This post reviews Emma Stroobant, “Dancing to the Music of Your Heart: Home Schooling the School-Resistant Child” (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Auckland, 2006). (Available fulltext here)
Stroobant, a doctoral candidate at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, here offers as her Ph.D. thesis a challenge to the dominant medical model that pathologizes the phenomenon of “school resistance”–the overwhelming fear of school and refusal to attend by some children. Rather than medicating such children and forcing them to attend school, Stroobant looks at homeschooling as an alternative therapy.
Stroobant begins by defining the school-resistant child as one with such a strong aversion to attending school that psychological and even physical problems emerge on school days (nausea, vomiting, headaches, fatigue). Most of the psychological literature on “school phobia” interprets it as an objective disorder that can be treated with proper interventions. Stroobant herself thinks this approach blames the victim, mistakenly placing something in the domain of psychology and biology that resides more properly in the sphere of culture. “School phobia” and “school refusal” are not psychic disorders stemming from chemical imbalances or other somatic sources but are in fact completely understandable responses by children to some of the more negative aspects of school culture. Her first two chapters historicize the medical discourse on school phobia, giving it a Foucauldian treatment that deconstructs expert claims to reveal the coercive power-relations hidden behind professionalistic rhetoric.
Traditional medical approaches to school resistance ignore the voices of the resisting children, discounting their concerns about school as exaggerations and distortions. They also discount the parental voice, interpreting worried mothers to be “neurotic” or “colluding” in their child’s problem. Challenging all of this, Stroobant in this study listens carefully to the discourse of six mothers, five children, eight educational professionals, and one psychologist, examining how the language used by each of these groups to explain school resistance reveals the phenomenon to be socially constructed and hence not grounded in empirical science.
All of the families she interviews were chosen because the children had exhibited pronounced anxiety about school for some time and had either resisted or actually stopped attending altogether until beginning to homeschool. The educational professionals, some from public schools and some from private religious schools, were interviewed to get a sense of their very different interpretations of school resistance.
Stroobant found that while educational professionals had very different understandings of the nature of school and the value of homeschooling given their religious beliefs or lack thereof, all agreed that school resistant children had problems–that is, they all, even the fundamentalist Protestants, accepted the psychotherapeutic paradigm and felt that homeschooling would not be in such children’s best interests.
Stroobant’s interviews with mothers found that school resistance displayed by their children challenged their self-image as “good mothers.” To cope with this challenge, mothers tended to shift “from being reactive to active agents in their children’s education.” Homeschooling thus became a means of proving both to themselves and to the society at large that they were good mothers who put aside their own convenience for the sake of their offspring. The move to homeschooling also enabled these women to shift blame for their children’s problems at school away from the child or the mother and onto the school. Stroobant pays very careful attention to the narrative homeschooling mothers consistently tend to tell–of school failure followed by redemption by homeschooling, a story Stroobant calls a “salvation narrative.”
But when Stroobant interviewed the children themselves, she found that often children had a markedly different interpretation of the school-to-homeschool transition than that of their mothers. This part of the dissertation is particularly fascinating to read as we see from transcriptions of conversations with mothers and their children such different views of the same situation.
Finally, Stroobant suggests that the real change that happens to school-resistant children who homeschool is a shift in their self-understanding. They are not simply healed or saved from their bad attitudes about school. They are reinvented as new people, no longer just outcasts or maladroits but homeschoolers, a new category. Mothers who turn to homeschooling as a response to their child’s school resistance may be very different from mothers who homeschool for other reasons, but their children can quickly become much like the children of “normal homeschoolers.”
As a good dissertation typically does, this study dwells long and richly on theoretical literature. There are excellent discussions of qualitative research methodology, of postmoderism, deconstruction, and critical theory, and of the secondary literature both on school phobia and homeschooling. Not knowing much of anything about homeschooling in New Zealand, I was intrested to discover that researchers there have typically found a dichotomy similar to what is often described in the United States, where one group of homeschoolers is motivated more by libertarian academic ideals and another by conservative Christian values.
Perhaps Stroobant’s most interesting insight in terms of homeschooling, however, is her application of her power-discourse interpretive paradigm to it as well as to schools. Homeschoolers have for a long time been very adept at uncovering the ways in which formal schools suppress, mold, indoctrinate, and so on. But Stroobant thinks that homeschoolers often fail to understand how homeschooling does the same thing, perhaps even more effectively because its gentle methods make its coercive actions harder to detect. In a fascinating chapter providing several contrasting interpretations of one of her subjects, Stroobant notes,
in Jonathan’s case homeschooling may have served a variety of functions (to do with rehabilitation, normalisation and governance) beyond simply providing Jonathan with an educational alternative to school that he found acceptable, enjoyable, and helpful. I would suggest that these functions of the home schooling process remained hidden from Jonathan and his mother, who assumed, like most home schoolers, that home schooling is necessarily an emancipating and power-free process because it takes place outside formal institutions and is not dependent upon the knowledge and skills of ‘experts.’
In this chapter Stroobant is particularly forceful in her critique of “unschooling” for its blindness to this coercive tendency. Her point is not that we need some sort of even freer alternative to homeschooling, but that there is simply no escaping the dynamics of power and coercion. Christian parents, more forthright in their admission of authority over their children, are more likely to acknowledge this situation.
Stroobant’s power analysis does not stop her from concluding, however, that, based upon her admittedly small sample, homeschooling can be a very effective way of dealing with the problem of school resistance among children. In closing let me encourage anyone who has read this far and is still interested to take a look at her study. Though heavily theorized, the prose is easy to read and full of fascinating ideas and self-disclosures.
Thanks for this post. I am in the process of deciding whether to take my 7th grade son out of school to homeschool him. He has a history of sporadic school refusal since 5th grade and since starting middle school this year he has refused to go to school 6 of the first 19 days. I have looked at much of the mental health profession’s info about school refusal in addition to getting him a counselor and considering anxiety medication for him (not to mention for me after trying to deal with this situation the last couple of years.) Part of me though wonders if he doesn’t have a point about school, though. Would I be hurting him by homeschooling and not forcing him to “buck up” under the system, or am I causing him to have a” mental illness” by refusing to listen to his lament that school is torture. He is diagnosed with ADHD and dysgraphia and although bright hasn’t met with much success in school. Anyone’s thoughts?
Knowing only the details you provide here, my instinct is to suggest that you might as well give homeschooling a try and see how it goes. Maybe he’ll love it. Maybe you’ll love it. Maybe one or both of you will hate it. If it doesn’t work out, he can always go back to school. Sounds from your post that this has been going on long enough that more of the same is not the answer.
I’m not sure how familiar you are with the homeschooling world, but no matter where you live there are certainly others doing it who would be happy to share their experiences and knowledge with you. A quick internet search will likely turn up some support groups or homeschooling organizations in your area.
Finally, one option that is sort of a compromise between homeschooling and institutional school is the “virtual charter school.” I don’t know what state you live in, but if it has a charter school law then it likely has online charter schools that offer a public school education that can be taken at home. You might want to check that out too. Thanks for your comment!
Milton
“Her point is not that we need some sort of even freer alternative to homeschooling, but that there is simply no escaping the dynamics of power and coercion. ”
We are unschooling our kids for more than 3 years now, and I don’t feel that power and coercion are inescapable. Our children are happy and healthy and they deliberately choose to learn the basics of math and so on to be able to catch up with their peers. We don’t press them to anything, because this has not been necessary and I expect that it never will. Possibly the author herselfs just is more sympathetic with Christian homeschoolers than with the “libertarian unschoolers”?
The author is not sympathetic to Christian homeschoolers. Her point is that ALL homeschoolers are indoctrinating their children, even the unschoolers. Christians are fully aware that they’re doing this, even proud of it. Unschoolers, Stroobant argues, like to think that they’ve escaped this and that their kids are just doing their own thing, but it’s not true. In subtle, often unconscious ways, unschooling parents too are molding their children.
If this perspective doesn’t make sense to you you might want to do a quick internet search for information about Michel Foucault. His major insight, articulated in many very difficult books, is that the Enlightenment’s attempt to free the individual from the confines of culture and context was a fictive diversion, a mask for its true aim, which was to exert power over people. Enlightenment institutions such as schools and prisons formed and “re-formed” human souls, limiting the options we all have for our lives. As Foucault famously put it in _Discipline and Punish_, “the soul is the prison of the body.”
Like Foucault, Stroobant thinks it is impossible to escape these power relationships, even through unschooling.
Aha, thank you for this explanation. Of course, we are molding our children because they take us as their role models and because they sense our expectations and try to fulfil them. I think this is indeed inevitable and it is at the same time the core of all culture, for good and for bad. And I agree that the more you are conscious about this connection of attachment and influence (further explored for example by the Canadian developmental psychologist Gordon Neufeld, http://www.gordonneufeld.com), the better it is. Those parents who believe that they do not influence their children, only shift their influence totally into the unconsciuos realm.
So, I agree, that we cannot escape the power, authority and responsibility we have because our children are attached to us. But I still do not think that “coercion” is inevitable.
I enjoyed reading the very well-written summary of Stroobant’s thesis on homeschooling school-resisting children. However, in defence of unschooling, I would say that most unschoolers are acutely aware of the constantly shifting power dynamics operating in their families. This is because most unschoolers have gone through a conscious and deliberate process of self-examination, looking honestly at how they interact with their child and how they can make these interactions more democratic, respectful and loving. While it is naive to think that any relationship operates in the absence of power, unschoolers strive for a ‘power-sharing’ arrangement, in which each family member’s voice is heard and weighed equally. The subtleties of coersion present a daily challenge for unschoolers as much as for any parent, however unschoolers consciously strive for co-operation rather than coersion, and encourage their children to be respectful, interesting and joyful by being respectful, interesting and joyful. Of course every parent consciously and unconsciously shapes their child; unschoolers try to always remain alert to how this process is unfolding, and deliberately choose a way of life in which the values of love, peace, and respect are paramount.
Well that’s interesting about power dynamics. This is something which many unschoolers purposely admit and plan around. They do that in at least a couple of ways: by providing their children with as many options as possible for making decisions and exploring the world; and by dredging out cultural strongholds within their own psyche that prevent them from allowing options usually thought to be inappropriate for children.
So that: while children are learning about how to use power, many unschooling parents are unlearning a great deal about how to use it. If a balance isn’t in play, people who understand more about influence and personal power may take charge of situations better left to others. They (the parents and other adults in a child’s life, in other words) may end up doing too much while others (children) don’t know how important their input is or feel at a loss about where and when they can act. Conventional parenting often takes advantage of this built-in inequality between adults and children, while unschoolers actively seek not to do so … all while protecting and advocating for the safety and freedom that may be lacking in the wider world for their children.
Unschoolers may fail in their endeavors, but that may not be for lack of effort. It’s a lot of personal work really. 🙂 Speaking as an unschooler myself.
Thanks for reviewing Stroobant’s dissertation, Milton Gaither, and the opportunity to post a comment. Pretty cool idea that she has touched on just some of the points about schooling and schooling at home that so many unschoolers talk about! Very exciting.
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While no one can escape the conditioning effects of culture, and I would actually ask why one would want to, the power an individual feels when they know that they have choice is the power that really matters to a person. Unschoolers allow for the power of choice, no matter what other influences, subtle or obvious, are going on. This is what children in school are missing out on for most of their days, and what can cause some children to “go crazy”–at least the intelligent ones!
Milton Gaither writes, “Her point is that ALL homeschoolers are indoctrinating their children, even the unschoolers. Christians are fully aware that they’re doing this, even proud of it. Unschoolers, Stroobant argues, like to think that they’ve escaped this and that their kids are just doing their own thing, but it’s not true. In subtle, often unconscious ways, unschooling parents too are molding their children.”
Now my comment. What is the problem with this. I thought that this is what parents were meant to do, part of raising their children. The problem as I see it is that parents have abdicated this role to the schools who indoctrinate their pupils whether consciously or subconsciously. The secular concept of NZ education is a myth as all education has a world view and if christians want to be sure that their offspring get their worldview, then they do it themselves. Unschooling is a myth, because to learn anything, there must be a discipline and routine. Learning requires some form of regularity, those that have not, have not prepared their children adequately for real life.
Actually, no, you can learn stuff without discipline and routine, although they are handy for learning some things (like playing the piano). But it’s true that all educators, parents, indeed all adult role models in a child’s life are influencing, moulding, shaping the child whether they’re aware of it or not. But that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact it’s quite natural.
Interesting to read about ‘school phobia’ and how it is put as a label on a child and treated as if it’s their fault or their problem. If an adult is hating their job, being badly treated, feeling stressed about office conflicts or power struggles or being sexually harrassed by a work colleague or something, we don’t say they have ‘job phobia’ which needs to be treated with psychotherapy and blame it on them, do we? But somehow, with children, the ‘experts’ have decided that if a child doesn’t want to go to school it’s the child’s fault, not the school’s.
It happens all the time. I complained to my cell phone provider about a problem and was told “we’ve never had anyone complain about it before” – the implication being the problem was with me, not them. Interestingly, I’ve spoken to many others who’ve had the same problem.
Maybe we need to remember “the customer is always right”? – even if the ‘customer’ is a child at school.
My 8 yr. has refused school for 4 weeks now. When brought to school he has cried uncontrollably. He does not want to be away from me. He says home is his natural habitad. He desparetely want to be hoeschooled and is going to the extreme in protest. Depression, anger, negative thoughts. I have been advised strong by school staff not to give in because he is manipulating me. In my heart I want to homeschool him and give him what he needs. The situation has gotten so bad they are recommending outpatient hospital schooling. Intenstive treatments, meds. and too many hands in the pot. I know he is anxious and I feel he will just get worse. Should I give him want he is begging for? Or will I be giving in to manipulation?
Jessie, my advice given what little info you’ve shared here would be to give it a shot. If homeschooling works for both of you, great. If not, you can always send him back to school. I personally would want to exhaust all other options before putting my child on medication.
“Like Foucault, Stroobant thinks it is impossible to escape these power relationships, even through unschooling.”
Has anyone applied the approach / philosophy of Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth, to home-schooling and power relationships? Foucault is old paradigm in comparison.
Wow, is there a new earth model of homeschooling? I am an Eckhart tolle fan and would be interested in any attempts.