With the rapid approach of finals, I have noticed a phenomenon in myself and many other students here at SMCC: increased anxiety and fear about finals and the stress involved in testing. Why does this burnout or shutdown happen? From my experience as someone who grew up with a father who suffers from PTSD, I see similarities in the reaction to the stress of these students and those of my father when we walked into a crowded store. This would suggest that it is a response like trauma. Hell, I noticed it even now while I am writing this article. My mind is racing. My chest is getting tight. The signs of an anxiety attack. But what causes this?

There is research (see sources below) to support the claim that the current public school curriculum could be putting too much stress on the youth of the United States, causing symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to the American Psychiatric Association, symptoms of PTSD are:

1. Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the traumatic event
2. Recurrent distressing dreams in which the content and/or effect of the dream are related to the traumatic event
3. Dissociative reactions which the individual feels or acts as if traumatic. 
4.  Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event 
5.  Avoidance of or efforts to avoid distressing memories, thoughts, or feelings about or closely associated with the traumatic event

These are all things that the people I know and interact with on a daily basis have when testing comes along. “I tend to need to walk away and then come back when I clear my mind,”(Kassidy Kwasinak personal communication)  said SMCC student Kassidy Kwasinak  This is Avoidant behavior similar to the behavior of people who suffer from PTSD They avoid spaces and or activities that are related to school as it is traumatic, making it harder to focus on work and classes with an overarching fear of failure hanging in the room. 

 There have been multiple studies done on stress and its consequences for the mental state of the student. These studies, while not saying outright that schools are causing students to be traumatized, do say that the stress levels of students when it comes to school are at unprecedented levels.. 

In my own life, I have noticed significantly less stress from classes that don’t include big standardized tests and pointless busy work. This makes the claim even more plausible. I asked a student here at SMCC that has been in the military what causes them or people that they know that share military experience the most stress in the civilian world. Their response was  “Things that don’t make sense cause more stress for people with PTSD.” (personal communication) 

Nothing taught to students via meaningless tasks makes any sense to their brain because most standardized testing just enforces answering questions without any actual purpose to the student beyond the grade they get, which even then has nothing to do with their actual intelligence. The veteran I asked about their experience with education and stress said that the behaviors that they deal with when  they are in a stressful situation  are more of a learned behavior due to the structure of the military. This can also be said for people who can’t test in large groups. The innate fear of not being able to finish at the same rate or not being able to get better grades isn’t a behavior you are born with. Fear is learned through experiences. 

I, like many, have learned to be scared of school because it was designed to be that way in the United states. The standardization of the education system has made school a threatening environment for many young people.  The stress is illustrated by increased cortisol levels in students.  According to a  study  performed by Furman University “Cortisol levels increased markedly during the academic term com-pared to the end of summer/beginning of the term.”(Stetler & Guinn, 2020) the correlation between current enrollment in college  and higher cortisol levels  is undeniable. A commonality between people who have textbook PTSD and college students is higher cortisol levels.

Traumatic responses are not just about cortisol.  They are also about perceived stress, something that both the study from Furman university and from another study I read about stress at a high school level by researchers from the University of Pécs, Hungary talked in depth making a strong connection between perceived stress and student performance. Both said that students during the school year are put under constant stress on a daily basis. This constant stress leads to lack of sleep, a feeling of being lost, an overwhelming sense of dread and many challenges. These are what causes PTSD to form or at least PTSD-like symptoms. According to  an article written by Randy Riddle of Duke university “Studies of high school students show that too much homework can  produce diminishing returns on student learning.”(Riddle, 2022) In other words, the more homework the less likely the students are to retain it. 

What should we do about it? Is a question that I have been asked by many people during my research into this phenomenon I like to call Educational Trauma. The answer, I believe,  is  the removal of standardized tests as they are useless and harmful for students. In addition, Teachers should advocate for less homework to make it easier for students to balance school work and their personal lives. Make education a free form process that is adaptable to the needs of a student rather than requiring the student to be adaptable to the work. 

SOURCES:

American Psychiatric Association. (2022. March 16. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders, 5th ed.

Riddle, R. (2022, September 23). How much homework is too much? Duke Learning Innovation & Lifetime Education. https://lile.duke.edu/blog/2018/10/How-much- homework-is-too-much/

Stetler, C. A., & Guinn, V. (2020). Cumulative cortisol exposure increases during the academic term: Links to performance-related and social-evaluative stressors. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 114, 104584. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2020.104584

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.(2016, June). Impact of the DSM-IV to DSM-5 changes on the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519704/table/ch3.t14/