Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

by Anne Helen Petersen

Put differently: What you’re doing when practicing your times tables or taking a standardized test or writing an essay isn’t learning, but preparing yourself to work. This is an incredibly utilitarian view of education, implying that the ultimate goal of the system is to mold us into efficient workers, as opposed to preparing us to think, or to be good citizens. And this utilitarian view matches how our current educational system operates, in which success hinges on a student’s ability to adhere to a narrow understanding of “successful” behaviors: getting good grades, performing well on standardized testing, behaving “appropriately” and deferentially toward teachers, establishing “normal” social bonds with peers, and being willing to participate in physical education.