That was the title I gave to the first book I wrote directly about violence and learning. It wasn’t my first choice. I wanted to call it “Canaries in the Mine.” After steeping myself in the trauma literature I was frustrated with the writings that suggested that people who have experienced violence overreact to “minor stimuli.” I couldn’t bear the idea that healing was seen as reaching a place where the victim or survivor comes to accept the risk of further violence as the reality of life.

I was infuriated by that expectation. I was learning all too clearly that there is nowhere free of violence to “go away and heal.” I saw too that for too many people violence is not an occasional incident, but an ongoing reality, or at least ever-present danger. Healing, I felt, should not be the expectation that we adjust to the sexism, racism, homophobia, ableism, classism, and so many other insidious violences, that too often expose a person to further violence.

I wanted to insist that the reality of the daily expectation of violence is and should be unbearable. I was drawn to the idea of the canaries that miners used to carry into the mines to keep them safe. I found myself speaking often of the idea that the miners didn’t tell their birds to “get over it” to get back on their perch when the methane gas made them keel over. Instead they would have hurried out, racing for fresh air themselves. They knew the deadly gas would get them next if they were too slow. They didn’t tell their birds they were “overreacting” because they themselves couldn’t yet feel the effect of the gas. They ran!

I began to wonder why society didn’t see the sensitivities and triggers of survivors as indicators that there is too much violence, too much toxicity in daily life. I became insistent that there was something wrong with the judgement offered in the therapeutic literature that people who have experienced trauma “overreact to minor stimuli.” I was clear to me that “minor” would only be used as a description by someone not experiencing that violence or numbed to its impact. I believed the description perpetuated the frame that there are normal, appropriate reactions, and unacceptable ones.

Clearly the stimuli do not feel minor, when too many violent experiences layer and fill up one being. That of course, sadly, may frequently be the case for those mistreated and violated by prejudices against a particular, race, class, ability, gender, gender presentation, or sexual orientation. For the person experiencing relentless violations the reaction becomes the only one possible in the face of the experience. I argued that the person overwhelmed by the experience of too many violent experiences is the canary in the mine. Listening, not judgment, is essential.

But canaries in the mines, though it meant a lot to me, didn’t say the book was about violence, or about education. So instead Too Scared to Learn became the second choice. Many people have loved this phrase over the years. They have often told me: “Yes that was exactly what it felt like. I was too scared to learn.” It has become the title for many workshops, presentations, and courses.

But still I’m never entirely sure I want to choose that title now. My concern is that it ignores how much is learned through violence. We learn from all experience. The challenge is that through violence too often we learn many negative messages. We may learn that we are worthless, that we deserve to be mistreated, that we are only good for one thing.

Particularly important for educators is that violence may teach us that we cannot learn the things we choose to learn. We may fear we cannot succeed in the studies we want to take on. We may feel defeated by the tasks we dream of completing. Perhaps, even more disturbing, learning enforced through violence may get in the way of dreaming of possibilities at all.

So the challenge for us as learners and as educators, is to make it possible to learn afresh. The need is for us in either role to figure out ways to loosen the old learning that limits. Then we can explore how to create spaciousness for new learning, learning that opens fresh opportunities, not only in individuals, but more broadly in society.

Originally draft 2018