Fear and Learning: Trauma-Related Factors in the Adult Education Process

Simply stated, trauma changes the brain. Some of the most persistent changes in the brain involve the capacity to acquire new cognitive information and retrieve stored information—both essential for effective functioning within our current educational system. The result is that, all too often, traumatized children experience the added insult of doing poorly in school, thereby failing within the one setting that might have been safe, predictable, and trauma-free. Even the fortunate children who have not been traumatized outside of school may experience shame and humiliation in the classroom. Too many children therefore grow up hating school, think they are stupid and incapable, and soon give up on themselves and the process of academic learning. But many grow up to become adult learners who eventually need to return to school. This chapter reviews fundamental issues that may help educators better understand the nearly one-third of the adult population who bring to their classroom a history of abuse, neglect, developmental chaos, or violence that influences their capacity to learn, as well as those who, in response to stress-inducing pedagogical methods, have acquired cumulative educational trauma leading to fear conditioning.