It’s back-to-school time, and parents are more stressed than ever about COVID classroom safety, the transition back to in-person learning, and making sure their kids are up-to-speed on academic and social skills.

But the kids are stressed, too, and it’s not just the pandemic. Increasingly, K-12 education is a pressure cooker of extracurricular activities, tutoring, competitions, and a host of education-enhancement programs. All of these things are designed to help students succeed—but, in fact, they might be having the opposite effect.

Today, Wednesday host Ali Muldrow spends the hour with Pawan Dhingra, author of Hyper Education, to talk about what’s going on with overprogramming and what we can do to support well-rounded, healthy kids.

Pawan Dhingra is a professor of American studies at Amherst College, where he researches and teaches about Asian American studies, inequality, immigration, race/racism, identity, and culture. He is the author of many books, including Life Behind the Lobby: Indian American Motel Owners (Stanford University Press, 2012) and most recently Hyper Education: Why Good Schools, Good Grades, and Good Behavior Are Not Enough (NYU Press, 2020).

Cover photo by Monfocus from Pixabay