Fear in the News

I saw an interesting in the New York Times about fear. Here is the comment I made:

I am a psychologist. I work with disabled adults. Many were successful workmen who suffered an injury, say hurt their back, and have to retrain. I test them to plan for their retraining and, for many, they are absolutely terrified when it comes to anything related to school. On average, they are as bright as the average person, but many have poor handwriting and, because of that, homework took forever to complete and interfered with their “education,” e.g. building things and fixing their bikes when they were young. Yet homework pressures were relentless and this created a learned fear of school. We can’t protect children from every phobia they may acquire, snakes, teddy bears, etc., but we don’t have to continue to terrorize young people over homework to the point that they hate and fear school. Kenneth Goldberg, Ph.D. author of The Homework Trap. www.thehomeworktrap.com.