University Life Now ‘Artificial’

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30677, 17 February 1965, Page 1

University Life Now ‘Artificial’

While it was good for an organised sport to be compulsory for secondary school i pupils, it was not good for a particular sport to be compulsory; the choice of tlie sport should be voluntary, said the physician in charge of student health at Queen’s University, Belfast (Dr. Wilson Johnston) in Christchurch yesterday.

The value of a sport to the student was 50 per cent the physical exercise and 50 per cent the mental relaxation, Dr. Johnston said, and if the student was forced to take part in a sport he or she did not like, the student would not get anything like the same benefit. Dr. Johnston, who started the student health scheme at Queen’s University in 1948 and has worked there ever since, said many students at universities under-estimated the importance of mental stress; no young person of 18 or 20 liked to admit they might have nerves. The problem of mental stress had increased greatly in recent years, many factors

being to blame. These included the sometimes excessive importance placed on academic success both by society and especially by parents, the increasing size and thus increasing impersonality of universities and high schools, financial considerations, and the increased competition at universities.

Also, whereas it was true 20 years ago that a university education greatly improved and broadened a student’s character for later life, he thought this was no longer always true. University life was now a very artificial form of existence, and whereas universities could once have been regarded as seats of gracious living or culture this was now not necessarily true. He felt that much of the cultural life of universities had now disappeared, and they were turning more into “technical mind factories," this resulting from the pressures of the times. Examination Panic Another problem at universities—and at high schools —was the student who, although he knew his work, “went blank” and panicked when faced with an examination. This occurred in varying degrees, and was not a

humorous pheonmenon, but an acute state of anxiety. If a student came to the health service early enough—at least three or four weeks before the examination—he could be helped. If he left it to two or three days before, he would usually have then reached a state of most acute anxiety, and was beyond assistance.

At Queen’s University this sort of anxiety state was on the increase, mainly because of the grants system. About 95 per cent of the students were on Government grants, and had the knowledge that if they failed their examinations for even one year, the grants would be withdrawn. This led, in some cases, to anxiety and even panic. If there was a medical reason for failure, however, the grant was now extended. However, parents who placed extreme importance on examination results—and this applied in the case of secondary school pupils as well—could often provoke serious states of anxiety in the student. He felt students at secondary schools, before they went

to the universities, should have counselling in how to study and in how to relax. He also felt that a health service at high schools, revealing and dealing with anxiety problems early, could relieve much trouble in later university life. The pressures caused by girl and boy friends at universities were also increasing, for although he was not opposed to such friendships, it sometimes resulted in the student being faced with the alternative of being attentive to the friend or attentive to studies. This problem, too, could lead to disturbances. Dr. Johnston has been attending a conference of Australian and New Zealand university medical officers in Dunedin, as the representative of the British Medical Officers’ Association. He will leave New Zealand on February 26, and on his way home will visit universities in both Australia and the United States. He has already visited both the Otago University and the University of Canterbury, both of which had excellent student health systems, he said.