*The following is excerpted from an online article posted on HealthDay.
It’s supposed to be the best time in your life, but a new study finds that U.S. high school students have mostly negative feelings throughout their school day.
Surveying nearly 22,000 students nationwide, researchers found about 75% expressed boredom, anger, sadness, fear or stress.
Girls were slightly more negative than boys, according to the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Yale Child Study Center researchers.
A second survey asked 472 high school students in Connecticut about their feelings at distinct moments throughout the school day. The teens reported negative feelings 60% of the time, according to the study.
The levels of negativity were “higher than we expected,” said study co-author and research scientist Zorana Ivcevic. “We know from talking to students that they are feeling tired, stressed and bored, but were surprised by how overwhelming it was,” she said in a university news release.
The study’s co-author is Marc Brackett, founding director of the Center for Emotional Intelligence. He said, “Overall, students see school as a place where they experience negative emotions.”
The researchers also found that the most common positive feelings about school — calm and happy — were vague.
“They are on the positive side of zero,” Ivcevic said, “but they are not energized or enthusiastic.”
Feeling “interested” or “curious” would reveal a high level of student engagement at school that’s associated with deeper and more enduring learning, she noted.
Many of the negative feelings expressed by students may be interrelated. For example, tiredness may contribute to boredom and stress.
The way students feel at school affects their academic performance and their overall health and well-being, the researchers noted.
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