My interest in the status of Fear Education has been summarized in Technical Paper No. 15 (see link “Technical Papers”). I am using the term Fear Education in a positive way, analogous to Sex Education, or Health Education. I am in no way advocating with this term the negative connotation that this type of education is fear-based. On the contrary, my basic argument and research, have been oriented toward making our education about fear (and fearlessness) an endeavor that is based on a fearless pedagogy and fearless standpoint. I have argued in many places, for many years, that too much of our education and socialization in the Western world is often fear-based, and that has caused great violence. Parker Palmer suggested that fear not ignorance is the nemesis of education. I tend to agree with the eminent philosopher and educator Bertrand Russell who once wrote, “One generation… could transform the world by bringing into it a generation of fearless children…. Education is the key to the new world.” I am currently writing a technical paper entitled “’Fearless’ In Educational Discourse” for publication. I have recently come across a new publication (anthology) of writing by critical literacy educators in schools, in which "fear" is the main topic of concern. This book (in press), co-edited by Dr. Paula Wolfe, University of Wisconsin, is a very exciting contribution to how fear is being used in the field of Education in unhealthy ways. Dr. Wolfe wrote (personal communication, Jan. 7, 2005): "The concept of fear in our book is used to explore how, in the literacy area, government has used testing, school choice, etc. to squash what we [educators] believe was a socio-political reform movement (progressivist schooling). Rather than an inevitable pendulum swing, we believe that fear has been used (fear of school takeovers, teachers losing jobs, lack of ability to compete internationally) to push schools to a more conservative agenda, all in the name of getting rid of colleges of education and public education. Most of the authors in the book are well known 'outsiders' in the field of literacy education. " I have just completed a manuscript for publication entitled "Education And The Culture Of Fear: A Review." The abstract for this 50pp article is below: Abstract - This paper is the first review study of the "culture of fear" concept in the literature of the field of Education. In recent years, several scholars across disciplines have shown a remarkable interest in the impact of collective fear on the economy, politics, urban planning, architecture, criminology, and general everyday life. Educators have generally avoided the topic of fear, and have given even less systematic attention to the culture of fear. From an analysis of 46 documents (English only) over a 15 year period (1990-2004), 98% of the documents appear after 1995. Although still a relatively rare concept in educational discourse, the culture of fear idea has been surfacing with increasing frequency since 9/11 and the popularizing of the American culture of fear in Michael Moore's documentary films. All educators in this study believe the culture of fear to be highly destructive to the quality of teaching and learning. Only three educators (Fisher, Giroux, Palmer) have published repeatedly on this subject, yet educators using the term culture of fear characteristically neglect to: (1) define the term, (2) cite literature in the social sciences that has studied the topic in depth, (3) cite other educators publishing on the topic, and (4) provide substantive and/or proven-effective suggestions for overcoming this highly destructive form of undemocratic social order. The author proposes a new critical Fear Education for the 21st century.
Throughout my website you will read of the controversies over what is fear (‘fear’) and how best to define it. I have also found there are many controversies over what is fearless and how best to define it. That is a topic beyond the scope of this brief introduction. I want to focus here on fearless pedagogy. First, let me say that it is a virtually unknown or unlabeled form of pedagogy. You won’t find the term under search engines on the Internet or in the various Indexes when doing research in education. I have been curious why these two terms have not come together. I decided to find out what other terms are used with “fearless” on the Internet. Here are my quick results from a Google Search (Jan. 2003): “FEARLESS LEADER(S) – 49,640 hits Note that “fearless” with “leaders” is highly valued. With children, it is less valued, and with parents even less. I checked some of these websites and it is definitely the majority that positively value the term “fearless” with these categories. It is interesting that perhaps this data indicates (although more close analysis is required) that leaders and children are thought to be more fearless than are parents. Why would that be? Let’s look at educational players and structures and see what association they have with the term “fearless”: “FEARLESS STUDENT(S)/LEARNER(S) - 222 Note the trend of declining use of the term “fearless” with the higher in power (position) amongst educational players and structures. When this data is compared to the above, and we see that fearless leadership is obviously highly desired, we have to ask why educational leaders rarely have the term ascribed to them? More disturbingly, this data, potentially indicates that fearless children (positively speaking) are going to have those fearless qualities removed from them quickly as they enter into relations with the higher in power aspects of the educational system. This data indicates that such a process of removal of fearlessness is essential to education. Now, I would like to know how that is justifiable. My entire interest in further investigating this problem, among others re: a poor quality Fear Education, is to imagine what a fearless pedagogy would look like. Fearless pedagogy would act to contravene this tendency of school systems to deplete the qualities of fearless from children, and all others involved in the educational (social) system. If fearless leaders are so highly valued, as this data appears to indicate, there is a democratically significant problem here with the way our educational systems work—and perhaps, work unconsciously against fearless children and leaders. But the other reality, is that the educational system does not destroy fearlessness in everyone. This rather gross, and preliminary study, provides data for some hypotheses to be made and tested in future research. I look forward to bringing together the foundational good qualities of critical pedagogy with fearless pedagogy, feminist pedagogy and anti-bias pedagogy to create a synthesis that could be taught to all educators (and others who are parents, teachers, learners, leaders). -RMF For more information on my proposal to create a grassroots fear education movement, see the Fear Researchers/Practitioners Bulletin #4. |