In Wounded by School, Kirsten Olson explains how outdated school policies take the joy out of learning. Children who learn differently and/or have special needs get lost in the cracks and as a consequence, their self-confidence plummets. This then causes unnecessary shame and anxiety.
Recognizing and Healing School Wounds
There is useful advice in Wounded by School for parents, teachers and students on how to recognize and work towards healing school wounds to make positive changes. According to Wounded by School these wounds cause:
- Loss of pleasure in learning
- Belief that student isn’t smart enough
- Belief in fixed abilities or that there’s no possibility for improvement
- Shameful feelings and anxiety provoking memories
- Anger towards authority figures
- Over attachment to the correct answers
- Lack of interest in taking any intellectual risks
- Tendency to label something as either black or white
The school wounds may lead to students not feeling competent in their ability to succeed at overcoming obstacles. If learners are labeled as average, that’s all that’s expected of them, so they’re not challenged or encouraged to excel above these imposed limits. Students are then more likely to give up and the labels become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Preventing School Wounds
There’s important information included in Wounded by School outlining how parents and teachers can help prevent school wounds. One of these suggestions includes praising the effort rather than the resulting outcome or mark.
Specifying what was good about a particular task is much more effective and motivating that a simple “good job” remark. Another important contribution adults can make is to lead by example by accepting people from different cultures, races and religious backgrounds.
Wounds of Perfectionism
Perfectionism is particularly damaging because it places enormous pressure on individual students to be the best. This may lead to loss of pleasure, because it often causes a fear of failure.
Wounds of Creativity
Kirsten Olson encourages creativity rather than stifling it so that children can come up with solutions to overcome difficulties. She shares touching stories of students’ struggles outlining how they overcame their learning differences using their creativity.
An unfortunate consequence of discouraging creativity is that students deny their passions, because they believe they’re too different from others. Conforming to what is “normal” is not necessarily a good thing.
Other school wounds that are explored include wounds of compliance, rebellion and numbness. Becoming numb or disinterested in school doesn’t make for a pleasurable or successful educational experience, nor does completely rebelling.
Wounded by School (Kirsten Olson, Teachers College Press, 2009, ISBN: 9780807749555) is a fascinating read that delves deep into the problems of structured and traditional schooling policies that need changed. Kirsten Olson is an educational consultant who is creating positive changes as a national level "Courage To Teach" facilitator. Find out more about Olson and school wounding at kirstenolson.org.
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