If you were starting from scratch and looking for a way to teach people to deal with stress/anxiety/deadlines, what would you do? Setting up a realistic, consequential-feeling but ultimately not too consequential, environment with stress/anxiety/deadlines where they would practice and learn seems like the common-sense way to do it to me. Even if you had specific things to teach (coping techniques etc.), you'd probably still want to have that kind of environment to test them out in practice.

Well, if I'd start from scratch I'd try to run experiments in different classes and see what works out best. Perhaps with a slight bias toward no grades because of the people in my life, there's a strong correlation between "cares a lot about grades" and "stress is psychologically harmful".

But fortunately I'm not starting out from scratch. People have made those experiments already. Grades suck.

Among other things that do work, guided retrospectives are one idea I would be tempted to implement. (Hell, we software developers know that too: when we want to get better, we hold retrospectives, we don't ask the scrum master to assign a letter grade!)

The grading holds you accountable, and places pressure to do better.

A person who is stressed or anxious is already feeling pressure. What makes you think they need more?

Well you learn to deal with it by being subjected to it. If you treat people like they're fragile, and don't apply this kind of pressure, they will grow up as fragile.

This is fascinating and new to me. What's your evidence?

In practically every sphere of human activity people are unskilled and get better through practice. Why would handling stress/anxiety be any different?

That one is easy! Stress/anxiety is a condition that makes all kinds of learning significantly more difficult.

A small amount of urgency can be helpful, but ideally it should be intrinsic (i.e. someone screaming at you or giving you letter grades is nowhere near as motivating as feeling that you can almost do it) and it's very easy to overshoot.

OK, but that doesn't answer the question of how to teach kids to deal with stress/anxiety. I agree that placing them under stress/anxiety probably damages their learning. I still think it's vital life experience to gain before adulthood.

Moreover, with no pressure, many kids will simply not put in effort to learn. That something so common sense is now neglected is bizarre.

Good scholastic performance by students in East Asian is not because schools in East Asian countries are low-pressure academic environments.