Publication: Too Scared To Learn: Women, Violence, and Education

• Horsman, Jenny

Too Scared to Learn examines in-depth the links for women
between literacy learning and violence. Extensive research
that reveals the wide range of impacts violence has on
adult learning forms the basis of the book. Horsman draws
on interviews with counselors and therapists, literacy
learners, and educators working in different situations,
and on a wide range of theoretical and experiential
literature. A broad array of information is offered to
enable educators to change programs and practice in
concrete ways that will enable women to learn more
effectively.

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. The book
clearly demonstrates that without an acknowledgment of the
impacts of violence on learning, women -- rather than
getting a chance to succeed and improve their literacy
skills -- get only a chance to fail and confirm to
themselves that they really cannot learn. It makes a strong
case for a theoretical shift in understanding violence in
society away from individualized medicalized approaches
that minimize its impact. Building on a new understanding
of issues of violence, the book offers concrete and
practical information on how learning situations for adult
women can be redesigned. While the research and practice
that informs this book is drawn primarily from work with
adult literacy learners, the implications are much broader
-- extending to girls' experiences of learning and to all
other settings in which adult women endeavor to learn.

A central purpose of this book is to build a bridge between
therapeutic and educational discourses in order to encourage
greater exchange of knowledge between the two fields and to
contribute to the development of new discourses and
practices that reconceptualize the intersection between
violence and learning. This reconceptualization is crucial
because previous understandings have pathologized learners
and minimized the problem, rather than recognize the need
to develop educational practices that facilitate learning
for all.