Too Scared To Learn

Book excerpt: Too Scared to Learn explores the impact of women's experiences of violence on their learning, and proposes radical changes to educational programs through connecting therapeutic and educational discourses. Little attention has previously been paid to the impact of violence on learning. A large percentage of women who come to adult literacy programs have experienced, or are currently experiencing, violence in their lives. This experience of violence negatively affects their ability to improve their literacy skills. Literacy programs and other educational programs have not integrated this reality into their work. This book builds on extensive research that revealed the wide range of impacts violence has on adult literacy learning. Interviews with counselors and therapists, literacy learners, and educators working in different situations, and a wide range of theoretical and experiential literature, form the basis of the analysis. Educators are offered information to support reconceptualizing programs and practices and making concrete changes that will enable women to learn more effectively. The book makes clear that without an acknowledgment of the impact of violence on learning, women, rather than getting a chance to succeed and improve their literacy skills, get only a chance to fail, confirming to themselves that they really cannot learn. Essential reading for literacy and adult education practitioners, teachers of English as a second language, and education theorists, Too Scared to Learn explores the intersection among trauma, psychological theory, and pedagogy. The book is filled with a wealth of practical ideas, possibilities, and thoughts about what practitioners might do differently in classrooms and educational institutions if we begin to think differently about violence.