Another example comes from Horsman's experience of trying to draw women who have experienced trauma into the aforementioned women's group. She found it hard to speak directly of the focus on experiences of violence, in case women felt uncomfortable attending a course described in this way. During Horsman's earlier research students attending an interview session reported that they were terrified they might be observed by others. Some said that they wouldn't attend a support group identified as for trauma survivors, even though they thought they would find such a group useful. Language such as, "if you have gone through tough times, want to move on, but are not sure where to begin" was the only way Horsman found to name the experiences of violence without seeming to stigmatize the women who might attend the course.

In spite of the complexity about naming violence in advance as something women in the group would have in common, once the group came together Horsman led a variety of exercises which created opportunities for women to name the role of violence in their lives. Increasingly it became evident that violence was something with which everyone in the group was familiar. Silence appears to be replaced by talk. Yet a new kind of silence appears when the talk also includes tears. Over and over again women in the Toronto program say to each other: "Don't cry." Often too, they respond immediately with a story of their own and, implicitly or explicitly, suggest that in comparison with their own much worse experience the other woman’s story is not bad enough to justify tears. We wonder about the prevalence and all-pervasiveness of this powerful discourse about not crying, which includes phrases like: "move on", "don't dwell on it", "it's all in the past" and "forget about it." These are clearly very strongly ingrained responses: Although Horsman regularly points out that saying "don't cry" implies that it is not OK to have the feelings you are having, it is still always the women's first response to someone crying.

We are concerned about the effect of this discourse on women who were frequently hurt as children and then not allowed to cry. This response confirms what they have been told and have told themselves their whole lives. It seems to be part of an extremely common discourse about the need to "heal", or at least to move on and "put the past behind you". This discourse silences talk about the pain of violence. It also connects to individualized medical discourses about the ill-effects of trauma as illness which, in turn, preserves a suggestion that it is only the individual who needs to change, not the violence of society. In contrast Lewis (1999) offers new language as she speaks of "familiarity with" and "living beside" trauma. Although this may sound like a small change, such reconceptualization makes possible new discourses about trauma as an ongoing experience felt long after the original incident or incidents have passed. Within such a discourse more possibilities for speaking about the ongoing impact of violence on learning could be revealed.

The extent to which the discourse about violence is overwhelmed by the well-learned need for silence on the issues is visible in another way in our work. When taken seriously at all, violence and trauma are often framed as barriers to women's learning. Women can't learn something particular a program is trying to teach them, because the issues of violence are too predominant in their minds. Often women can trace the moment when they stopped "learning" as a child, or the particular things they didn't "learn" at school, to episodes of violence in their childhood. We do not want to deny that this is a problem; indeed, our work is based on this premise. But what is missing in the "violence as a barrier to learning" discourse is any reference to just what women ARE learning, either when being abused or when struggling to overcome the damages. "Learning," we argue, does not stop in the midst of violence. Instead, what is learned is not speakable, not nameable. Enforced silence around issues of violence and trauma mean that some women and girls appear not to learn while learning an enormous amount. The discourse of barriers to learning also preserves an unproblematic sense of "normal" students, who don't have barriers, and "other" students with barriers. These "others" will, at best, be recognized as having "special needs", and at worst, be judged as not ready to "learn," needing first to go away and "heal" their "disorders," seen as belonging in the medical system rather than in education. In this theoretical framework, not only does societal violence not need to change, neither does the education system; only the individual must learn to behave differently and leave the impact of violence behind her. In this way, discourses of schooling and education interact with those about violence.