The Pupils' Stress and Fear: the Content and Peculiarity of the Expression in the Context of Educational System

Algimantas Bagdonas

Kaunas University of Technology, the Institute of Educational Science,

Donelaicio 20, 3000 Kaunas, Lithuania

Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Hamburg, 17-20, September 2003

This essay is based on the following concepts: McLaughlin’s concept of personal autonomy, emphasising education of an autonomous, intellectually and morally independent, responsible individual; the concept of school fear suggested by Rost and Hurrelmann, representatives of the German pedagogical psychology school; the concept of humanistic pedagogy, integrating the actions and communicative interaction of all school components which eliminates violence and psychological pressure at the educational institution and emphasises teaching methods and organisational forms enabling the integration of student feelings and intellect (Maslow, Rogers); the notions of educational environment, learning paradigm, change in the teacher training paradigm, and teaching individualisation suggested by Lithuanian researchers in education (Juceviciene, Siauciukeniene).

School is a community of students, teachers and parents, which pursues unanimous goals and serves as a bridge to society and humankind. The view of school as merely a place of knowledge acquisition and learning is wrong in principle. School life should be rich and joyful. To make it such, it is very important to create an atmosphere of collaboration. Relationships between adults and children as well as requirements of the educational process make school life peculiar, however it is possible to seek and achieve a school life and relationships within the school community based on sincerity, respect, love and responsibility. Having established such priorities for school life, one can hope for a harmonious and wise society.

Already the classics of pedagogy argued that school is a house of joy and perfection. If children experience school fear and continuous stress situations, a question has to be asked: why this happens?

School-related problems and the speed of contemporary life brings in a lot of tension and rush which can lead to physical ailments since children’s reaction to spiritual conflicts harms not only their mind, but also body. Excessively high volume of studies even at primary school, parents’ expectations and teachers’ attempts to convey as much knowledge as possible impose an emotional pressure on students. As a result, they experience stress situations, which, by repeating regularly, cause the feeling of fear in students. We can call this feeling school fear and analyse it as an important and interesting phenomenon.

In the rapidly changing world, the best chances to achieve success have flexible, creative, and able to communicate and adapt people. Such individuals have an optimistic approach to problem solving and self-development. Meanwhile, people suffering from stress, experiencing constant fear, having poor opinion about themselves and painfully reacting to criticism are not able to compete with those able of critical thinking and adapting to constantly changing circumstances. It is important not only to help these individuals, but also to develop such educational ideas, which exclude stress and fear from the educational system. Continuous development and ability to change helps to ensure mutual understanding and respect between people. To avoid psychological crises, it is important to accept change, to adapt more flexibly to the new situations, to continuously develop one and to be prepared for changing one’s personal direction.

Modern society emphasising achievement and successful career, school curriculum requirements, complex exams demanding broad academic knowledge, uninteresting, traditional lessons and gaps in teacher competence lead to emergence of school fear and stress. There is no doubt that certain humiliation experienced after getting bad or unjust marks and anxiety caused by advice of tactless teachers make wounds in children’s soul, mind and body which cause certain ailments gradually turning into chronic disease. One might say that these are rare cases, which should not be given much consideration. However, how many such cases there are? It could be argued that these students lack learning motivation, but one of the functions of school and the entire education system is to strengthen learning motivation.

It is important to try to answer the question: what is wrong in educational ideas, teacher and student interaction and the educational system which turns school from the house of joy into a place causing illness, stress and feelings of fear?

Research methods: scientific literature analysis, documents analysis.

This problem is addressed in the four sections of this essay. In the first section, reasons behind the stress and school fear are analysed. The second section deals with philosophical, psychological and educational problems of school fear. In the third section, school level categories (educational forms and methods) are analysed. Finally, in the fourth section, student’s autonomy as a measure of fear prevention is discussed. The essay is ended with conclusions and recommendations.

Stress and fear: nature and reasons (determined by school and other factors)

Stress is a scattered phenomenon since stress situations are created both at school and at home. School cannot stay aside from dealing with this problem. Stress develops into school fear. It is interesting to compare characteristics of stress and fear suggested in various sources. Dictionary of Educational Terms (1993, in Lithuanian) gives this definition of stress:

Stress is a state of physical and mental overload caused by stimuli and situations of various origins. This state is caused by sudden impacts or long overload (fright, fear, conflict). Both students and teacher experience a certain load of tension during every lesson. Educational institutions are often subject to tense situations: examinations, teachers’ reproaches, interpersonal hostility, unfair assessment, work overload, etc. Stress-related tension is dangerous for physical and mental health.

Stress often has a positive, mobilising effect, prompts energetic action and active search for way out of the stress situation. However, when individual experiences stress constantly, continuously or intensively, stress can turn into distress, which has a negative effect on physical and emotional state, can cause various illnesses, or disorganise all activities of an individual. According to research, human body functions best under the limited influence of stressors. Too many or too intensive stressors turn stress into distress which leads to decrease in capacity and resistance of the body.

To summarise, stress is defined as a state caused by unfavourable situations, excessive workload, or other individuals’ influence. Stress (tension) is a state of mental and physiological tension emerging due to the change in external conditions or internal disorders (stressors). It manifests itself through physiological changes, emotional tension, frustration and fear. Stress is dangerous for physical and mental health. Hence, stress is not an acceptable state and ways should be sought avoid and fight it by socialising students and meeting their self-expression needs.

According to the Dictionary of Educational Terms (1993), fear is an emotion caused by perceived or imagined danger. Children feel fear when things or events, when they find themselves in under threat, which seems unavoidable, scare them. This causes ‘learned’ fear (phobias). Therefore it is important to avoid intimidation when raising children and to teach children to overcome problems and difficulties. Overcoming fear helps to develop courage; otherwise timidity can become a personal trait. Fright is dangerous for health: it may cause speech distortions, stammering, twitches and permanent anxiety.

Fear arises when individual encounters danger. In normal conditions, fear helps to avoid danger. Contrary to anxiety, fear is always related to a specific object in the environment – person, thing, or event. Fear is accompanied by tension, agitation, activity lacking in harmony and changed perception. Strong fear reduces individual’s active involvement in life. At the same time, fear warns about the imminent danger, stimulates vigilance, increases sensitivity, and suppresses pain and ability to adapt to the changed conditions. Fear is agitation, tension, and emotional state, presentiment of danger. An increasing, panic fear leads to illness and suffering. Fear is caused by big concern, anxiety and danger, which are often groundless, imaginary. Fear is an emotion caused by real or alleged danger, self-protection instinct, experiences, or upbringing. Regularly experienced fear can turn into a mental quality, i.e. timidity. Fear inhibits human activity, ingenuity, memory and ability to adapt to change. Being under constant stress and fear, individual is not able to meet life challenges.

Can a student who permanently experiences the feeling of fear express oneself as a personality?

Fear can be a consequence of stress experienced both at school and in family. It is worth discussing whether fear can be related only to school, whether family and society can also cause it? It can be argued that one feels fear towards something unknown. Fear is not always a consequence of stress. School-related phobias emerge when a child goes to school for the first time and is afraid of the unknown. Fear may emerge when a pupil expects repeating failure. The category of fear includes helplessness, threat and uncertainty. School fear also covers the notions of socium-related and achievement-related fear.

Factors causing students’ stress and school fear can be classified as follows:

  • External: legal, economic, political, technological, cultural.
  • Internal: values, culture, philosophy, human resources, communication, and qualification.
  • Those related to educational process: educational aims, curriculum, methods, tools, and interaction.

Fear can be analysed both at the school and at the educational system level. Reasons of stress and fear can be classified into those related to school and those unrelated to school. School-related problems bring to light the role of school as an institution with its own culture, ethos and community. In case of stress caused by other factors, it should be analysed whether it is in any way related to educational situations. Other reasons of stress can be punishments by parents, restrictions, prohibitions, or emotional aloofness at home.

Emergence of school fear is influenced by the following factors:

  • Teacher training paradigm, impacting teachers’ behaviour in the educational process: authoritarian vs. democratic, humiliation vs. praise.
  • Choosing the content of instruction material and conveying it through selected educational forms and methods.
  • Determining students’ abilities to be able to differentiate and individualise the educational content.
  • Achievement assessment: what is assessed – work or the whole personality?
  • Student relationships in the educational institution: competition or collaboration?
  • Parent support and cooperation with school.
  • Socium’s influence on the student.

Stress and fear related problems are embedded in the educational policy and laws, so school inadvertently causes stress and feeling of fear in children. How does it happen? One of the ambitions of the Lithuanian National Curriculum is to change society through education. The aim of the Curriculum is to provide deep education developing a student as a versatile individual. The Curriculum and the organisation of education are based on central attention given to a child, and an academic subject is a tool, which helps to develop child’s personality. Another aim of education is to provide children with sufficient base of the formal knowledge.

In the Lithuanian Educational Concept (1992), it is declared that the aim of education is laying the ground for a dynamically self-renewing society, an open and critical social consciousness, instead of justifying and establishing the existing social and ideological structures.

The above-mentioned document commits to establishing democracy at school, which means following the deeply embedded democratic values, establishing and following democratic relations in education, and providing universal accessibility. In other words, it is important educate individuals prepared for professional career, able to adapt, make decisions and act independently, to help them discover common human values and to build their life based on them. School should help individuals to unfold in the social and cultural space, to nurture cultural self-consciousness and understanding that they are not only the users of native language, but also its creators, responsible for its evolution and preservation of identity.

Educational laws have established general educational aims, in particular – education of a socially active individual. Only rational people can create democratic society. An important condition for learning democracy is students’ self-confidence and critical thinking. Their development requires atmosphere of freedom. Free school teaches socialisation not according to a certain formula, but by involving a student into social dialogue. This dialogue is a precondition for liberating the thoughts and actions and for personal autonomy, which are important for democracy. Meanwhile the National Examination Centre places completely different emphasis, first of all requiring reproduction of the formal knowledge. It is not the school, which sets this requirement; it has to comply with it disregarding students’ situation. Which priority should the school follow: thoughtlessly abide by educational laws or seek education of the whole child and encourage his self-expression?

Since school follows the National Curriculum, stress for students comes from outside. Students have to behave at school, as school requires, i.e. student’s role is unchanging, while he may violate the rules defining this role. Students cause stress and fear for themselves by inadequate behaviour. Based on the national educational documents and society expectations towards school, it can be argued that overcoming student stress and fear is an urgent issue on the way to creating an open, democratic society.

Is school itself capable of eliminating the reasons of student stress and school fear? The answer is yes in case of internal reasons, however school is not capable of eliminating the external reasons. It is restrained by bad decisions made at the macro level. Fear manifests itself at school but its roots are in the wrong educational policy.

Stress and fear emerge not only at school; this is not only an educational problem, but also a social phenomenon. What causes stress and school fear outside the school? These reasons are rooted in society and can be eliminated only by effort of the whole society. Stress may be experienced in family, and a child may bring it to school. Fear may be caused by change of school, strict teacher, difficult tests, but this is only a part of the problem. Often school fear embodies other problems of a child and her family – shyness, strong attachment to parents, parting anxiety, parents’ conflicts, or alcoholism.

Child’s educational experience is to a great extent determined by family and parents. Parents’ duty is to ensure that their children become a rationally autonomous individuals and democratic citizens. According to Almond (1981), today’s schools are tomorrow’s societies; therefore formation of the education system determines the formation of the future political and social order. How are parents to be granted the rights not for social control, but for promotion of critical decisions leading to autonomy? Moral and legal parents’ rights should be matched with their duties to society.

Problems of asocial families should be concern of the whole society because it has to protect children from negative phenomena and to take care of its social environment. Children should be protected from stress dangers by law. Here social care institutions should play a certain role. Most of the crimes are committed outside the school, however it should not completely withdraw from this problem: school has to influence the young generation. Immature person is not autonomous and he or she is not able to resist the outside impact.It should be admitted that children do not become autonomous in vacuum; this process requires relevant educational environments.

Although educational research has an independent object, one can easily notice in it several aspects – philosophical, psychological and sociological. It is obvious that educational reality is addressed from different perspectives. However, it must be admitted that only educational research analyses education in a syncretic way, as a system created by people and serving them. Hence, both educational researchers and practitioners should analyse their work from philosophical, psychological and sociological perspectives, rethinking the educational realities through reflection and double-loop learning. Philosophical approach is reflected in the development of intellectual autonomy and cultivation of critical discussion.

From the perspective of philosophy of education, there is no better way of addressing the problems as critical and reflective thinking. Philosophical perspective on education emphasises search for alternative thinking, raising educational and social questions, discovering the intellectual potential possessed by society. It is believed that philosophy can help to create a more effective educational theory because philosophy helps to discover the aims and methods and to critically analyse the cultural preconditions of education. Philosophy provides us with general perspective a broader approach. Obviously, educational theory covers more than philosophy, using the input of many areas. Interface of philosophy and other sciences in education helps to organise educational process and makes it clearer.

During the 20th century, Lithuanian school was following the traditional educational paradigm, which sees education as transmission of generalised social experience to students. According to the new paradigm of liberal education which is aimed at nurturing child’s natural abilities, only education responding to the current needs of individual and society can meet the requirements of the knowledge society. Establishment of the new paradigm first of all requires a large number of its adherents among teachers. A contrast between educational reality and the effort emerges: many teachers try to apply principles and technologies of liberal education and to propagate the unfolding of student personality, self-consciousness, creation of favourable educational environment, and teaching to solve problems. However, educational reality is laden with pedagogical conservatism and academic character of teaching. It can be expected that change of the educational paradigm will take a few decades and will be related to the new educational thinking. Type of the paradigm is also related to the state education system: traditional paradigm dominates in centralised system, whereas decentralisation is accompanies by emphasis on education of free individual. In other words, paradigm change and the political, social and educational evolution of society are synchronic, conditioning each other phenomena, thus democratic society reinforces the paradigm of liberal education, whereas educating free individual facilitates the development of democratic society. So, education involves search for methods, forms and learning environments, which integrates philosophical and educational perspectives.