In these days the high school exams are taking place and, like every year, controversy and discussions are rekindled around this event. There are those who consider them a fundamental rite of transition to adulthood and those who, on the contrary, consider them an obsolete evaluation tool, the result of an educational system that struggles to evolve. Some would like a return to the rejection, others propose the abolition to save students a stress considered superfluous. The high school exam perfectly embodies the central dilemma of the Italian school: a tightened school between the need to form competitive individuals and the need to guarantee inclusiveness. On the one hand you want to prepare students capable of dealing with the world of work, solid and well structured. On the other, we want to offer all the same opportunities, recognizing limits and personal predispositions.

Stress

But is it really possible to keep these two objectives together? Often, to motivate the students, more or less explicit pressures are used linked to the fear of failure: negative votes, disciplinary notes, suspensions, up to the spectrum of the rejection, perceived as the nightmare par excellence. In this perspective, stress is seen as a necessary tool, useful for strengthening the psyche of young people and preparing them for adult life. However, we know well that there is a threshold beyond which stress not only stops being healthy, but it can even become harmful. The trauma, in psychology, arises precisely from a stress so high that it cannot be adequately elaborated, with consequences that can hinder personal development.

There are even those who consider bullying a sort of social ritual to be faced to mature, although today we know with certainty that it is a form of abuse capable of generating very serious, often permanent psychological and relational consequences. The problem, as simple as it is unsolvable, is that we are not all the same: what for some represents a positive stimulus, for others it can turn into a destructive experience. And, unless I hypothesize an entirely personalized educational system – an impractical possibility in reality – the stress generated by the school context inevitably remains unequal. In light of all this, is the high school exam really useful? Does it favor the well -being and social integration of young people, or does it hinder them? As it is easy to guess, there is no univocal response. Much depends on individual characteristics. However, it is clear that, in recent years, the exam has been taking more and more the face of a symbolic ceremony, with almost obvious results.

Very rare failures

The failures have gradually reduced to become very rare. It would almost be said: it is worth completely eliminating them. But those few failures that remain continue to play a fundamental role, acting as a deterrent and from coercive incentive to study. In short, they are an element of essential stress in the current educational model. On the contrary, increasing the number of rejection to return “seriousness” to the exam would risk causing even worse side effects, generating traumas capable of compromising the psychological growth of many students. And so a paradox is created: if everyone is promoted, those who do not do it are even more humiliated, perceived as “irrecoverable”. But who are these “terrible” students? And how did they get to the exam, if they were so unprepared? Here opens another fundamental question. Today, the few who are not admitted to the high school exam are not necessarily lacking in the knowledge level. Often these are children who do not have sufficient socio-emotional skills, in particular the ability to regulate anxiety. Some of them are so frightened that they are not even able to present themselves in the classroom. This is the case, for example, of young people who live forms of extreme social retreat, such as hikikomori.

Harder for those behind

Paradoxically, therefore, the fact of not rejected almost nobody ends up making even more violent the exclusion of those few who remain behind, with a devastating impact on their self -esteem and, in some cases, also on their mental health. For this reason, in my opinion, there are two roads that can be traveled: either you choose to really enhance competitiveness, bringing the exam back to its original function and reintroducing significant failures, or you decide to radically change its course, transforming the exam into a purely symbolic moment, adaptable to the skills-including socio-emotional ones-of each individual student, however renouncing the idea of ​​the battle.