learning experience 2

The fear of spiders is also known as arachnophobia. This is a phobia for those who have been affected by a spider in some way or another. It is not the fear of the spider but the possible risks of a spider bite perhaps and its side effects. This kind of fear can sometimes prevent us from an unpleasant situation or situations. Not everybody around us may experience this fear, otherwise we would not have entomologists or people who study arachnology or even zoo keepers who handle insects for a living, but for those who do have this fear have an associated learning experience. This paper narrate about the informal learning experience leading to the fear of spiders. Informal learning is an unorganized form of learning with no precise set of objectives; the learning is unintentional and is perceived from surroundings and interactions. In the information discussed in this paper the fear of spiders occurs because of the inability to know whether the arachnid is potentially poisonous or life threatening, I was told as a child to stay away from areas that had a lot of dirt mountains or areas that were filled with a lot of wood pieces by my mom because she had once been bit by a spider herself and had a phobia of spiders but I did it anyhow. Once my sister and I were out playing in the desert area behind my grandmother’s house and suddenly out of one of the holes that was in the dirt mountain came out a tarantula the size of a small Chihuahua puppy. It started crawling at a miraculous speed given how big it was and we began screaming for help because we were afraid to move thinking it was going to crawl up onto us. This informal teaching has taught me over the period to stay away from the wood and dirt filled areas. The experience has in fact taught me to become extra cautious in areas of this sort. The fear of spiders can be acquired through classical conditioning as per (Brewer 1974,p.27) “ there is not and never has been any convincing evidence for unconscious, automatic