Compositionists should be aware that just as not everyone who experiences trauma develops PTSD (Blank, 1993; Delahanty et al., 2003; Maercker et al., 1999; McFarlane, 1988, 1997; van der Kolk, 1997), not everyone with a history of abuse and violence has difficulty learning (Belenky et al., 1986; Horsman, 2000). Nonetheless, I argue that the strong correlations between violence and abuse and low literacy established by Horsman require far more attention from compositionists. Horsman proposes that instead of saying violence itself causes learning difficulties, that we should say learning difficulties stem from the learner’s trauma in response to violence and abuse. According to Horsman, the term “trauma … avoids some of the debates about what counts as violence … and draws [attention] to concepts of control, connection, and meaning”
(p. 32 & 33) central both to literacy learning and to Herman’s (1997) explanation of trauma:
Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning. … Traumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life. Unlike commonplace misfortunes, traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with violence and death. They confront human beings with the extremities of helplessness and terror, and evoke the responses of catastrophe. (p. 33)