There is a common trait among today's students: they do not stop at merely feeling an emotion; they use that emotion as their logic. The feeling of "I don't want to do this" immediately leads to the judgment that "I don't need to do this." The sensation of boredom quickly translates into the conclusion that "this class is meaningless." It is as if momentary feelings are accepted as objective facts.
This is not a simple issue of attitude. Emotional reasoning has become the default wiring of their thinking. The reflex of "swallowing what is sweet and spitting out what is bitter" dominates their overall learning. What matters to them is not the ultimate purpose, but the immediate sensation. Avoiding instant discomfort takes priority over long-term growth.
The intriguing part is that while many educators recognize this phenomenon as a problem, they repeat the same error in their approach to solving it. When students struggle, educators tend to break assignments into even smaller pieces, make them easier, and offer quicker rewards. It is an approach that says, "If you just do this right now, it will get easier." On the surface, this seems like a practical and effective strategy. However, a fatal paradox lies hidden within it.
This method may temporarily lower student resistance. Yet, at the same time, it repeatedly conditions the student’s brain with a dangerous message: discomfort is something to be avoided, difficulty is something to be bypassed, and thinking should be wrapped up as quickly as possible. Ultimately, we are not persuading students; instead, we are reinforcing a cognitive habit that calculates immediate sweetness first. Ironically, this very method of education has become the breeding ground for today's impatient and restless generation.
The core of the issue is not the fact that students experience stress. The real problem is that students are losing the ability to sustain their thinking while enduring that stress.
Learning is inherently uncomfortable. The process of understanding principles is slow, ambiguous, and often frustrating. It is precisely through navigating this discomfort that critical thinking is forged and cognitive patience is cultivated. When faced with a difficult problem and unable to find an immediate answer, the brain finally begins its search. It builds connections, forms hypotheses, and corrects mistakes, thereby training its muscles of thought.
However, today's students give up before they even reach this point. The reason is simple: they have been conditioned by instant stimulation and immediate answers for far too long. The seamless outcomes delivered by short-form videos, automated recommendations, and generative AI constantly train the brain to seek the "fast and easy path."
In this environment, the role of education is not to eliminate student discomfort. Rather, it is to design structures that help them endure it.
This requires intellectual delays: forcing them to tolerate the silence that follows a question, training them to dissect the process of an error rather than merely comforting their feelings about a wrong answer, and making them discover principles on their own instead of handing them easy solutions. These mechanisms are not meant to torment students. They are training exercises designed to restore the power of sustained thinking.
True education is not the art of making students comfortable. It is the art of ensuring that students do not stop thinking even in the midst of discomfort. Moving beyond the sensory reflex of "swallowing what is sweet and spitting out what is bitter," we must help them understand on their own why they must endure this bitterness. Only at that pivotal juncture will emotion step down from the seat of logic, and thought begin to reclaim human agency.
This is precisely the ability we need most in the age of AI. It is not the capability to obtain answers quickly, but the capacity to endure the silence of an unanswered inquiry and push a question to its absolute limit. Future outcomes will not be determined by those who possess more convenient tools, but by those who can engage in deeper, prolonged thought.
The real problem with the current mainstream curriculum is that it makes it far too easy to bypass the process of understanding principles—a process that requires enduring the bitter taste of discomfort. An even more serious issue is that the training to comprehend why one must walk this path, and the practice of persuading and moving forward alongside peers who have not yet understood, is disappearing as well. As a result, students are conditioned to prioritize their individual, immediate satisfaction over the experience of co-creating mutual understanding. While individual comfort may be reinforced, the social muscles of persuading and connecting with one another are steadily weakening.
However, a society is not stabilized when individuals simply go their own separate ways and scatter. It is only when we understand, persuade, and cooperate with one another that unnecessary conflicts and stress are truly reduced. No matter how exceptional one's abilities and knowledge may be, their value cannot fully come alive if they remain disconnected from others. An individual's capabilities exert true power only when society understands, respects, and requires that value. Ultimately, a person who cannot persuade and move those around them will inevitably hit a wall using only their solitary talent, and that limitation will eventually loop back as greater isolation and stress.
Similarly, the assertion that law functions holds true only within relationships where law is mutually recognized and shared. No matter how sophisticated our laws, institutions, and technologies may be, the world grinds to a halt if they fail to flow toward one another and instead remain disconnected. Functionality may exist, but an isolated function is closer to stagnation than actual operation.
This principle applies equally to the era of artificial intelligence. No matter how deeply sophisticated AI permeates our world, a society cannot move forward if humans refuse to look at one another, remaining trapped in emotional instincts and rejecting genuine communication. On the surface, every function might appear to be working perfectly. Systems will run, data will accumulate, and algorithms will calculate at ever-increasing speeds. Yet, the moment human thought ceases within that framework and the connections meant for mutual understanding are severed, that society has already lost its vitality.
Ultimately, what drives civilization is not a mere collection of functions. It is the power of understanding that allows progress to flow between those functions. That understanding cannot grow from a habit of quickly consuming easy answers. It flourishes only within the cognitive patience that endures discomfort to push a question to the very end. No matter how brilliant the AI technology blanketed across the world, the moment humans cannot tolerate the pain of independent thought, that civilization will stall—cloaked in its most sophisticated shell. What remains will not be a progressive society, but a colossal, metallic system where only functions survive while vitality is dead.
Perhaps these thoughts and hopes of mine are nothing more than a faint echo reverberating against a tide that can no longer be turned back. Even so, there is one thing I always urge my students never to forget: the gap between those who endure pressure and hardship to rise above them, and those who grow accustomed to avoiding discomfort, will only widen with time.
As that gap grows, so too does the weight of what society demands each individual to overcome, along with the stress they must bear. In the end, today’s small acts of avoidance may offer temporary comfort, but they inevitably return as far greater pressures tomorrow. That, precisely, is the true problem of the reality they will one day confront.
