School Violence. What is going on??

For more details and sources ...

Five to eight times as many children today suffer from major depression or a clinically significant anxiety disorder. We've seen a doubling in the suicide rate among young people aged 15-24. And we've seen a quadrupling in suicide rates among children under the age of 15. This increase in anxiety and depression has not correlated with anything else including economic cycles or war. As a matter of fact, kids to day are more depressed than they were during The Great Depression and more anxious than they were during the Cold War. What's changed over those decades?

Let's think about this for a second.

• We are taking play away from kids. Recess is bing lost due to fear of injury. They have hours of homework. Lack of play leads to begin socially and emotionally crippled. 
• We are stressing them out about grades, test scores, and how they are going to pay for college. Testing starts in 1st grade.
• And we are sleep depriving them. Sleep wake cycles shift two hours later at puberty. 59% of 6-8th graders and 87% of high schoolers are sleep deprived. Sleep deprivation leads to depression, anxiety, and suicide. 

And we are doing this all with just our school system. With how our schools are structured and prioritized. That doesn't even take into account the other things happening in kids' lives. They have other stressors, other traumas happening in their lives. And we do nothing to help them learn how to handle any of this. We don't teach them emotional resiliency. We help them with no skills to cope with any of this. 

These ar the things that we need to be talking about, that we need to address in order to solve many of the concerns facing our society today including school violence: mass shootings, suicide, and bullying. This is why in my work I talk about Education Transformation. It's gotten to the point where reform isn't enough. We need to completely transform things. We need to restructure and redesign our education system and schools. We need to reprioritize what we teach and how we teach. 

There are world leaders and innovators out there that are also calling for ed reform and ed transformation and they explain that the current structure of our school systems is the same as it was a few hundred years ago. But our economies are not remotely the same. So, they don't align anymore. That is reason enough to make a change. 

But what we are not spending enough time talking about is how it's gotten so bad that we are now harming our kids. We are harming their minds, their bodies, their lives, and their futures. That's how important education transformation is. This is the conversation we need to be having. We need to bring it to the forefront. We need more than just better schools. We need a complete transformation.

So please join me in this conversation. Please help me spread this message. Of course you can do that by commenting, liking, sharing. But also, start the conversation in your own communities. With teachers, parents, and politicians in your community. We need to be talking about this. 

Watch the full video below. 

​Emma B Perez takes a look at the increase in depression, anxiety, and suicide among kids in the past few decades and suggests a possible reason for it as well as prescribes a solution. To learn more visit emmabperez.com

Sources: 
Dr. Peter Gray https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg-GEzM7iTk&t=34s&frags=pl%2Cwn
http://www.emmabperez.com/conversation/why-make-play-a-priority

Angela Hanscom https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/12/03/a-therapist-goes-to-middle-school-and-tries-to-sit-still-and-focus-she-cant-neither-can-the-kids/?utm_term=.1a235347f575
http://www.emmabperez.com/conversation/why-learn-about-physical-health-and-nutrition

http://www.emmabperez.com/conversation/why-is-financial-literacy-so-important

American Academy of Pediatrics https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/pages/let-them-sleep-aap-recommends-delaying-start-times-of-middle-and-high-schools-to-combat-teen-sleep-deprivation.aspx

National Sleep Foundation https://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-polls-data/sleep-in-america-poll/2006-teens-and-sleep

CDC https://www.cdc.gov/features/datastatistics.html

http://www.emmabperez.com/conversation/why-learn-about-physical-health-and-nutrition

http://www.emmabperez.com/conversation/the-greatest-gifts-we-can-give-our-children-pt-1

http://www.emmabperez.com/conversation/the-greatest-gifts-we-can-give-our-children-pt-27053870

http://www.emmabperez.com/conversation/whats-the-point-of-school