Podcast Script

 Today, I (we) will be talking about a potential increase in defeatism in students. Admittedly, there is not much research done on this topic, particularly as it relates to students in secondary education, or grades 6 through 12. Personally, I think more research needs to be done about this topic as it relates to current events. And by that I mean in a post COVID-19 world. Of course, since it’s only been almost three years since COVID started and less than a year since it’s really ended, there is even less research about this topic. Honestly, there’s not really any research about it at all. For the purposes of this podcast, I’ll be referring to levels of hopelessness in students as well as defeatism, with references to depression and anxiety, because there is more research done within these topics, and the implications of studies on hopelessness, depression, and anxiety could very well be linked to defeatism.

So, before I jump in, I’d like to ask… What is defeatism? Defeatism is defined as the mentality that, no matter how much things progress, they will never actually get better. I thought this would be a good topic because I see this a lot with my own peers and sometimes even in my own mentality, so I was curious to research it in younger, secondary students. A couple other key terms to go over here would be depression, which is as mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and/or a loss of interest that can interfere with one’s daily life; Anxiety, which is a nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, or could be referring to a general feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease; Hopelessness is then characterized as a feeling of despair or a lack of hope. 

To be clear, there are many reasons why any of these negative emotions could manifest. While many conditions pertaining to depression and anxiety have been researched to be chemical disorders in the brain linked to genetic factors, many of my personal opinions are rooted in behaviorist theory, which has led me to believe that life is more nurture than it is nature. What I mean by this is that, while we have our genetic makeup and predispositions in place, our world around us is what manifests, or activates, certain traits or characteristics as opposed to others. Someone might be predisposed to anxiety or depression, but that does not necessarily mean that they will have anxiety or depression, right? Therefore, I would argue that much of the issues discussed in this podcast, particularly relating to defeatism, are learned behaviors, whether that be on the conscious or unconscious level. People can often develop these conditions or mindsets as a form of survival, whether that fear is genuinely life threatening or not really doesn’t matter. The human brain, or, rather, mammal brains in general, has an uncanny ability to detect patterns, and this was initially a survival tactic. We would notice a repeated threat, and we would learn to avoid it. We do a similar thing now, particularly with anxiety. We pick up on signals (triggers) from others that would indicate that something bad was either happening or about to happen in which we feel our safety is threatened, and those signals become a trigger for future events. 

So, I tend to believe that, based on the premise of behaviorist theories, it makes sense to conclude that general feelings of hopelessness and defeatism can be largely dependent on external factors. To reiterate, there are certain elements of anxiety, depression, hopelessness, and defeatism that are largely innate or genetic. There are also a number of these elements that are learned. For the purposes of this podcast, I will be discussing the elements of these negative emotions and experiences that are a learned response, because those are what are in the realm of my ability to correct or help with. 

As we delve deeper into this topic, I want to make it known that I was quite frustrated with the fact that there were limited sources on defeatism in general, particularly in students. And, of the sources I found, defeatism was simply assessed as to what level of defeatism a person/student possessed. Based on my research, I could not find any sources that explained why defeatism might exist in students or what contributing factors there are. 

One 2015 source from Aliran by Nicholas Chan actually suggested that the education system itself is defeatist, particularly how education is only structured in one particular way, and how this structure denotes a lack of intellectual effort. However, much of the discussion in this article was about defeatism in eastern schools and creating national unity. I understood this to be a problem for my research because much of what I am looking at is about western education, particularly in the United States, since that is where I plan to teach for the foreseeable future. 

Another article from 2007 written by Zuroff, Fourier, and Moskowitz, did not exactly reference defeatism, but discussed an Involuntary Defeat Strategy that could be linked to depression, perceived inferiority, and interpersonal behavior. Their finding indicated that Involuntary Defeat Strategy was frequently apparent in depressed participants as it related to perceived inferiority and partner dominance, as well as participant behavior. However, this study was done pertaining to young and middle adults and had nothing to do with a classroom setting, instead relating to partner interactions. 

The final study I wanted to discuss here was the most relevant to my findings, but did not exactly relate to defeatism. A 2013 Canadian journal by Capri, Gunduz, and Sinem examined the relationship between life satisfaction, burnout, work engagement, and hopelessness in high school students. It was observed by these researchers that high school students' life satisfaction scores have a negative relation with exhaustion, cynicism, efficacy and hopelessness scores, but have a positive relation with vigor, dedication and absorption scores. It was also observed that life satisfaction scores only predict hopelessness, absorption and efficacy in a meaningful way. I decided to do some observational research of my own at my current high school placement for an education practicum course. I used the same methods to score my students, utilizing the Satisfaction With Life scale and the Beck Hopelessness Scale, along with a separate post-COVID mental health survey. I really only had a small pool of students to work with, since only 8 of my thirty students decided to take the survey. Regardless, my findings were actually quite similar to that of these researchers in that life satisfaction scores had a negative relation with exhaustion, cynicism, and efficacy. One error of this research, however, might be that students were asked to fill out their own answers in a group setting, and this might have been more productive in an individual setting with students being asked questions orally. I say this because there seems to be some skewed data, as students' scores do not appear consistent across tests. For example, students may have reported feeling hopeless and depressed with defeatist attitudes, but these scores were not contingent with their scores on the Beck’s Hopelessness Scale, which those students then scored highly on. Again, there are obviously some errors in the methods of my own research, as I simply wanted to see how students responded. The sample size of students is also an issue, here, as a sample of 8 students of the same grade level at the same high school is not enough data to draw conclusions about students in secondary education as a whole. 

Because of my limited research, my thesis about defeatist attitudes increasing in students, particularly in a post-COVID world, is still inconclusive. I hope to, someday, be able to have a larger sample size across multiple grade levels and various other backgrounds. However, my own small bit of research being on par with other researchers gives me hope that what I am studying is worth investigating, though I (and other researchers as well) may not be asking students the right questions. I will also have to do more research on other assessments to use, as well as the efficacy of those assessments.