Episode 18- This is Your Brain on Achievement Culture with Dr. William Stixrud Artwork

Experience Matters with Steve Shapiro

If you ask someone about the most powerful learning experience of their youth, few people will mention a lecture, a textbook reading, or a test. Nearly all will identify an EXPERIENCE; that is because experiential learning is the most profound and lasting form of learning. So if experience matters, how do we offer it to students in our schools? This podcast invites folks to share the learning experience that most deeply impacted their lives, and each episode includes provocations about how we can bring those types of experiences into the mainstream of American schools. Experience Matters is about harnessing the power of experiential learning to transform public education

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Experience Matters with Steve Shapiro

Episode 18- This is Your Brain on Achievement Culture with Dr. William Stixrud

January 11, 2023 • Steve Shapiro

This is Your Brain on Achievement Culture with Dr. William Stixrud

We are in the midst of a youth mental health crisis, especially among kids in “high achieving” schools. Neuropsychologist William Stixrud has a front row-seat to the crisis, with unique insight into emerging research on the impact that “achievement-culture” related chronic stress and anxiety have on the adolescent brain.

We cover a lot of territory, including:

4:20 How the Beatles shaped Bill’s brain

7:46 The difference between rich and poor kids’ mental health

8:58 The mental health status of “high achieving kids”

10:51 Detailing the adolescent mental health CRISIS

13:19 The cruel untruths we tell teens

16:52 How stress “sculpts” the adolescent brain

18:39 The relationship between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala

21:41 A crazy story about fearing a kid in Iowa

23:17 How depression “scars” kids’ brains

24:27 The most important indicator of a successful childhood

26:58 How fear fuels the problem

29:00 The most stressful thing in the universe

30:47 Teenagers’ experience of learned helplessness

32:53 School policy strips kids of autonomy

34:53 Teachers need autonomy too!

38:11 The startling paradox of “good schools”

Here’s a link to my conversation with Emmy Huefner about her experiences with achievement culture stress.