Learning Fear
Fear can be weaponized to motivate both children and adults to act in certain ways.
Fear is everywhere these days. I see it in people's eyes and sense it in their words (or lack thereof). There are many reasons for fear and it's part of our makeup in order to make us react quickly in order to survive in the face of danger. However, the fear I'm referring to has been intentionally created – I often use the word “weaponized” – by those who want us — both adults and children — to behave in certain ways.
In addition to the danger of getting hurt, sick, or dying, other things that cause fear include making choices that backfire on us and even being ostracized from our pack.
As I wrote over 20 years ago and repeated in this 2023 post, the adrenaline rush that accompanies fear is addictive, contagious, and crowds out reason. That’s why it is used to sell newspapers, wars, prescription drugs and other medical products (including those that will reportedly make us look younger or feel healthier), life insurance, alarm systems, pesticides, guns, political candidates, and much more.
Marketers present a scenario they hope will invoke our sense of fear. Then they show us a solution – a path back to our comfort zone – that entails using their product or service.
While the use of fear as motivation seems to be escalating, it’s nothing new. And it begins in early childhood. Our society has long accepted – even expected – its use to get kids to behave in ways that suit the adults. When I look back at my childhood in the 1950s and 60s, the main emotion I recall is fear, or at least anxiety. I was perpetually afraid – of going by myself to the first day of kindergarten (I cried but they told my mother to go home and I’d stop), of failing a test (I never did), of being called on to answer a “mental arithmetic” question or sing a scale (my throat would close tight), of being ridiculed for looking clumsy in gym class (I often did), of not making friends (I was quiet but relatively popular), of getting a bad report card (I never did), of forgetting my locker combination (I still dream about that), of getting a class-wide detention and then being punished again at home for the imagined transgression (that happened on occasion), and, and, and, including fear of not becoming a successful (employed) adult. The teachers and my parents believed that fear was a good way to control and manage behaviour. Sadly, many still do.
A somewhat related motivation for this treatment was protection from the problems and sorrows presented by the grown-up world.
My beloved paternal grandfather died while living with us in a house across the street from the school. I was six, but was elaborately shielded from the fact with the help of my school teacher. When I eventually questioned where he was, they told me he had “gone” and wouldn’t (couldn't?) answer my questions about where he was. In fact, we never talked about him much after that.
When I was 15, my father died. He had a heart attack while lying on our couch. I was shielded from the details of that as well. I wasn’t allowed to visit the funeral home and there was even an unsuccessful attempt to keep me away from the funeral. My mother wouldn’t talk about him much after that.
Keeping me away from those life experiences didn’t protect me at all; it taught me that there were things I wasn’t capable of handling. I’ve handled – and accomplished – a great deal in my 75 years. But sometimes I wonder what life would have been like if I’d found my spirit and my voice earlier. I wonder how much more I could have done, and how much stronger I’d be, with more confidence in my abilities, without fearing the unknown, and if I’d done something else with all those minutes in which I imagined and worried about what might happen next.
Nor was the fear-mongering in school successful. Although I was a well-behaved student with excellent marks, I now realize that I learned very little of consequence in school. And that's because fear impedes learning in the same way it interferes, as the marketers and politicians understand all too well, with thinking and rational decision making.
Even when someone isn’t inciting fear in us, learning something new can sometimes feel like a dangerous and risky adventure, at the same time as it is exciting. We leave our comfort zone and will likely display some incompetence along the way. So, especially for children, the risk- and mistake-making processes are best supported by a non-coercive, secure physical, intellectual, and emotional environment.
Coercing and pushing children into what seems to them to be a scary situation will accomplish nothing positive if they are not ready to allow themselves to be vulnerable enough to take the required risk. It can also lead to the very behaviour that the control tactics try to control!
Attempts to coerce kids to learn in an atmosphere that controls their freedom of movement, routinely mistrusts them, and where they often don’t want to be because it's irrelevant to their lives often results in fear, rebellion, and sometimes violence, rather than learning.
An understanding that fear motivates in the wrong direction might allow the creation of a truly democratic society, which sees all people as valuable and responsible, values cooperation and collaboration, abhors misuse of power, and tries to solve conflict non-violently.
Unfortunately, many people working in education seem tone deaf to the part they play in using fear and control to motivate children and young people. I came across an example this morning in an article published in School Magazine addressing the need for voting reform, in the aftermath of our recent Canadian election where many people were motivated to support a specific party in response to our current atmosphere of fear. The author wrote: “Teachers have always been on the front lines of justice—both inside and outside the classroom. Let’s demand a system where every voice counts. Let’s unite across political lines and say: we want a future built on courage, not fear...Now is the time for proportional representation. Let’s teach democracy by living it.”
I was saddened but not surprised to read this. What about justice for children and youth who are definitely not living democracy in most classrooms and, in fact, who are often living in fear rather than learning? Let’s truly make every voice count — children’s included.