flyingrose

Unlearning and The Stockholm Effect

Rated Nov 10 2007 • 3 reviews • freedom • swaraj.org

No person, place or thing is my source; I am is my source.

From the page: "The stories I've read have all given me much food for thought, so much so that I couldn't possibly say it all in a few pages. The most striking thing about these seven stories, to me, is that these writers all did well in school, come from middle-class families, and yet discovered (or "unlearned"), on their own, that school has limited rather than expanded their learning abilities. Why, I wonder, aren't more people questioning school as these writers have?

Once one reaches compulsory school age in any country, the process of schooling is identical: our natural urge to learn and explore is controlled and measured on a daily basis, and universal compulsory school attendance laws make it hard for alternatives to school to emerge. I think most of us identify with our caretakers in school and make the best of the situation. The phenomena of identifying with one's captors is known as "The Stockholm Effect," and I think it is this effect that prevents far more people from questioning their schooling and coming up with new solutions.

In August, 1973, two ex-convicts held three women and a man hostage during a robbery in Stockholm, Sweden. The robbers kept the hostages for six days. What is remarkable about the situation is that despite the robbers threats to kill the hostages, the hostages defended the robbers behavior, even days after they were rescued by the police. Indeed, two of the hostages became engaged to their captors! Journalists and doctors who studied this incident dubbed it "the Stockholm Effect" and noted it was common throughout history: slaves defended their masters, prisoners of war felt sympathy for their jailors, prostitutes defended their pimps, incest and other abuse victims excuse the actions of their dominators. School isn't as physically abusive as these other situations, but it nonetheless fits the four criteria for the Stockholm Effect to occur "

More from the page: "Shilpa Jain writes,

I have often wondered how people can do something they know to be wrong or cruel or pointless or irrelevant. Don't they get a sick, horrible feeling in the pit of their stomach, like I do? If I persist in doing or condoning what I know is not right, that dull ache in my gut becomes unbearable and I vomit. Like I did for three days in Morocco, when it hit me full-on that international development projects were all a sham.

That dull ache in the gut doesn't incapacitate Jain or any of these writers, instead it spurs them on to create new ways to learn with people, such as Jain's work with Shikshantar in India, Mako Hill's work with the Free Software movement, or Yusef Progler's teaching in a New York City college. Not only are they refusing to identify with their captors, they are actively creating escape routes for others to follow."

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