In 2011, I began studying the negative effects of educational practices. There is a lost of research on the negative developmental implications of standardized curricula, and yet we perpetuate it year after year. There is evidence that students are experiencing burnout before graduating high school. And there are many stories about students succeeding in high school, entering college, and not completing their degrees. At every stage of education, there are case studies of injury and trauma. I track these traumas on a spectrum from mildest to most severe, and also write about the history, politics, philosophy, psychology, and interpersonal neurobiology of these phenomena. Educational Trauma is the inadvertent perpetration and perpetuation of harmful systemic and cyclical practices in schools. On the mildest end, it is the anxiety, pressure, and stress felt around testing and overloaded curricula. It moves along to bullying, value-added-measures for teachers, and the use of chemical restraints for non-conforming students. The spectrum of Educational Trauma culminates with the School-to-Prison pipeline which is enforced by the presence of law enforcement on school campuses in poor communities.
Kristin Olson is also talking about the pain of school. In her book, Wounded by School: Recapturing the Joy in Learning and Standing up to Old School Culture, she lists 7 wounds:
- Wounds of creativity
- Wounds of compliance
- Wounds of rebellion
- Wounds of numbness
- Wounds of underestimation
- Wounds of perfectionism
- Wounds of the average
You can read all about it here, and see if she is detailing the effects of Educational Trauma.