Now We're Stressed Out
Bags under our eyes mean not enough sleep, not focusing means our brains our full, and
jumpiness is a sign of hyper-vigilance. Stress can be healthy, but sometimes its timing can be harmful.
Every teacher and educator has a different opinion on testing, and how to properly determine a student’s brain power, but it’s mostly split into whether single definitive testing is accurate or not. Since the beginning of time, we have taken that last test or evaluation, so naturally, this idea has travelled
through the evolution of education. Yet, not even recently, ideas have come into play to prove that basing a student’s performance off one test is not as effective as some people think it may be.
Grade Nine science and math students learn that there are independent and dependent
variables. An independent is a variable that doesn’t depend on the variation of another, and a dependent is one that does. What happens if, the night before an exam, a student’s hormones go off track, and it throws off their sleep cycle? New studies show that an extra hour of sleep can be the difference between an A and a B. Perhaps the student preparing for a test has a disagreement that blows up between them and their parents, and it’s all they can think of? These two examples are dependent variables, both of which are based off actions that the student can’t control. These are two fairly common things that could majorly affect someone performance, but what do they have to do with how much the student studied? Or how much they payed attention in class? The answer: nothing at all.
It’s stress that ruins their chances of doing well. Psychiatrist Robbie Gonzalez once said that “Stress makes it harder for your brain to function, burdening it with cognitive loads that can interfere with your ability, not only to learn and assimilate knowledge, but to translate ideas into meaningful information.”
So, tell me, is it really effective to base 30% of a student’s grade on one exam, when there are so many possible uncontrollable variables?
Photo credit: healthaim.com