Aug 19, 2018 4 min read

School bells ring soon, and we are already hearing from high schoolers about their stressful lives — ones rife with bullying and, maybe most alarming of all, the demands of studying hard and getting ahead.

Such was the gist of a program this past week on National Public Radio. Joshua Johnson of 1A interviewed three students from different parts of the country and different backgrounds who sounded the same alarming message: hey, adults, it’s tough being a kid.

So what else is new.

School is pretty demanding, said Michael Solomon, who attends a Montgomery County, Maryland, high school, outside Washington, D.C.

“There’s lots of stress,” he said. “More than in previous generations.”

One of the consequences is more and more teenagers are mentally depressed, Solomon said.

Here was Dana Youngberg of Newell, South Dakota, on bullying at her high school: “We constantly fight bullying”, which, she noted, has two root causes: spite and jealousy.

Youngberg said her school is so small that she and her friends know one another too well. Apparently, every one of life’s little wrinkles is apt to result in someone getting put upon.

Miracle Burnes of Chicago commented that she sees lots of bullying at her school. Sometimes, the bullying leads to fights, to physical violence.

Unfortunately, she said, we live in a “day and age” when people get “into your face.” The result can be hallway mayhem.

Burnes and Solomon were especially quote-worthy on the role of parents in their lives.

Solomon said that he likes “to know my parents are there, but I do need my space.”

Burnes said parents should talk to their children once about school, and then drop the subject entirely. One and done.

She also said she has trouble talking to her mom, except in the car, when evidently her mother is too distracted by traffic to pay very close attention to her what she is saying. Burnes would rather talk to strangers about her day-to-day problems.

Instead of talking, Burnes prefers writing letters to her mom.

In a way, the interview was reassuring: Solomon, Youngberg and Burnes are just as confused about things as the typical American youth of the past half century or so.

Super kids dominate the public airways. It’s good to know there are still kids out there — kids who remind you of you at that age: pretty clueless.

Still, there is more than a little truth in what they had to say: Never in the modern age has school been so menacing. Columbine. Sandy Hook. Parkland.

Young Americans have reacted in pretty typical fashion. They are frightened.

According to a survey taken last spring, 57 percent of U.S. teens are worried that a shooting could take place at their school. Twenty five percent are “very worried.”

The survey found that 64 percent of high school girls fit into the “worried” and “very worried” categories along with 57 percent of boys.

At 51 percent, white kids are the least worried. African-Americans check in at 60 percent; Hispanics, 75 percent.

The survey by the Pew Research Center was taken after the Feb. 14 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, in which 17 students were gunned down.

Former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also spoke to Johnson. Duncan said voters need a laser focus on schools and education. Politicians should be held to account for: high school graduation rates, the quality and quantity of local community colleges, and the availability of pre-kindergarten classrooms.

Duncan has a new book out, “How Schools Work.” The first chapter is called “Lies. Lies Everywhere.”

Duncan said the biggest lie is that Americans value their children. By failing to secure the safety of children in school — for instance, by not insisting that Congress do something about guns — adult Americans are failing the country’s young people.

“We value our guns more than we value our children,” Duncan told Johnston.

The real birdbrains, it turns out, are the grown-ups.

Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown and is the author of two books — Grand Salute: Stories of the World War II Generation and Our People. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.