Holistic Education Initiative

The Effect of Fear on Education

The post that follows comes to HEI from Ba Luvmour whose ongoing contribution to the field of holistic education and parenting is unsurpassed.  Here Ba reminds us of the insidious nature and cost of fear and how fear permeates our educational institutions as well as so much of our relationships with children.  Ba suggests that it is here, in relationships, that the remedy is accessible.

Fear

Fear eats at the minds and hearts of students, leaving a residue of undeserved shame and nebulous guilt. When frequently present, fear grinds away the structures of the mid-brain (amygdala, hippocampus, etc.) which are critical for learning and for memory. The wounding of all aspects of development undermines sense of place, trust, autonomy, and interconnectedness. Spiritual life withers. Social life becomes rife with suspicion and protectiveness against betrayal. Fear imprisons; once fear imprints we become our own jailor. In every way fear undermines every aspect of Holistic Education that we hold dear.

Josette and I do presentations on the effect of fear on education and ways to dispel it. These presentations specify how fear accomplishes all the soul destroying attributes named in the previous paragraph. Delineating these specifications here would require five blogs.

We have all been infected with fear. Many of us see that Holistic Education needs to be fear free and so do valuable work to make it so. We must continue to do so! No matter the sophistication of our programs, out engagement with nature, our commitment to self-knowledge, fear infiltrates, perhaps insidiously, into our learning communities. Denial only fertilizes it. It may come through the parents, from students who come from fear inducing schools, from the culture (actually, assuredly from the culture), from developmental mistakes inculcated through ignorance (often by well-intentioned adults), and from us, as the way fear manifests is often subtle and hidden behind rationalizations and justifications.

Before sharing some ways to dissolve fear there is one important, universal mechanism that must be understood. Josette and I call it emotional metabolism.

Feeling complexity develops primarily in the years 8 to 13. The range and nuance of emotions, such as envy, empathy, self-trust, injustice, melancholy, exhilaration, etc., become consciously known to the child.

This is the open window in which repeated feeling experiences are feelings learned. This is the window in which emotional metabolism is set. If fear was present in the younger years, it can be dissolved now. More commonly the fear is reinforced. If afraid often then fear will create and recreate our realities. Situations will be interpreted, anxiously, for their fear probability whether or not there is fear present. You are not “having” fear. Once metabolism is set, it has you.

Once emotions have you, you will find content in your world that justifies their existence—a hard truth substantiated by neuroscience. We justify our negative emotions by anything from the weather to a social interaction, to traffic, to achievements gained or lost, to…..

It takes strong self-discipline and effort to change emotional metabolism. Judgment of others and oneself, beliefs about right and wrong, and all aspects of relationship (including those with students and parents) reveal much about emotional metabolism. We must take this critical step to eliminating fear for it is an axiom of education that the who, how, and when determine the learning of the what. We are the who, the how arises from our knowledge of our students, and the when is circumscribed by developmental capacities. The content is the what.

We can work with any fearful student. Provide the holistic developmental nourishments, engage meaningful relationship, eliminate punishment, and allow students to be seen for themselves and not in comparison with others.

We must accommodate parents. Parents have fears. In addition to the dilemma we all face as described above, they fear for their child’s success, whatever that might mean to them. While they often wish to speak of academics or high school or the changing world, fear is the motivator. They fear that they might be inadequate parents. They fear that they are wasting their money on independent schools. If we judge parents we give lie to holism and reinforce their fears. Our relationship with parents significantly influences our credibility and impact.

In many ways relationship is everything for dissolving fear. Interpersonal neurobiology reveals that we literally change the structure of our brain by the relationship we engage. So if emotional metabolism has worn grooves of fear those grooves can be reorganized. Psychologically, fear thrives in isolation, in feeling alone and abandoned. Communication with loved and trusted friends and partners breaks the isolation and diminishes the power of fear. Can we talk about fear in school among colleagues? Holistic child development demands relationship as well. Knowing the nourishments and the capacities of the stages without profound positive regard lacks power. We love our students; there is no place for fear in love.