Yeah totally. I don't mean that as a slight against the kids, but they do have poor executive decision making skills and they are not amazing at learning. As did I in high school and middle school. Brain development plays a factor. The commonly cited fact is that executive function is still developing in teenagers and young adults. I'd also argue that teenagers are often sleep deprived or facing other challenges that make school hard to prioritize (dating, drama in social life, change in familial dynamics, etc).
I think schools and many adults have it completely backwards when they see that kids struggle to get their homework done, get enough sleep, handle extracurriculars and have some sort of social life, and blame the kids' lack of organization or lack of proper education. Blaming a teenager's lack of organization is like blaming a toddler struggling to walk. They're still developing the necessary coping mechanisms and discipline to handle adult life.
I don't know. But I don't believe blame is a good impetus. I spent a lot of my high school experience stressed and blaming myself for my inability to work inhuman and inhumane hours. Only in retrospect have I realized that I was not at fault. Only now have I understood that working so hard with so little sleep on tasks I find so uninteresting is not admirable in the slightest.
This will only get worse. It's becoming harder and harder for students to get accepted to colleges, which in turn means the bar for them is rising, often to ridiculous levels. The students who make it to the high levels are not the smart, charismatic future leaders of tomorrow. They are neurotic, depressed, sleep deprived and scared. They are pushing themselves to ridiculous, unhealthy limits for whatever reasons. And by selecting them and placing them in the same school, the same room, we are only concentrating these qualities.
I don't know what we should use to push students forward. But I know that teenagers these days could use less blame.
I think schools and many adults have it completely backwards when they see that kids struggle to get their homework done, get enough sleep, handle extracurriculars and have some sort of social life, and blame the kids' lack of organization or lack of proper education. Blaming a teenager's lack of organization is like blaming a toddler struggling to walk. They're still developing the necessary coping mechanisms and discipline to handle adult life.