Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at

Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

A radical educatorâ€™s paradigm-shifting inquiry into the accepted, normal demands of school, as illuminated by moving portraits of four young â€œproblem childrenâ€

In this dazzling debut, Carla Shalaby, a former elementary school teacher, explores the everyday lives of four young â€œtroublemakers,â€ challenging the ways we identify and understand so-called problem children. Time and again, we make seemingly endless efforts to moderate, punish, and even medicate our children, when we should instead be concerned with transforming the very nature of our institutions, systems, and structures, large and small. Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable childrenâ€”Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcusâ€”Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem.

From Zoraâ€™s proud individuality to Marcusâ€™s open willfulness, from Seanâ€™s struggle with authority to Lucasâ€™s tenacious imagination, comes profound insightâ€”for educators and parents alikeâ€”into how schools engender, exclude, and then try to erase trouble, right along with the young people accused of making it. And although the harsh disciplining of adolescent behavior has been called out as part of a school-to-prison pipeline, the children we meet in these pages demonstrate how a childâ€™s path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age.

Shalabyâ€™s empathetic, discerning, and elegant prose gives us a deeply textured look at what noncompliance signals about the environments we require students to adapt to in our schools. Both urgent and timely, this paradigm-shifting book challenges our typical expectations for young children and with principled affection reveals how these demandsâ€”despite good intentionsâ€”work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.
Country USA
Manufacturer The New Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2025-10-07
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	The New Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2025-10-07
Format	Kindle eBook

Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

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