OCR Text |
Show WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2 - DIXIESUNNEWS.COM IDEALISTS continued from page 1 mon, now the group's .,. .4c......., . 1 i ., -- - .0-- 1 ,,- ' l' ''. i - t , , it (,,,,, : , - .4 executive director, "and a need to present oneself as perfect." A new study out of the United Kingdom shows today's coljust that lege students want to be perfect, and more so than their parents did. But the reasons behind that, the researchers say, are deeply ingrained in today's culture. Two British researchers studied more than 40,000 students from the United States, Canada and Britain in what they believe is the first study examining perfectionism across multiple generations. They found that what they called "socially prescribed perfectionism" increased by a third between 1989 (when Gen Xers attended college) and 2016 (with a mix of millennials and Gen Zers), and that culture could be driving up rates disorders. of mental-healt- h Lead researcher Thomas Curran said that while so many of today's young people try to curate a perfect life on Instagram, social media's grip isn't the only reason for perfectionist tendencies. Instead, he said, it may be driven by competition percolating more into modern society, meaning young people can't avoid being sorted evaluations," increased and ranked in education and employment. That comes from new norms since 1989: like greater numbers of college students, standardized testing, and parenting that increasingly emphasizes success in education. "We now have forms of competition where it never used to be," said Curran, of the University of Bath. "Forcing to compare, compete, and keep up with social comparisons in turn is forcing them to develop perfectionist tendencies." Curran and Andrew P. Hill, an associate professor at York St. John University, analyzed college students between or 1989 and 2016 who completed the "Multidi- mensional Perfectionism Scale," a survey that puts a figure on perfectionism. The survey asks respondents to agree or disagree on a scale with statements like: "When I am working on something, I cannot relax until it is perfect," or "Anything that I do that is less than excellent will be seen as poor work by those around me." The study, published Dec. 28 in the journal Psychological Bulletin, concluded that three categories of perfectionism, which they define as "a combination of excessively high personal standards and overly critical self perfec- Self-orient- ed a tionism be desire to perfect increased by 10 percent. self-impos- Other-oriente- d perfec- tionism, or the practice of holding others to irrationally high standards, increased by 16 percent. Socially prescribed perfectionism, or the perception that there are unrealistically high expectations from others, increased by 33 percent. It's the latter dimension that gives researchers the most concern. Curran and Hill describe socially prescribed perfectionism as "the most debilitating" and said it's a better predictor of depression and suicide than the other two. So where's that socially prescribed perfectionism come from? Curran said it would be "easy" to attribute the rise to social media, and while he admitted those platforms "put the problem on steroids," he said there are other factors, like an increase in meritocracy among millennials. The researchers say today's hypercompetitive society tells young people: Have the highest grade point average, get into the best school, obtain the highest-payin- g job, and the perfect life can be yours. For example, in 1976, half of high school seniors expected to get a college degree of some kind. By 2008, more than 80 percent expected the same, but actual degree attainment didn't keep pace. The researchers say this suggests expectations are increasingly unrealistic. They also said changes in parenting style over the last two decades might have had an impact. Curran and Hill wrote that as parents feel increased pressure to raise successful children, they in turn pass their "achievement anxieties" onto their kids through "excessive involvement in their child's routines, activities or emotions." Those in the mental health community like Malmon say they're concerned about the impact the culture of perfectionism has on mental health on campuses. She's comforted, she said, by students working to destigmatize the issue. "Mental health has truly become this generation's social justice issue," she said. "It's our job to equip them with the tools, to let people know that it's not their fault, and that seeking help is a sign of strength and not weakness." (c)2018 The Philadelphia Inquirer. 24, 2018- TALENT continued from page 1 much about it and just be natu ral...I learned a lot by being around these contestants." Jordon Sharp, host and chief marketing and communication officer, announced one of the star judges, Alex Boye, You Tube musician and prior America's Got Talent contestant, will be recording his new video with DSU and holding a concert at the M. Anthony Burns Arena on March 3 to fundraise for DSU scholarships. Sharp said the concert will be the biggest fundraising d event of the year for need-base- scholarships. Judge Merrill Osmond, whose band, Osmonds Family, has been awarded 27 gold records, is currently teaming up with DSU to create the "Osmond Center for Productions" on campus. He is also working to create a degree program for DSU production students. Di)de's Got Talent, hosted by the DSU Student Alumni Association, donates all funds scholard raised to The students. ships for DSU funds assist people in situations that cut off their access to education; people who wouldn't be able, to go to school otherwise. "The most important thing is raising the scholarship money," Beatty said. "That's what it's all about." need-base- , Seattle students work to retain indigenous dialects LONG BY KATHERINE Markee Heckenliable, Editor-in-Chi- Ryann Hein len, News Editor Alexis McClain, Sports Editor Cody Eckman, Features Editor Emma van Lent, Opinion Editor Taylor Lewis, Multimedia Editor Kylea Custer, Photo Editor Valerie De La 0, Social Media Editor Hanna Pollock, Copy Editor Erin Hakoda, Ad Manager Mason Hardy Jonathan Holland Jessica Johnson Grant Jones Kyle Lindsley Maria Modica Lizzy Range Aubrey Shipley Naomi Vazquez Rhiannon Bent, Adviser The Dixie Sun News is distributed each Wednesday during fall and spring semestersas a publication of Dixie State University, the communication department, and Dixie State University Student Activities. DSU administrators do not approve or censor content. The student editorial staff alone determines its news coverage. The unsigned editorial on the opinion page represents the position of Dixie Sun News as determined by its editorial board. Otherwise, the views and opinions expressed in Dixie Sun News are those of the individual writers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Dixie Sun News or any entity of the university. When Alyssa Johnston and members of her tribe speak to one another in Quinault, they are often moved to tears by the knowledge that, at the turn of the century, the language was all but dead. The last person who spoke fluent Quinault passed away in 1996. By using recordings of those who spoke the language in the 1960s, a handful of people in the Olympic Peninsula tribe are slowly and painstakingly piecing it back together and teaching it to a new generation. Last year, Johnston was the first person in recent memory to earn a world language credit at the Uni- versity of Washington by showing she had achieved "intermediate proin that ficiency" language. "It's everything to me," Johnston said of the importance of reviving her tribe's native tongue. "Language is culture," she said, and the tribe "right now is literally making history" by bringing it back. That history is also being written on the UW's Seattle campus. Every two weeks, two separate groups gather around a table in one building or another to practice one of two indigenous languages: Southern Lushootseed, the common tongue of the Native American tribes that lived in this region, and Hawaiian, the native language of the indigenous people of Hawaii. Chris Teuton, chair of American Indian Studies at the UVV, hopes students eventually will be able to low-lev- - 1 ' for-cred- TNS DIXIE SUN NEWS learn both those languages it in courses, join55 other the languages ing already taught by the university. In the meantime, the informal classes are a labor of love for the volunteers who teach them. Nancy Jo Bob, a member of the Lummi Nation, and Tami Kay Hohn, of the Puyallup Tribe, both drive up from Auburn every month to offer several hours of language instruction, using a system they devised that helps students think and speak in complete sentences from the outset. Lushootseed was revived by Upper Skagit author, teacher and linguist Vi Hilbert, who died in 2008 at the age of 90. Hilbert taught Lushootseed for credit at the UW until her retirement in 1988, and it has been taught intermittently at the university since then, along with Navajo and Yakama. Lushootseed's sentence structure is different from English, and includes sounds that don't exist in English. "It's like my tongue is one speaker marveled during a recent language table session. Sentences start with a verb, rather than a subject, and the form the verb takes, gives information about the manner and time of action, said UW English Professor Colette Moore, who is taking part in the language table. "By the time a speaker gets to the subject in a Lushootseed sentence," she said, "he or she has already given a lot of other information." The language's history in the Puget Sound area dates back thousands of years. English, in contrast, has been spoken around here for fewer than 250. el , 4 , 0 ,i f , ? , i ,. ' "4!" ' ) 0,,,a10110010C.. t I '', 1 : ., t ' 1 - i a...--,,,,,-, - , .,.,, , - mill Tula lip Stephanie Fryberg vocalizes Lushootseed sounds. The language was revived by the late Upper Skagit Vi Hilbert in Seattle on Jan. 10. Senc DixieS to the "Sometimes it can be a perspective shift for students to see English as an immigrant language," Moore added, "but, of course, it is." America's past is threaded with a long, ugly history of white settlers separating Native Americans from their languages and cultures. In the 1900s, many Native American children were sent to boarding schools, where they were forced to speak only English. Johnston, of the Quinault tribe, says her grandfather spoke the language, and her mother asked him to teach it to her. But he refused the older generation feared their children wouldn't be successful if they spoke a Native American language, she said. "By revitalizing languages, that's part of the healing process," said Teuton, who is Cherokee and began learning that language at the University of North Carolina, where he taught before he came to the UW. "We are trying to recover from that colonial history." Native American knowledge, he said, "is really grounded in our language the grounding of stories, our storytelling traditions, our words for the natural world, words that describe our social relations." Language is also a vital cultural connection for many Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, said Manuhuia Barcham, a UW lecturer who helped organize the Hawaiian language table. Barcham hopes to also start one for Samoan and Chamorro, which is spoken in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. Both Pacific Islander and Native American populations have low levels of enrollment in higher education, and part of the goal of teaching languages is to make the UW "a more open and friendly space for our youth and our community," he said. Among the state's other higher education institutions, Lushootseed has been taught at Pacific Lutheran University and at the UW Tacoma, as part of a summer institute. Wenatchee Valley College in Omak teaches Salish; the Northwest In dian College in Bellingham teaches Native American languages. Johnston learned Quinault from Cosette a linguist who is her tribe's most fluent speaker, and who was able to administer the test that allowed Johnston to get UW credit for knowing that language. The UW requires entering students to have completed two years of a foreign language in high school, and to take a third quarter while in or to demonstrate college that they have acquired and m news news.( for lett Terry-itewast- e, "intermediate low-lev- el pro- ficiency" in a language other than English. The university had to create a new way to test proficiency in languages that are not commonly taught. "This provides an academic incentive and establishes it as an equal language, a world language," said Russell Hugo, a linguist in the UW's language learning center. "Hopefully more students can do this, so we can build stronger ties of support and recognition" for local indigenous languages. (c)2018 The Seattle Times. Sub no Ion and m Writ name, email shoulc in sch major. Lett editinc gramr Lett maccL offens publisl Lett ted to the bo attach Lett of Dixi be puL Dixi ages z on its reader edit cc an edi comri or vulc |