When Ambition Becomes Absurd: The Hidden Dangers of Over-Pushing High School Students

 


There’s something slightly deranged happening in modern schooling, wrapped in marketing gloss and sold as “excellence.” Somewhere between targets, dashboards and corporate cheerleading, academic ambition mutated into academic absurdity.

The Distinction Arms Race

Schools across the country now chase distinctions like commodities. Targets are set with all the humanity of a production quota, as if teenagers are microprocessors being upgraded, not actual people with limits. The latest craze? Forced extra classes. Mandatory extension programs. And the pièce de résistance: Saturday school. Every Saturday. From February to prelims.

Imagine being 17 and realising your social life has been replaced by a timetable designed by a Soviet-era engineer.

All in the name of “excellence”.

What Happens in Real Classrooms

It looks impressive on a PowerPoint slide - arrows shooting up, averages climbing. But on the ground?

Students buckle. Pressure doesn’t motivate everyone; sometimes it simply crushes them.

Teachers burn out. They become emotional shock absorbers for a system demanding superhuman performance.

Learning narrows. Creative work vanishes, replaced with exam drills and enough past papers to insulate a house.

And ironically, the more pressure we apply, the faster students lose their love of learning.

The Saturday School Syndrome

The message behind stealing every weekend is simple and horrifying:
Your value is your output.
Rest is weakness.
Balance is optional.

This isn’t preparing teenagers for adulthood, it’s preparing them for burnout.

The Ethics Nobody Wants to Discuss

When results overshadow humanity, questionable “solutions” creep in:

  • inflated marks
  • sidelining weaker learners
  • prioritising distinction-heavy subjects
  • fear-driven classrooms

It’s academic enhancement with the moral subtlety of a tax evasion scheme.

The Children Who Get Lost in the System

Not every student is built for distinctions - and that is perfectly normal. Some are creators, builders, leaders, artisans, innovators, thinkers. A distinction-obsessed culture reduces these diverse paths to one narrow metric of worth.

And the consequences? Deadly.

South Africa’s own data is sobering: 9% of teen deaths are from suicide, and up to 20% of high school learners have attempted it at least once. In 2024 alone, more than 7,400 suicide attempts were recorded among under-18s in nine months.

Behind every number is a child who felt overwhelmed, cornered, or crushed.
If even one suicide is linked to school pressure, then every forced weekend class becomes an indictment on the system, not the child.

What Schools Should Actually Be Doing

If schools genuinely care about students — not just metrics — the path is clear:

  • Get the foundations right early.
  • Support teachers, don’t drain them.
  • Shrink class sizes.
  • Provide real mental-health structures.
  • Celebrate growth, not just A-symbols.
  • Teach thinking, not memorisation.
  • Protect balance like it’s sacred - because it is.

The Real Goal of Education

Distinctions look great on spreadsheets.

But education is not a spreadsheet.

It’s the shaping of minds.
The nurturing of character.
The building of resilience.
The discovery of self.
The preparation for life, not just exams.

Schools must remember this before they sacrifice an entire generation at the altar of academic prestige.

We’ve created a machine.

And machines don’t care who they grind down.

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