Our granddaughter, like tens of thousands of other first-year Canadian university students is currently undergoing the stress and anxiety of wracking their memories and cognitive abilities inherent in writing final semester exams. How else prove to the certification authorities that students have managed to receive and successfully grapple with the information related to their studies that they must make a part of their intelligence capabilities?

The long-lasting memory of the traumatic process will haunt them for the rest of their lives. I was not myself, in my teen years able to pursue an academic education beyond Grade ten, when my parents informed me I had been exposed to sufficient educational opportunities at age 15 to enable me to get out in the workforce to begin earning a living, and in the process, help my parents provide for me and my younger siblings. Despite which I felt sufficiently troubled by the emotions that exams up to that point in my schooling had profoundly affected me with, to recall them in nightmares decades afterward. Even though the disbelief and disappointment of knowing my school days were over had assailed me deeply at the time.

Now, however, the academic and scientific community dealing with human psychology is reaching a conclusion that imposing the rigours of exams on developing brains and psyches may not be the absolute best way of determining which among the students they are aimed at have excelled at learning and which have not. "We are in the midst of an educational revolution. Everything's going to change now", stated Stuart Shanker, distinguished research professor of philosophy and psychology at York University, a leading figure in educational reform.

While Alberta appears to be leading the way, preparing to depend more on appraisals of daily work than standardized high school exams, it appears that Ontario is right behind with a pilot project relating to a new evaluation model, in view of the high-stress exams actually resulting in a false idea of a student's capabilities. Florida has eliminated a major Grade 11 exam; Colorado, Washington, Arizona and others are moving toward similar conclusions.

Recent scientific investigation has highlighted stress, cognition, memory and attention require a different evaluative approach in concluding what students have been able individually to absorb and retain of their studies. "It is difficult to communicate the pain, suffering, and misery suffered by high-test-anxious subjects before, during, and after major evaluative experiences", Moshe Zeidner, education professor at University of Haifa, Israel wrote in his book Test Anxiety.

"There is a time and a place for diagnostics, but a sole reliance on them does not seem wise to me", Sian Beilock, Human Performances Lab head at the University of Chicago who researches cognitive performance under pressure, stated. The stress inherent in exams, Professor Beilock points out, "rob us of our limited ability to pay attention to what we need to". Concern associated with pressure-performances "soak up the resources that we could be using to focus on a test."

Support for the complete relaxation of traditional methods of evaluating students' success in retaining the knowledge they have been exposed to is not by any means universal. "We are now reaping the consequences of that emphasis [the 'self-esteem' movement]. We've not trained our kids to deal with that kind of stress ... We've done a generation of kids a disservice by giving them so much self-esteem that they can't deal with failure", claims Doretta Wilson, executive director of the Society for Quality Education, decrying the 'Montessorification' of higher education.

But the tide does appear to be turning. Likely it will do so far sooner in the West than in the East where the rigours of tests and exams winnow out students incapable of performing under pressure. And photographs of desperate parents clambering up the walls of educational institutions in India -- to try to pass exam solutions through to their children sweating inside to respond to critical questions whose success will determine their futures -- will continue to amaze others untouched by such a phenomenon in their lives, looking on with disbelief at what people will expose themselves to in hopes of inspiring their young toward success.

AP Photo/Press Trust of India    In this Wednesday, March 18, 2014 photo, Indians climb the wall of a building to help students appearing in an examination in Hajipur, in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

So, I've sent a lengthy article on the topic along to my granddaughter in an email attachment. And have little doubt that it will fail dismally to amuse, entertain or instruct her, let alone infuse her with hope for the future, while she is bending her considerable brain-power to its limits attempting to achieve the high marks she knows will guide her own aspirational future.