Peter Gray

And of course, all the other students had.

But, you know, I wasn't really that much behind.

You know, I easily caught up if

somebody used a term you know let's say the professor talked about meiosis well i looked it up you know they're used to self-direction they're used to the taken responsibility if there's a term they don't know they look it up if if there's something that uh they really don't understand they're not afraid to ask for the professor uh for a little bit more explanation outside of class so

I think what they told me is that the advantage they had, which they felt was more than compensated for any disadvantage, was that they had learned to take responsibility for themselves and their own learning.

What do you think, Peter?

I'm really glad you asked that question.

This is, I think, in some sense, gets at the crux of the problem, the social problem.

The pressure that parents feel to be sure that their children are achieving by the current standards of achievement

This is burning kids out.

It's exhausting kids.

Let me give you a little research study that was done some years ago by the American Psychological Association.

They surveyed people in America, including teenagers that year, about how stressed they had been and why they were stressed.

And teenagers in high school turned out to be the most stressed out people in America, more stressed out than adults.

And here's the key, when they were asked what the source of their stress was, 83% said school pressure.

So we have really frightened kids about this.

And I would argue needlessly so.

The evidence that you're not going to succeed if you don't do all these supposed things, the evidence is strongly against that.

I actually wrote an article on this and what I described there is two longitudinal studies, very well controlled studies by a statistician and an economist.

They really asked the question, even in terms of your ultimate earnings by age 40, does it matter what college you go to if you control for other factors?