Further Anxiety

Just to add a bit more to yesterday's comments: anxiety in its less useful form (a debilitating fear of failing or doing something wrong or unacceptable) is accepted in schools in the sense that everybody, teachers and pupils, know it well and attempt (often remarkably successfully) to live with it. So we forget about it while knowing it's there and suffering its effects. Most kids in most lessons worry that there'll be something they are not going to understand and that the subject in question is going to get away from them. Joy in learning is often simple relief at coping. Most teachers worry that today's the day they are going to mess up on something very public and important, and since almost anything can suddenly become important, even what may seem entirely trivial details, they pretty much worry about everything all the time.

If this is going on in a reasonably sensible, balanced environment, the damage caused will not be quite so telling. In my experience schools in Singapore are singularly inept at establishing that kind of balance. This ineptitude derives from the simple fact that the need for such a balance is simply not recognised. The endless striving for chimerical excellence precludes clear-sighted recognition of what's real - and who can argue with excellence? So schools here breed worried people.

The solution, I suppose, is to choose not to worry. Easier said than done - but it can be done, or at least cultivated. Central to that cultivation is keeping a sense of proportion. Useful saying: All this will pass.