You Are Mediocre, Deal With It

[GCMG]

One of the complaints you hear about traditional schooling is that it creates an environment where the pupil internalises the lack of expectations. In general, we see this as a bad thing for the obvious reasons. If you need a crash course on what those obvious reasons are, watch this 112 minute video. Allow me to play devil's advocate in the "smoking is good actually because governments profit off the higher taxes and early deaths of smokers" way.

Let us suppose that the alternative to internalising expectations is people of limited ability but with the expectations of greatness. Here's a 104 minute video about such a person and how they found happiness becoming a pencil pusher. But what about those who can't find fulfilment in dead end jobs that they don't do properly anyway? Mightn't we imagine that such people would become stress cases, bundles of anxiety, burdened by their conviction that more is possible when, alas, it's just not, not for them? Here's a 133 minute video about someone who found something they were genuinely good at through that realisation.

Look, I suspect that one of the main reasons anxiety is so commonly diagnosed is because it's an easy diagnosis: "No, mate, you don't have a complicated physiological problem that I, an overworked GP in a stressed healthcare system don't have time to diagnose, you just have anxiety, here's a mindfulness app". However, it is seemingly true that now no-one's literally posting class rankings and that people are turning against academic streaming (n.b. that genuinely doesn't seem to help anyone, in addition to any internalised expectations problems) and, in fact, just stripping any sense of competition out of schooling, there are a lot more anxious people. And a lot more anxious teens, in particular (note: there are, famously, a lot of very anxious teens in systems with massively high stakes end of school/university entrance exams... in this devil's advocate argument I suppose what I'm saying is that the anxious teens are the ones who should've been internalising low expectations or something). On the other hand, there's also way less crime, though one might argue that social cohesion has actually declined... a lot. And, besides, I heard that the crime rate reduction was because they took lead out of petrol... I did have a video about that but I can't remember who it was by, so watch this one about fashion instead.

So, is this getting rid of pirates causes global warming or is there some actual merit to this argument?

You can assume that I think there is some merit to the argument. It does not feel completely convincing to me (see: the digressions on anxiety, for example) and it barely attempts to validate the implicit claim "it is better for people to feel unfulfilled than be anxious". That's the purpose of the discussion about crime rates and social cohesion. Of course, those points don't have anything to say about whether it's better for an individual, merely whether it's better for society. But, to be fair, that was signalled at the start.

[Eternal Algerstonia]

i'm not mediocre, i am the best person on this website

[Neoncomplexultra]

what is your question?

[Vivida Vis Animi]

I don't know how to describe it, but this OP reads like it was written by procedural generation. It's paragraphs of ramblings whose ending question does not relate to in any way to its contents. Also, you didn't provide an opinion OP. I think. Again, this reads like drunk ChatGPT article.

[GCMG]

I don't know how to describe it, but this OP reads like it was written by procedural generation. It's paragraphs of ramblings whose ending question does not relate to in any way to its contents. Also, you didn't provide an opinion OP. I think. Again, this reads like drunk ChatGPT article.

What? How does the ending question "does this argument make any kind of sense?" not relate to the preceding argument?

Likewise:

what is your question?

How was the question in that OP unclear?

Let me break it down pedantically:

1. Premise: education has moved away from emphasising competition between pupils
2. Premise: this change has been to avoid pupils from internalising low expectations
3. Argument: people whose reach exceeds their grasp might become anxious because of their inability to fulfil their high expectations
4. Evidence: people seem to be more anxious now
5. Question: does this chain of reasoning have any merit to it?

You can assume that I think there is some merit to the argument. It does not feel completely convincing to me (see: the digressions on anxiety, for example) and in he form above, it doesn't remotely attempt to validate the implicit claim "it is better for people to feel unfulfilled than anxious". The full argument veers in that direction with the discussion about crime rates. However, that doesn't talk about whether it's better for an individual, merely whether it's better for society. But, to be fair, that was signalled at the start. I will adapt this paragraph into the OP to provide a more obvious opinion.

[Fractalnavel]

I don't know how to describe it, but this OP reads like it was written by procedural generation. It's paragraphs of ramblings whose ending question does not relate to in any way to its contents. Also, you didn't provide an opinion OP. I think. Again, this reads like drunk ChatGPT article.

+1

[Restored New England]

Most people are mediocre. That doesn't mean that everyone is, and frankly, even the mediocre can improve upon their mediocrity to an extent, however great or small.

[Neoncomplexultra]

[*]Premise: education has moved away from emphasizing competition between pupils

this is true

[*]Premise: this change has been to avoid pupils from internalizing low expectations

this is not true. it is not provided here why this change was made.

this change has the effect of causing pupils to internalize fixed expectations. whether or not these expectations are low or high will depend on the pupil. for smarter pupils, this change has caused them to internalize low expectations, by imposing average expectations upon them instead of allowing them to dynamically determine their capacity through competition.

also, here you meant to write, "to prevent pupils from". the word "avoid" is not used with "from"

[*]Argument: people whose reach exceeds their grasp might become anxious because of their inability to fulfil their high expectations

to the extent that this is comprehensible, this is true. however, it is not an argument, it is a premise. it is a premise and not an argument because it does not rely on the previous premises; it would be true in any world in which the previous premises were true or false or in any other state.

also, here you meant to write something other than, "whose reach exceeds their grasp". this expression does not make sense as an allegory. if you can reach something, you can grasp it; if you can grasp something, you have reached it. reach and grasp are equivalent in range, unless you count reaching and only touching with the tips of the fingers, in which case reach always exceeds grasp.

[*]Evidence: people seem to be more anxious now

this is true, but it is not evidence for any point. this is true independently of the previous points. it is a fact that people are more anxious now. there are many inputs into population anxiety, and many forces which determine people's expectations of themselves and satisfaction which achievement which are outside of the education system.

[*]Question: does this chain of reasoning have any merit to it?

this is not a chain of reasoning and it is without merit. your capacity to use the english language to describe chains of reasoning is mediocre, please deal with it.

[GCMG]

[*]Premise: this change has been to avoid pupils from internalizing low expectations

this is not true. it is not provided here why this change was made.

You evidently disagree with the reason provided but that does not mean a reason why the change was made was not provided.

this change has the effect of causing pupils to internalize fixed expectations. whether or not these expectations are low or high will depend on the pupil. for smarter pupils, this change has caused them to internalize low expectations, by imposing average expectations upon them instead of allowing them to dynamically determine their capacity through competition.

You cannot infer purpose from effect, e.g. this well known issue.

also, here you meant to write, "to prevent pupils from". the word "avoid" is not used with "from"

No, I meant to write to "this change has been to avoid pupils internalising low expectations" or maybe I did meant to use prevent instead of avoid. You have no way of knowing.

[*]Argument: people whose reach exceeds their grasp might become anxious because of their inability to fulfil their high expectations

to the extent that this is comprehensible, this is true. however, it is not an argument, it is a premise. it is a premise and not an argument because it does not rely on the previous premises; it would be true in any world in which the previous premises were true or false or in any other state.

No, it is an argument. If it does not follow from the preceding premises, that is a flaw in the argument's logic. That is to say, it would be an argument without logic.

also, here you meant to write something other than, "whose reach exceeds their grasp". this expression does not make sense as an allegory. if you can reach something, you can grasp it; if you can grasp something, you have reached it. reach and grasp are equivalent in range, unless you count reaching and only touching with the tips of the fingers, in which case reach always exceeds grasp.

Your reach exceeds your grasp.

[*]Evidence: people seem to be more anxious now

this is true, but it is not evidence for any point. this is true independently of the previous points. it is a fact that people are more anxious now. there are many inputs into population anxiety, and many forces which determine people's expectations of themselves and satisfaction which achievement which are outside of the education system.

This follows from your misunderstanding the argument. That is, from your failing to perceive the argument, just as you failed to perceive the blindingly obvious question.

A prediction of the argument is that if more people are in a position where their reach exceeds their grasp, then more people will be anxious as a result. If more people were not anxious, then the argument's prediction would not be met. However, the argument's prediction of more anxiety is something you accept. This does not demonstrate that the argument is true because people could be more anxious for other reasons (e.g. misdiagnosis as I suggested or multiple causes in concert, as you suggest).

[*]Question: does this chain of reasoning have any merit to it?

this is not a chain of reasoning and it is without merit. your capacity to use the english language to describe chains of reasoning is mediocre, please deal with it.

You are no better at it.

[DutchFormosa]

I'm honestly shocked I'm not dead yet. Oh well, I can only hope it'll come eventually.

[Umeria]

1. Premise: education has moved away from emphasising competition between pupils
2. Premise: this change has been to avoid pupils from internalising low expectations
3. Argument: people whose reach exceeds their grasp might become anxious because of their inability to fulfil their high expectations
4. Evidence: people seem to be more anxious now
5. Question: does this chain of reasoning have any merit to it?

Reducing emphasis on competition means that expectations carry less social stigma, meaning that not fulfilling those expectations causes less anxiety not more. So the answer to 5 is no.

[Nilokeras]

There are lots of reasons why kids become anxious - difficult family circumstances, moving schools, changing friend group dynamics, uncertainty about the future, grade performance, just being a teenager, you name it. We don't have a good baseline for how prior generations felt so it's difficult to say with any certainty that people are more anxious now than they were in the past.

As someone who works in university education teaching first year students I think it's also difficult to argue that the current model of schooling - with grades, set courses, etc - does much good. New university students struggle very hard at doing any kind of work that requires critical thinking, interpreting guidelines on their own or being otherwise self-motivated. They also tend to be fixated on grades and every new cohort of fist years in my Biology 101 course has a few of them who will come into office hours after every assignment (notably not before, mind you) and argue about their grades. Even more of them will argue over email. Grades are the only way they know how to measure their own progress and self-worth, and that first C+ on a paper after being a straight A student all through high school shatters them.

It takes an awful lot of suffering and re-writing all their learning strategies/ways of working for students to pull out of this mindset, sometimes over the course of years, and we have to spend that time outside of teaching them technical skills helping them do it. It's an incredible waste of everyone's time and energy.

[Vivida Vis Animi]

I don't know how to describe it, but this OP reads like it was written by procedural generation. It's paragraphs of ramblings whose ending question does not relate to in any way to its contents. Also, you didn't provide an opinion OP. I think. Again, this reads like drunk ChatGPT article.

What? How does the ending question "does this argument make any kind of sense?" not relate to the preceding argument?

For my sake, let's pretend the question "this getting rid of pirates causes global warming or is there some actual merit to this argument?" is beyond comprehension for me. Can you attempt to simplify your question and line of reasoning? As "does this argument make any kind of sense" has a more straightforward answer of "no," but that reasoning being in the argument's presentation more so than anything else.

[GCMG]

1. Premise: education has moved away from emphasising competition between pupils
2. Premise: this change has been to avoid pupils from internalising low expectations
3. Argument: people whose reach exceeds their grasp might become anxious because of their inability to fulfil their high expectations
4. Evidence: people seem to be more anxious now
5. Question: does this chain of reasoning have any merit to it?

Reducing emphasis on competition means that expectations carry less social stigma, meaning that not fulfilling those expectations causes less anxiety not more. So the answer to 5 is no.

I don't think the problem with expectations is social stigma. The fact that the problem is about internalising expectations to me suggests social stigma has nothing to do with it.

It has been pointed out that the argument does not rest on the premises it is said to rest on. This may be your problem. I will try again:

1. people have expectations about themselves
2. when people cannot fulfil these expectations of themselves, they become anxious
3. people base their expectations on what they're told is possible
4. but they also base these expectations on what they experience at school
5. in a school system that creates competition between pupils, some pupils are told they are mediocre or incompetent and thus have low expectations of themselves
6. low expectations are easily met
7. in a school system that is designed to avoid having pupils internalise low expectations of themselves, pupils come to have high expectations of themselves regardless of their ability to meet those expectations
8. some people are more able to meet high expectations than others
9. school systems have been increasingly geared to preventing the internalisation of low expectations
10. therefore, there should be more people with expectations of themselves greater than what they're able to achieve
11. therefore, there should be more stressed people
12. there are more stressed people

There is no role for social stigma here. In fact, I can't really see how your argument works. I mean, I get that if it's true, then you're essentially saying that present day schooling should be producing less anxious people, so in that sense it doesn't really matter if I think social stigma has a role in expectations because you do. It's like if I was saying something like "aliens did 9/11" and then you said "actually George Bush did 9/11 to avenge Harambe"... George Bush's doing 9/11 would (somewhat) preclude aliens doing 9/11 and the fact I think aliens did 9/11 doesn't make your alternative conspiracy theory an irrelevant criticism. What I mean is that I don't see how your argument works internally. Like, I can understand that you think George Bush did 9/11, not aliens, but I don't see how your argument explains how he knew about Harambe's death which had not happened yet.

If you were bring social stigma up because what I was saying was unclear (rather than your understanding it but disagreeing anyway), hopefully this new pedantic formulation works better.

[GCMG]

What? How does the ending question "does this argument make any kind of sense?" not relate to the preceding argument?

For my sake, let's pretend the question "this getting rid of pirates causes global warming or is there some actual merit to this argument?" is beyond comprehension for me. Can you attempt to simplify your question and line of reasoning? As "does this argument make any kind of sense" has a more straightforward answer of "no," but that reasoning being in the argument's presentation more so than anything else.

It's a reference to Pastafarianism.

We don't have a good baseline for how prior generations felt so it's difficult to say with any certainty that people are more anxious now than they were in the past.

A flipside to the misdiagnosis thing I mentioned is that it's quite possible that we're just better at diagnosing anxiety now and, in fact, people are less anxious than ever... it just seems like people are more anxious because we're now not failing to diagnose anxiety as much as we were.

As someone who works in university education teaching first year students I think it's also difficult to argue that the current model of schooling - with grades, set courses, etc - does much good. New university students struggle very hard at doing any kind of work that requires critical thinking, interpreting guidelines on their own or being otherwise self-motivated. They also tend to be fixated on grades and every new cohort of fist years in my Biology 101 course has a few of them who will come into office hours after every assignment (notably not before, mind you) and argue about their grades. Even more of them will argue over email. Grades are the only way they know how to measure their own progress and self-worth, and that first C+ on a paper after being a straight A student all through high school shatters them.

This affects teachers too. I did a marketing assignment once and I was trying to figure out why I got the mark I did. So I go to office hours and the marker was pretty much exactly like "Yeah, have some extra marks". And that was... it. I wasn't looking for more marks, I genuinely wanted to have a better understanding of the weakness of the assignment. I never got that explanation by the way but I took the extra marks. My theory is that the minor practical component was initially judged more on its execution of theory rather than demonstration of understanding of theory. I had prepared it based on the latter.

In another example for a different subject I received, from memory, 4/10. My assignment wasn't in the return box, which was at the time open air, and since it never turned up I guess it was stolen or something. Anyway, I went to see the lecturer to try and understand what was going on. He suggested I print the thing off again and he remarked it himself. 8/10. Which, frankly, made a lot more sense. I suspect what happened was that it was actually a 9/10 assignment and the original marker just misread their handwritten 9 as a 4 when doing the data entry.

However, my experience is generally different to yours, i.e. the crush for office hours is before tests/exams. This may be a matter of perspective as, naturally, I was not holding office hours but going to them. But to illustrate the scale of this, I once waited for basically a whole hour, for example. I guess it's possible something similar happened with assignments but I don't remember that being the case. I would note with that first anecdote I did chalk it up the marker's being so used to people complaining about marks they didn't comprehend that wasn't my own interest. But, as I said, it's not like I complained about getting a better mark.

It takes an awful lot of suffering and re-writing all their learning strategies/ways of working for students to pull out of this mindset, sometimes over the course of years, and we have to spend that time outside of teaching them technical skills helping them do it. It's an incredible waste of everyone's time and energy.

Do you perceive an alternative?

[Umeria]

Reducing emphasis on competition means that expectations carry less social stigma, meaning that not fulfilling those expectations causes less anxiety not more. So the answer to 5 is no.

I don't think the problem with expectations is social stigma. The fact that the problem is about internalising expectations to me suggests social stigma has nothing to do with it.

It has been pointed out that the argument does not rest on the premises it is said to rest on. This may be your problem. I will try again:

1. people have expectations about themselves
2. when people cannot fulfil these expectations of themselves, they become anxious

I'm gonna stop you right there. Failing to accomplish something only hurts your mental health if you placed a lot of self-worth on it. Schools these days have been telling students that mistakes are a part of learning, it's okay if you don't get it the first time, etc. which is meant to prevent anxiety and also happens to be true. They're not giving kids high expectations to be nice to them or whatever - the expectations haven't changed much, the perceived consequences have. Anxiety only goes down from this, so the mental health problem must be from a different source.

[GCMG]

I don't think the problem with expectations is social stigma. The fact that the problem is about internalising expectations to me suggests social stigma has nothing to do with it.

It has been pointed out that the argument does not rest on the premises it is said to rest on. This may be your problem. I will try again:

1. people have expectations about themselves
2. when people cannot fulfil these expectations of themselves, they become anxious

I'm gonna stop you right there. Failing to accomplish something only hurts your mental health if you placed a lot of self-worth on it. Schools these days have been telling students that mistakes are a part of learning, it's okay if you don't get it the first time, etc. which is meant to prevent anxiety and also happens to be true. They're not giving kids high expectations to be nice to them or whatever - the expectations haven't changed much, the perceived consequences have. Anxiety only goes down from this, so the mental health problem must be from a different source.

I don't think they're succeeding. Like, at all.

Have you ever heard of whole of language (apparently it's "whole language")? That's screwed a whole generation of kids over. Schools kept doing it. The theory is well meaning but that doesn't mean it works.

The fact of trying doesn't mean what they're trying is succeeding.

In fact, I'd argue that this theory is just fundamentally flawed. I don't think you can not become stressed if you can't do something you feel you should be able to. I'm not sure that self worth has much to do with it. I don't care that I can't remember how to solve sequences in the abstract (albeit, in part because I believe the vast, vast majority of people can't either), but I do care when I encounter them that I can't remember how to do it. I know I can't remember and I believe hardly anyone can, but it's still frustrating that I don't remember. It is, in fact, more true to say that my sense of self is predicated on the idea that I'm a person who can't remember how to do sequences and series than anything else. Not being able to? Still frustrating.

[Libertarian Right]

Alternate title: I am definitely the main character, deal with it.

[Nilokeras]

A flipside to the misdiagnosis thing I mentioned is that it's quite possible that we're just better at diagnosing anxiety now and, in fact, people are less anxious than ever... it just seems like people are more anxious because we're now not failing to diagnose anxiety as much as we were.

Like how incidences of early cancer rose in the second half of the 20th century not because we were suddenly getting more cancer in earlier life, but because we developed techniques that allowed us to detect them earlier than we otherwise could have.

This affects teachers too. I did a marketing assignment once and I was trying to figure out why I got the mark I did. So I go to office hours and the marker was pretty much exactly like "Yeah, have some extra marks". And that was... it. I wasn't looking for more marks, I genuinely wanted to have a better understanding of the weakness of the assignment. I never got that explanation by the way but I took the extra marks. My theory is that the minor practical component was initially judged more on its execution of theory rather than demonstration of understanding of theory. I had prepared it based on the latter.

In another example for a different subject I received, from memory, 4/10. My assignment wasn't in the return box, which was at the time open air, and since it never turned up I guess it was stolen or something. Anyway, I went to see the lecturer to try and understand what was going on. He suggested I print the thing off again and he remarked it himself. 8/10. Which, frankly, made a lot more sense. I suspect what happened was that it was actually a 9/10 assignment and the original marker just misread their handwritten 9 as a 4 when doing the data entry.

However, my experience is generally different to yours, i.e. the crush for office hours is before tests/exams. This may be a matter of perspective as, naturally, I was not holding office hours but going to them. But to illustrate the scale of this, I once waited for basically a whole hour, for example. I guess it's possible something similar happened with assignments but I don't remember that being the case. I would note with that first anecdote I did chalk it up the marker's being so used to people complaining about marks they didn't comprehend that wasn't my own interest. But, as I said, it's not like I complained about getting a better mark.

It's often easier to surrender to the students and remark things in their favour than it is to argue them into submission, is the thing as well. I taught lab sections in that Biology 101 course and I was personally in charge of around 100 students - when it came time to release marks to the students I would send an email to them all saying 'I will not be answering questions by email about your grades, if you want to chat about them please make an appointment to see me in person'. Not doing that is a rookie mistake a lot of new TAs make, because the minute you release the grades you get a torrent of emails asking 'why did I get a B- on this assignment?!' and its impossible to answer all of them. Which makes it in turn harder to give the genuinely curious students the attention they need because you're spending so much time with the students who are in anxiety tunnel vision about a half-mark that caused them to drop from one letter grade to another.

Do you perceive an alternative?

At a basic level there's often very little communication and coordination of standards between high schools and universities - we have basic requirements for courses (ie to get into Biology 101 you need to have taken biology throughout high school) but we have to figure out every year what the students do and don't know, then adjust accordingly. Having more of those lines of communication and trying to sync practices is an obvious place to start.

In universities we also have a lot more freedom to experiment with course design and there are other models of how to design coursework that, IMO, work much much better. Many profs remove grade point scales and mark assignments based on larger 'bins', like 'needs work', 'good' and 'excellent', because it removes students' incentives to argue and wheedle for points needed to get to a specific letter grade. They'll often get translated back into a letter grade at the end because of university requirements of course but it's a useful psychological trick and it helps prime them for the real world, where your reports to your boss don't get a letter grade.

Or how one of my favourite profs starts every semester by designing the syllabus for the course with the students on the first day, allowing them input on when assignments are due, what the late assignment policy is, etc. They also work with the students to come up with the rubrics they'll be marked against for their assignments. It's a great exercise because it not only helps students peek behind the curtain and learn how to navigate expectations, but it also relieves a lot of tension and anxiety because students get used to communicating with their prof honestly very early. There are lots of ways to improve education to make it more efficient and humane, we just have to embrace them.

[Neonian Technocracy]

Alternate title: I am definitely the main character, deal with it.

PFFFFFFFFFF AJAJAJAJAJAJAJA

[Umeria]

I'm gonna stop you right there. Failing to accomplish something only hurts your mental health if you placed a lot of self-worth on it. Schools these days have been telling students that mistakes are a part of learning, it's okay if you don't get it the first time, etc. which is meant to prevent anxiety and also happens to be true. They're not giving kids high expectations to be nice to them or whatever - the expectations haven't changed much, the perceived consequences have. Anxiety only goes down from this, so the mental health problem must be from a different source.

I don't think they're succeeding. Like, at all.

Have you ever heard of whole of language (apparently it's "whole language")? That's screwed a whole generation of kids over. Schools kept doing it. The theory is well meaning but that doesn't mean it works.

The fact of trying doesn't mean what they're trying is succeeding.

Your 12 point argument relies on the success of the school system's design. Specifically points 5 and 10.

In fact, I'd argue that this theory is just fundamentally flawed. I don't think you can not become stressed if you can't do something you feel you should be able to. I'm not sure that self worth has much to do with it. I don't care that I can't remember how to solve sequences in the abstract (albeit, in part because I believe the vast, vast majority of people can't either), but I do care when I encounter them that I can't remember how to do it. I know I can't remember and I believe hardly anyone can, but it's still frustrating that I don't remember. It is, in fact, more true to say that my sense of self is predicated on the idea that I'm a person who can't remember how to do sequences and series than anything else. Not being able to? Still frustrating.

Bolded seems to directly contradict your argument. You're meeting a low expectation of yourself and still getting frustrated, because you're attaching value to not meeting the expectation. So it wouldn't be better if schools gave low expectations instead of high ones, and it makes more sense for schools to discourage attaching value to expectations.

[Neoncomplexultra]

1. people have expectations about themselves
2. when people cannot fulfil these expectations of themselves, they become anxious
3. people base their expectations on what they're told is possible
4. but they also base these expectations on what they experience at school
5. in a school system that creates competition between pupils, some pupils are told they are mediocre or incompetent and thus have low expectations of themselves
6. low expectations are easily met
7. in a school system that is designed to avoid having pupils internalise low expectations of themselves, pupils come to have high expectations of themselves regardless of their ability to meet those expectations
8. some people are more able to meet high expectations than others
9. school systems have been increasingly geared to preventing the internalisation of low expectations
10. therefore, there should be more people with expectations of themselves greater than what they're able to achieve
11. therefore, there should be more stressed people
12. there are more stressed people

your first entry i would fail from english class, for this one i would give you a medicore grade.

i will help the other people in this thread by translating from your private language into english:

"By creating a non-competitive academic environment in which "everybody is a winner", has our society created a generation of students who expect to always succeed, and so do not know how to predict failure, deal with failure, or to come to terms with the fact when they are not as successful as other people in the real world?"

"If so, what have been the consequences of this mindset? Has this resulted in people being more stressed, or anxious? What other results may there be?"

compared to what you wrote, this is much better. not only is this much more concise but the question is more interesting: stress and anxiety have too many inputs, but this mindset could be responsible for social phenomena of irrational economic decisions, such as the decision of students to enroll in a course of study that they will drop out of, which is good for the university business model but which is a waste of the time of young people.

the next time you want me to teach you your native language you will have to pay me money. i accept bitcoin.

[Thermodolia]

I don't know how to describe it, but this OP reads like it was written by procedural generation. It's paragraphs of ramblings whose ending question does not relate to in any way to its contents. Also, you didn't provide an opinion OP. I think. Again, this reads like drunk ChatGPT article.

Oh good, I thought that either I just had a fucking strike or OP did

[Valles Marineris Mining co]

“Your life is nothing, you serve zero purpose” -Low Tier God

[The Grand Fifth Imperium]

1. people have expectations about themselves
2. when people cannot fulfil these expectations of themselves, they become anxious
3. people base their expectations on what they're told is possible
4. but they also base these expectations on what they experience at school
5. in a school system that creates competition between pupils, some pupils are told they are mediocre or incompetent and thus have low expectations of themselves
6. low expectations are easily met
7. in a school system that is designed to avoid having pupils internalise low expectations of themselves, pupils come to have high expectations of themselves regardless of their ability to meet those expectations
8. some people are more able to meet high expectations than others
9. school systems have been increasingly geared to preventing the internalisation of low expectations
10. therefore, there should be more people with expectations of themselves greater than what they're able to achieve
11. therefore, there should be more stressed people
12. there are more stressed people

your first entry i would fail from english class, for this one i would give you a medicore grade.

i will help the other people in this thread by translating from your private language into english:

"By creating a non-competitive academic environment in which "everybody is a winner", has our society created a generation of students who expect to always succeed, and so do not know how to predict failure, deal with failure, or to come to terms with the fact when they are not as successful as other people in the real world?"

"If so, what have been the consequences of this mindset? Has this resulted in people being more stressed, or anxious? What other results may there be?"

compared to what you wrote, this is much better. not only is this much more concise but the question is more interesting: stress and anxiety have too many inputs, but this mindset could be responsible for social phenomena of irrational economic decisions, such as the decision of students to enroll in a course of study that they will drop out of, which is good for the university business model but which is a waste of the time of young people.

the next time you want me to teach you your native language you will have to pay me money. i accept bitcoin.

I would say the entire grade system (1st grade, 5th grade, 11th grade, etc.) of schooling is a bad idea altogether. It's too much of an attempt at a "one size fits all" approach to schooling, when the truth is everyone is different when it comes to academic needs and intellectual capabilities. For instance, in high school I had no need of studying for days on end to get an "A" on a test. I could read something once or twice, internalize it, and apply it practically. And yet I was still stuck doing algebra for two years. (If you have a choice in your state/country, pick consumer math instead of trigonometry. You will likely never regret it.)