Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's similar to issues with performance enhancing drugs. If your course is graded so the top x% get an A, and people are using drugs to get ahead, then there's pressure to take study drugs to level the playing field with your peers. The end state is everyone taking drugs, and nobody being any better off academically.
> If your course is graded so the top x% get an A Is this... normal? I never had a single college course graded this way. If I had found myself inside of one I would have dropped out of the class and swapped to another as soon I looked at the syllabus. Forget drug abuse, think about what workplace dynamics that teaches students to embrace. I was just talking about if we were working kids too hard or something, I didn…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norm-referenced_test
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> I was just talking about if we were working kids too hard or something
We are, the internet isn't helping. If you haven't read it, [0] is a fantastic piece showing the anxieties of modern studying. I see it as similar to how gaming has changed over the past ~20 years, the 'best' strategies have been democratized, and the general bar for skill is much higher. This is fantastic if your goal for education is a better educated workforce, and destructive if you're using academic success as a differentiator.