Let's not Get Too Soft

After a certain age, some students feel terrified by exams. This goes far beyond the usual nervousness everyone experiences prior to an exam. But, being a subjective experience, how does know what a particular student is feeling? Conversely, has the pendulum of concern/compassion swung a bit too far nowadays?

 

Lisa Marchiano, a psychoanalyst, describes a student who’d experienced what she (the student) described as a panic attack during the first exam, but “successfully completed the first exam — and did okay on it”. And yet, that student didn’t take the second exam because she was afraid she’d have another panic attack. Marchiano tried telling the student that the fact that she had “pushed through the fear feelings” meant she could deal with it. “But I had a panic attack,” responded the student and did not budge. Marchiano asks the forbidden question:

“I found myself wondering where she had learned that she ought not to be expected to tolerate ordinary distress or discomfort. How have we come to the point where we believe that emotional disquiet will cause harm, that we ought to be soothed and tranquil at all times?”

 

Alan Jacobs wonders the same thing:

“We’re now in a moment at which any attempt to resist the pathologizing of perfectly ordinary experiences of nervousness or uncertainty is tagged as indifference (at best) or cruelty (at worst). To encourage students to believe that they can overcome their anxieties is, it appears, now a form of abuse.”

 

I personally don’t subscribe to this “coddling”. Don’t most of us complain that the education system doesn’t teach and mould children to face the “real world”? That being the case, isn’t it true that the world out there, the one outside of academic institutions, will be one having deadlines and pressure? So what is it that anyone hopes to gain by shielding students from “distress or discomfort” based on the pressure to perform?