At some point I am going to write about anxiety that exists among the administration and faculty of Christian higher education institutions. Today is not the day. Instead, I am going to offer a brief synopsis of an "in progress" paper I am hoping to submit to a journal for publication.
The paper's thesis is as follows:
One of the least recognized and most concerning aspects of online theological education is that it nurtures chronic anxiety. In order to unpack this statement let me define chronic anxiety and it's systemic nature. Counselor and educator Peter Steinke highlights the etymological origins of the term anxiety as "wind" or "air", "choking" or "strangling" (Steinke, 2019). Notice the physiological link between the experience of anxiety and not being able to breathe. He describes someone who is chronically anxious as being unable to regulate their emotional capacities.
According to therapist Murray Bowen, when two parties are in a chronically anxious system, they look to triangle in a third party to alleviate the anxiety. This can be seen when someone has a disagreement with another person and later they talk to a third party about the conflict. It serves to transfer the anxiety, shifting it around to make it more comfortable for the anxious person.
While I don't have time to explain the details, the paper I am working on looks at technology as a third party that can be triangled in to the learning system. Before the move to online learning, students interacted directly with the teacher, other students, and the learning material. Now, computers, phones, and digital interfaces have been triangled into education.
While what I am suggesting may seem like a stretch, the research on people and their prolonged interaction with digital devices indicates growing rates of anxiety as one of the results. While the Internet is allowing more students greater access to Christian higher education, excessive uses of the Web also seems to produce heightened levels of anxiety.
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