Across the country, children are arriving home with school reports, worrying whether they have lived up to their own expectations and those of their parents. Many of them will not have. Hundreds of thousands of Grade 12 pupils are counting the days to the release of the National Senior Certificate results on January6, worrying that they won't meet university entrance requirements. Thousands of them will discover that their anxiety was justified.So what now? Often enough, depression, hopelessness and thoughts of suicide, according to education and mental health experts, who complain that education authorities and schools are doing little or nothing to help children and parents prepare for or cope with academic failure.As is so often the case, the wealthy minority of schools have counsellors but most do not, leading Basil Manuel, president of the National Professional Teachers' Organisation of SA, to warn that "we are probably sitting on a little bit of a time bomb".In fact we are watching a slow-motion explosion. According to the SA Depression and Anxiety Group, the suicide rate for children aged 10-14 has more than doubled in the past 15 years. And the National Youth Risk Behaviour Study found that 18% of young people have attempted suicide.Realistically, we are not going to get counsellors in every school any time soon. And, much as we might hope otherwise, the standard of schooling, and the number of educational and career opportunities for young people, are not going to improve overnight.What we can do, as communities and parents, is look at our values and the way we transmit them to the young.Is academic success really so important that we must push children into depression and to the brink of suicide in its pursuit?Is there something else we should be wishing for our children?Happiness, perhaps?..