“You are FAILING the sixth grade!!!” It wasn’t just hyperbole, my son’s progress report this week does show four Fs and getting him to complete and turn in work has been a struggle since the fall.  I was angry.  I was frustrated.  I expected more from him.  But the truth is, I was afraid. I was afraid he’d be tracked as a poor student, I even worried that his sixth grade transcript would keep him from college.  And as he cried and told me about class changes, block schedules, losing things in his locker and work getting lost in his backpack, I thought about the family not far from us who would never again get to be exasperated with their son or reprimand him about his work.  Their 13 year old boy took his life after receiving an email from his school about a failing grade.

Suicide is currently the leading cause of death among kids my son’s age, killing more young people than cancer.  This frightens me. Stress, anger, frustration and depression are all common in children who consider suicide. They are also necessary and normal feelings of teens  as they figure out who they are, what their goals are and how they decide they measure up. A 2011 (Hansen, B., & Lang, M) study of suicide rates in students found that suicides increase during the school year but dramatically decrease during the summer and school holidays.  The researchers controlled for seasons and weather and differences in ethnicity, race, gender and income.  In all groups, the trend remained; suicide rates increase when school is in session. Let that sink in for a moment. Suicide rates go up when our kids go back to school.

We are creating environments where our children feel unvalued, uncared for, and incapable of managing stress and disappointment.  We are narrowing the definition of success to discrete, measurable outputs, and forgetting to consider all that is gained through building relationships with peers and teachers and through trial and error.

My lovely boy is funny, creative and kind.  He is a talented singer and artist, he stands up for others when they are being treated unfairly.  He can cook.  He can design costumes and build machines out of paper and cardboard. He makes me laugh daily and for a little while, I forgot that those are grades I care about most and that is the curriculum I’ve been using to raise him.