Six-six culture or pressure to perform?
Should educational institutions tackle performance pressure? Or should they mainly teach their students to deal with this better? The VVD is afraid of creating a culture of six. Life is tough, get a helmet.
Picture: Type tank
The Verwey-Jonker Institute has listed the figures again especially for the House of Representatives: 44 percent of students in higher professional education or university education suffer from psychological complaints. That is more than the rest of the population and more than their peers. Women report twice as many complaints as men.
'Mental health crisis'
The institute points out the influence of social media, discrimination and performance pressure. Corona also plays a major role. Researchers are still seeing the effects of this, although the corona peak is now decreasing.
The findings are no surprise for Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf. Ever since he took office, he has said that the well-being of students requires more attention. The House of Representatives agreed with him during a debate on this on Thursday. Christian Union MP Don Ceder even spoke of a “mental health crisis”.
This is not about preventing performance pressure, but about making excellence impossible
Another voice came from Claire Martens-America of the VVD. She also sees that things are not going well, but is that really due to performance pressure? She summarizes: “The BSA must be abolished, selection at the gate must be prohibited, you can no longer graduate with honors and, read today, at Leiden University a course is switching to a project instead of a thesis, because a thesis is already too much. That is not preventing performance pressure, but making excellence impossible.”
'More forgiving'
In doing so, she opposed the analyzes that MPs had already given for an hour: society no longer offers young people any room to make the wrong choices (GroenLinks-PvdA) and with our meritocratic ideals we put too much pressure on their shoulders (CDA). Education should become “more forgiving”, “so that people fall less hard and get back up more easily” (NSC).
Martens-America wants to go the extra mile to combat a culture of six. “How can we ensure that MBO students can also excel?”
We pay attention to young people who are successful, but not to young people who fail
Ceder (CU) thought the VVD's worldview was too individualistic. “Isn't the flaw of our liberal society that we pay attention to young people who are successful, but not to young people who fail?”
thesis
Martens-America prefers to turn it around: “Why is it that our generation is becoming less and less resilient? I can assure you that deadlines are simply set in the labor market. Young people have to learn to deal with this. If we no longer do that, for example by taking away the thesis, what are we preparing our youth for?”
But what exactly is an incentive and what is a barrier, DENK MP Doğukan Ergin wondered. “Does Ms. Martens-America agree with me that we need to remove barriers so that as many people as possible can excel?”
“My employee always says: life is tough, get a helmet” stated Martens-America. “I don't think a thesis is a barrier, but something that prepares you for the real world.” BBB MP Claudia van Zanten later seemed to agree: “I am not in favor of mediocrity. It is good to strive for success.”
Middle position
Dijkgraaf chose a middle position in the debate. According to him, whether cum laude schemes should indeed be abolished is up to the programs themselves. He believes that education “should alleviate the pressure to perform, but it should also be a place to learn to deal with performance pressure.”
But, he warned: “Even if you think education is all about performance, you have to admit that good mental health helps with that learning performance.” Minister Dijkgraaf only had a short time to respond to MPs' questions. The debate was interrupted in the meantime and will not resume until June.
