Whether they actually perceive themselves to be anxious, or have headache, stomach ache, or hives, many school-aged children are nervous about school.
In the language of Rational Emotive Therapy, it is not an external thing or event that causes anxiety, as anxiety arises from how we THINK about that external thing or event. However, in the case of the modern classroom, a case can be made that the way in which classes are managed is so stressful for the average young person, that it is rather difficult to avoid school-driven anxiety. Whether your student is scared of tests, a given teacher, big projects, group projects, or speaking in front of the class, there are things about modern education that essentially create situations too stressful for the average young person to manage easily. And, even more unfortunately, parents are often made into unwilling assistants in the creation of school anxiety.
Let's begin with a question: What is the root cause of school anxiety? In short, the basic assumption of intellectual education that all children ought to learn on the same schedule. Granted, we now have gifted classrooms and special education classrooms to accommodate variations from the average, but the basic premise remains that the mind can be educated on a fixed schedule, a schedule that is determined by bureaucrats.
Really, this ought to give us all pause. We send our children for swimming lessons and karate lessons and ice skating lessons, all of which operate based upon skills testing. A child works on a set of skills as long as she needs to, and when she passes them, she may proceed to another set of skills. Why does the mind of your child get less consideration than the body?
