Race to Nowhere, a documentary film on the amount of stress many students go through, has been so popular that screenings tonight and Thursday night at the Rowayton Library are already sold out.

In fact, all four of the showings of the film by Vicki Abeles have sold out since the documentary began its run at the library last week. It was screened locally in a collaborative effort between the library and the Community Cooperative Nursery School. Screenings scheduled in Greenwich and Stamford are also sold out, but tickets for the film are still available for those willing to go as far as Redding (Feb. 10) or Ridgefield (Feb. 23), according to the movie's Web site.

According to the film, parents’ and schools’ expectations of high achievement are producing “little professionals” who frequently rely upon cheating and pharmaceuticals used to treat ADD.

In one study the film cited, a survey of 5,000 students indicated that less than three percent had never cheated.

Prompted to make the film after her 12-year-old daughter was diagnosed with stress-induced illness, Abeles, a first-time filmmaker, hired a crew and set out— interviewing students, teachers, medical professionals and other professionals to examine the cause and effect of “the dark side of America’s achievement culture.” During film production, a 13-year-old student in her daughter’s class committed suicide, apparently the result of a buildup of school-induced stress.

According to Ken Ginsburg, an adolescent medicine specialist at the University of Philadelphia who is interviewed in the film, “the common force that drives negative behaviors is stress.”

The film indicated that the pressure-filled environment that children face today is a perfect storm of well-meaning parents, top colleges that are expected to select a student body from an ever-increasingly competitive pool of applicants, school systems that are expected to comply with the No Child Left Behind Act, as well as self-imposed pressure by the students themselves to do it all.

An admissions counselor from Stanford University admitted that she felt “culpable for creating this hypercompetitive environment. When I was a student, there were only a few kids” who were considered academically talented. Now, the expectation is that everyone should and is taking five or six AP or honors-level classes, with the result that students do not have time to learn the material, and instead rush to memorize and “spit back” facts.

In addition to spending several hours a day on academics, students are also expected to play sports, participate in community service, “be pretty,” and actively participate in clubs and other organizations to enhance their college applications. Creativity and talent in the arts are routinely ignored, according to Race to Nowhere. As a result, the film asserts, college graduates who enter the workforce are unprepared to think independently.

“A common criticism of America’s schools is that our knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep,” said a teacher interviewed in the film.

The stress that children face has also not gone unnoticed in Fairfield County. Recently, the Weston High School PTO invited a practicing psychologist to speak, where she gave tips and told personal anecdotes to illustrate to parents how they can help their children deal with stress.

In Weston, where the assistant superintendent of schools, Thomas Scarice is pushing for a new curriculum to be implemented over the next several years. The proposal is designed to increase students’ critical thinking and analytical skills.

Children who are overscheduled and are not allowed time to “be bored” are subsequently denied the opportunity to develop applied knowledge skills. “Play is children’s work,” said Dr. Deborah Stipek, dean of the School of Education at Stanford.

Aside from anxiety and depression, many students interviewed in the film indicated that simply giving up is the easiest route to relief. “If you don’t try, you can’t fail,” one student said.

An AP Biology teacher said that “the first thing I did when I took over the class was to cut the homework load in half. And do you know what happened? The AP scores went up.”

Sara Bennett, the founder of Stop Homework, said “parents really need to educate themselves about how much homework really helps. There is almost no correlation between homework and achievement.”

Singapore, which has consistently outscored the United States in areas such as math, hardly assigns any homework at all.

The film, often shown in venues other than movie theaters, has sold out frequently in screenings across the country. According to a New York Times article, the documentary is often accompanied by discussions sponsored by parent-teacher groups, One occurred recently in Westchester County and another in San Diego.