John Thompson: Fear, Teen Stress and High Stakes Tests
Guest post by John Thompson.
I am a Baby Boomer. I was born in 1953, during the greatest economic boom in history. Tomorrow, we knew, would be better than today. And, today, according to the American Psychological Association, we remain the less stressed than subsequent generations.
My generation's fate could have been less rosy. Our parents survived the Great Depression and World War II, and some imposed an extreme competitive, stressful value system. The symbol of hard-charging fathers who lived their lives through their sons was the Jimmy Piersall story. My father and I watched on television when the Hall of Fame baseball player had his infamous meltdown in the centerfield of Yankee Stadium. Across the nation, this led to conversations between parents and children about the dangers of living up to the external demands of others. With the assistance of the movie, Fear Strikes Out, a cross generational conversation helped young people learn how to seek balance in their lives.
Piersall's Yankee Stadium breakdown, by the way, occurred during the Sputnik "crisis" years. This was a time when a supposed crisis in American education was manufactured. During this panic,