Teaching requires “drama.” It is well known that in order to learn we
have to have anxiety. The anxiety could
be helpful or not depending on the event.
When anxiety gets overboard we become hooked to the situation with
overwhelming anxiety after a traumatic event, in the case of Post-traumatic
Stress Disorder.
My impression is that some of the situations in which
anxious students excel were ones in which greater persistence or more work
could result in better performance. One suspects that anxious college students
have reached the college level by responding to anxiety with increased
perseverance and effort. This was illustrated in Oosthoek and Acker's (1972)
finding that high-anxiety students reviewed an audiotape more frequently than
low-anxiety students. When
a clear course of action is available to anxious students, I would expect them
to use it. I attribute the poor performance of anxious students in student centered
classes (Domino, 1974; Dowaliby & Schumer, 1973) to a lack of clarity about
the activities necessary to achievement.
We have had athletes that says: “no drama, things are
fine,” when we see that things are falling apart. They had had no anxiety because the situation
does not produce anxiety for them; lack of experience or too much familiarity
with the situation which does not cause anxiety are into play for the athlete. Therapy to change depends on creating anxiety
for the patient in order to learn new tricks.
We have lost many athletes because of their lack of experience, but
mainly because they are so used to failures that anxiety (drama) is not
present.
Should coaches create drama in order to
teach? It depends on the kind of athlete we
have. Is the education good enough so
they can strive for the goal or the opposite? Drama should be learned at home
or at least the possibility to learn from drama.
We have been working with families to overcome
ignorance and lack of drama when drama should be present. We’ll see how it will turn out.
