this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2026
1 points (100.0% liked)

Public Health

1829 readers
4 users here now

For issues concerning:

🩺 This community has a broader scope so please feel free to discuss. When it may not be clear, leave a comment talking about why something is important.

Related Communities

See the pinned post in the Medical Community Hub for links and descriptions. link (!medicine@lemmy.world)

Rules

Given the inherent intersection that these topics have with politics, we encourage thoughtful discussions while also adhering to the mander.xyz instance guidelines.

Try to focus on the scientific aspects and refrain from making overly partisan or inflammatory content

Our aim is to foster a respectful environment where we can delve into the scientific foundations of these topics. Thank you!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
otter@mander.xyz
otter@lemmy.ca
1
Students are anxious – and it’s no surprise, since we are teaching them to be that way (theconversation.com)
submitted 3 weeks ago by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/publichealth@mander.xyz
15 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A theory dating back more than 100 years suggested that there is an optimal amount of stress for good performance, based on a study that had nothing to do with humans.

Researchers ran mice through a maze, using electric shocks to punish wrong choices. On harder tasks, moderate shocks produced the fastest learning, while stronger shocks made it worse. Over the years, this got reinterpreted into claims about punishment, reward, motivation and stress in humans.

But the original study was about how animals learn to avoid fear and pain, not about optimal learning at all. Once a mouse learns to avoid a shock, escape itself triggers dopamine release; in other words, the escape – not the discovery – is the reward.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] worhui@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I think this is in part due to scarcity and the declining middle class. Opportunities for people to have a fairly comfortable life are fewer and harder to achieve then they were in the past. As there are less resources the criteria to dole them out gets stricter as a way to determine who gets more of the shrinking allotment.

Education is one of the few levers left people can effect that will improve life. It’s easy to see the effects ripple backwards.

My fifth grader has academic anxiety about grades and how it will affect college and job prospects. To me that’s crazy; at this point it’s about the fundamentals of life. How could you know what job you want at 11? Much less what extracurricular activities will universities look for when you apply to college.

[–] steelplatedmech@piefed.ca 0 points 3 weeks ago

They see their parenrs struggling and see what is possibly in store for them, and their parents may also not believe like previous generations that their kid is destined to be better off than them.

Not surprising if the parents accomplished what the generation before them thought was the key to success of getting educated and choosing the right career path. So they've already "succeeded" and hit the ceiling and see it wasn't all they envisioned it to be and the job opportunities and salaries in relation to cost of living getting worse.

And the kids pick up on that.

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Your fith grader understands that when you say 'everything will be okay' that what you are really doing is lying to yourself because you are scared, which I understand but what else is your kid supposed to do except be background anxious about coming expulsions from their way of life that their parents clearly are dangerously ignorant of?

Your child's response is totally rational, it is your denial that isn't.

Your child will have an unimaginably worse life than you, if you can't accept that now it will destroy you and your future adult relationship with them.

I made the mistake of growing up ignoring those thoughts and believing things would generally be ok because the world view I was given was sickly incapable of anything but empty positivism and the whiplash has nearly killed me (so far).