Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

Shalaby notes that were one only to view the subjects of her research in school, the “troublemaker” label might seem fitting. At home, however, their full humanity becomes clear. Shalaby therefore argues that schools themselves engender trouble by creating the categories of “good” and “bad” students and subjecting the latter to exclusion in an attempt to erase nonconformity and defiance. However, excluded children respond by disrupting more forcefully, making themselves hypervisible to resist invisibility.

This is not a problem of individual schools but rather of school culture writ large, which approaches students as people in the making rather than as humans who already have distinct personalities, preferences, histories, etc. What’s more, the idea that school prepares students for “life” does not resonate with children, as attending school is all they know of life. Shalaby argues that students are the classroom’s “native” residents and teachers the interlopers who threaten the classroom’s sense of community by wielding exclusion as punishment.

Though inappropriate in execution, the willful behavior of “troublemakers” asserts their presence and voices their need for community, attention, and self-determination. Rather than changing children, particularly through medication that could have serious long-term consequences on their minds and bodies, Shalaby calls for radically reimagining education along lines of power sharing, caring, and inclusion.