimes be called upon to offer guidance and encouragement in the areas of emotions and behavior — standard empathetic stuff for a leader of young people. Before the culture wars, teachers were seen as respected partners in a child’s upbringing. Now this trust dynamic is fraying, which is a crisis by itself.
Public schools would be wise to focus on the effective instruction of academic content. This is a hard enough task already.
Another way schools try to take on the burden of mental health is through school counselors. School counseling isn’t specific to mental health issues — counselors are there to guide students through many aspects of the educational journey. But counselors can advocate for students, they can help students advocate for themselves, and they can refer a student to mental health services as needed. They help so students don’t fall through the cracks.
Kathy Hoffman, the former Arizona Superintendent, was a strong proponent of reducing the student-to-counselor ratio. She touts the accomplishment of helping reduce the ratio in Arizona from 900 students per counselor to 651 students per counselor.
Tom Horne recently made a move to harden the schools, changing a school safety grant program to require a school to hire at least one resource officer before hiring a second school counselor or social worker. He doesn’t seem to be against school counseling, but his prioritizing of officers in schools is in line with his views on school discipline in general. Crack down on misbehavior, suspend and expel when necessary.
One Arizona school district is taking a different step toward hardening one of its schools, installing an enhanced weapons detection system at the school gates.
The more progressive view on these issues is that we should soften the schools, create a more nurturing environment, hire more people for students to talk to, and hopefully catch bad outcomes before they escalate into crisis or violence. Progressive educators favor restorative discipline practices, like asking a disruptive student to reflect on his behavior, rather than punitive practices like detention or suspension.
My view is that we can do both. We should be setting and enforcing boundaries for students in school. We should also try to build positive school cultures, which is hard work: it requires high-caliber teaching, administrative consistency, and a host of intangibles. If the school feels like a prison, learning will be drudgery. If the school feels safe, predictable, and positive, learning can be a worthy challenge.
What is causing the mental health crisis in the first place?
Jonathan Haidt argues that social media is the culprit. He’s writing a book combining his previous ideas about the “coddling” of the American mind with the new problem of social apps as the mediators of social life:
In brief, it’s the transition from a play-based childhood involving a lot of risky unsupervised play, which is essential for overcoming fear and fragility, to a phone-based childhood which blocks normal human development by taking time away from sleep, play, and in-person socializing, as well as causing addiction and drowning kids in social comparisons they can’t win.
Ross Douthat argues it’s a combination of social media and the problem of a decadent society leaving kids feeling alienated from meaning and lost in a sea of cultural incoherence.
A few more reasons why social media might be contributing to the problem:
Attention crisis. Endless social media feeds = rapid-fire processing. The mind is less capable of deeper focus, be it through reading, music, conversations, or pondering. Real world experiences are potential grabs for sharing.
Never ending social pressure. Before social media, a kid could leave a school environment and go home and be with family or neighborhood friends. Now, social interactions at school are forever happening online. There is no quiet place to go.
Warped algorithms. Social media feeds reward content that generates reactions. The substance doesn’t matter. This affects what kids see, and what they are incentivized to post.
It’s easy to dismiss social media concerns as, whatever, it’s just the latest technological innovation. But I think we underestimate how profoundly different these tech-mediated social worlds are from what existed prior. Young people are spending multiple hours per day on platforms designed to monetize their engagement. This is a radical change.
I’m open to different theories and dissenting opinions. But at the least, social media seems to be a hurdle in the way of healthy mental development. And there’s evidence it might be doing active harm.
Hopefully, the growing awareness of a mental-health epidemic will spark a serious effort to create better environments for young people. We live in a time of political and cultural warring. Meanwhile, too many young people are silently suffering. If we can collaborate on anything, it should be to urgently respond to this problem.
I tend to be skeptical of claims about "decadence" as a cause of mental health issues. Right-wing folks equate moral uprightness with well-being, but that's not always the case esp. in environments with strict and harsh punishment. At best, what gets described as "decadence" is a symptom rather than a cause.
Social media platforms work on a business model that stokes anxiety and outrage for the purposes of staying on devices and advertising. It's possible to have different social media spaces, but that requires different approaches to monetization or very different understandings of social media (e.g. social media as public utility instead of advertising platform).
Schools are overburdened with these issues because Americans don't build many other public institutions for young people. Other nations don't have programs like sports, art, tutoring, or music through schools but through other government agencies or organizations. Schools are able to focus on education because other parts of the government take care of health and well-being. A separate agency to deal with kids' mental health would ensure something is done without making the issue the job of schools.
I'm not sure AZ politics is ready for socialized mental health care, but the recent restrictions on medical debt indicate some willingness to reign in the business of health care. People are fed up with choosing between their mental/physical health and their financial well-being. A system that wants some level of business to survive long-term needs to address costs more effectively.