Stress and learning

Why are we not teaching our students the barriers to learning? We are telling them lots of things to learn, like calculus, chemistry, physics, history, Jose Rizal, etc., but we are not teaching them how the brain functions and learns.

About 35 years ago, we convinced a group of parents with asthmatic children to attend a monthly lecture on the lungs as well as on the medications they can use at home so they can reduce emergency-room visits and hospitalizations. Three of us—two pediatricians and one allergist—alternated in giving the monthly talk. After a few months we noticed a reduction in the number of asthmatic children taken to the emergency room and being admitted in hospital.

Years later the lectures became a standard of practice called Asthma Education Program, which was administered to parents whose child ended in hospital after failed home management. This model is now used for the benefit of almost all children with chronic medical problems like cystic fibrosis, autism, ADHD, diabetes, allergy, celiac disease, depression, etc.

If this procedure is effective in the medical field, I think it will also be effective and benefit parents and educators in telling students about how the brain works and the factors that can derail learning.

There are a number of factors that result in school failure. The biggest factor is stress—not physical, but emotional.

Parents and educators should know how stress affects the brain and retards learning. Most of you have heard of PTSD, or posttraumatic stress disorder. This condition was first diagnosed among Vietnam War soldiers returning to their homeland, the United States. When examining the brain of soldiers who died from other causes but had a history of PTSD, researchers found in the hippocampus, the memory center, evidence of cell damage. However, those soldiers who had no history of PTSD had a normal hippocampus.

When monkeys are chronically stressed and their brain is put under an electronic microscope, scientists find damage in the memory brain cells similar to that in humans. This cellular finding is a result of the stress hormone called glucocorticoid, which goes up and stays elevated during prolonged stress. With reduced-functioning memory cells, it is easy to understand why learning is compromised.

When I was a premed student we had a number of teachers we considered “toxic.” They were strict, and shouted at students who gave a wrong answer. I was stressed out when attending their classes, and I cannot remember most of their lectures. However, in the classes of teachers who were funny and never raised their voice, I learned much better and I felt good.

Students suffering from chronic stress don’t do well in math, don’t process language efficiently, have poor memory, and cannot easily adapt old information to new problems. In any performance test, stressed students or workers generally perform poorly. In one study, adults with a high stress level performed 50 percent lower than those with low stress in life.

Unfortunately, the effects of stress are not limited to learning; they are also the harbinger of depression. Prolonged stress, especially when severe, can push students to depression and, in some cases, to suicide. In a recent Korean Air flight, I read in the newspapers in the plane that the suicide rate among students in a certain region in South Korea is the highest in the world. This is because admission to the best university is highly valued, and competition is intense. In that area during admission examinations, the environment is required to be as quiet as possible, to the extent that even airplanes are not allowed to land or take off.

During my second year in medical school, one student in our university system committed suicide. It was also a time when I felt I was at the end of my rope of persistence. I was stressed, not only because of my studies but also because of my parents’ financial situation. Neither of them finished high school. We survived on the earnings of their small tailoring shop and beauty parlor. There was a semester that my mother could not come up with my tuition. One night I couldn’t take it anymore. I started shouting, crying, and throwing soda bottles at a cement fence. When my mother came, I told her I wanted to quit medicine. But she spoke to me in a calm voice, and in time I settled down and heeded her plea that I continue my studies.

I remember that during our first few days in college we students were oriented on how to use the library, the time and days it is open, and how to borrow a book, when to return it, and the fine for lateness.

If we can teach students about the library, why not teach them also how the brain works so they can learn better and reduce school failure, just like parents with an asthmatic child reducing the visits to an emergency room and hospitalization?

We are lucky that the 21st century has brought us the fruits of many cognitive researches that can be used in our classrooms. To benefit from the research studies, we all should use these in our schools.

Dr. Leonardo L. Leonidas (nonieleonidas68@ gmail.com) is a 1968 graduate of the University of the Philippines College of Medicine. He retired in 2008 as assistant clinical professor in pediatrics from Boston’s Tufts University School of Medicine, where he was recognized with a Distinguished Career Teaching Award in 2009. He now spends part of his time in the province of Aklan.