More than one in four U.S. school-aged children refuse to go to school at some point during their education, according to the New York University Child Study Center. It’s equally common to both boys and girls and most prevalent from 10-13. Spikes in “school refusal behavior” are associated with transitions to new schools, and although it is “considerably more prevalent in some urban areas,” according to NYU, it cuts across socioeconomic classes.
The term “school refusal” is a new one to me. Truancy and absenteeism are far more familiar words. In a New York Times blog, pediatrician Perri Klass describes her introduction to the phenomenon, courtesy of an “anxious and somewhat quirky” first-grader who “seemed to be spending his whole first-grade year sick with one thing or another.”
“I didn’t grasp the extent of the situation until I got a call from the school nurse. If my patient missed another couple of days, she told me, he would be required by law to repeat first grade; the school year wouldn’t count. Would I please make sure I was giving him all those absence notes for a very good reason?”
Klass says experts now look at school refusal in terms of the child’s motivation.
“Children may avoid school because they are trying to avoid negative feelings, like anxiety and depression, or negative experiences, like exams or troubling social interactions. On the other hand, they may be pursuing some positive reward — a parent’s attention, the chance to play video games all day or, for older kids, more illicit pleasures. And there is overlap, the experts point out: a child who misses a great deal of school for reasons that look like truancy may become increasingly anxious — and embarrassed — about going back. In fact, missing school intensifies both the academic pressures and the social pressures that are waiting when a child returns, setting up a dangerous cycle in which the more you’re absent, the more you want to stay out.”
School refusal is “not a diagnosis,” points out Dr. Helen Egger, a child psychiatrist at Duke University Medical Center. “It’s not a disorder; it’s a symptom,” she tells the Times. “But it’s an important symptom, with consequences that can be harsh. It should send parents — and pediatricians, educators and psychologists — looking for ways to help,” Klass writes.
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Pingback by Hell No, We Won’t Go! « The Core Knowledge Blog « Parents 4 democratic Schools — September 15, 2010 @ 5:10 pm
It’s only very recently in our history that we’ve decided to put very young children in institutional settings. In the past, kids did not typically begin school before the age of 8. Maybe the fact that the Kindergartner or 1st grader isn’t ready to spend all day away from his/her mom is not a symptom of something being wrong at all. Maybe instead of trying to help him/her “adjust” to school, the parent should simply postpone enrollment until he/she is older and more mature.
Comment by Crimson Wife — September 15, 2010 @ 6:00 pm
Perhaps institutional schooling itself is the problem. Why force kids to be around peers and total strangers when there are many resources outside of school to learn from?
Comment by AB — September 16, 2010 @ 12:29 pm
“Perhaps institutional schooling itself is the problem.” This is wrong on two counts: the fact that schools are an ‘institution’ does not in itself excuse this or other student behavior. And second, in this country – rightly or wrongly – home-schooling is an alternative, so strictly speaking no child is ‘forced’ to go to school.
Comment by andrei radulescu-banu — September 16, 2010 @ 1:05 pm
Option A
Remake American society so that two household incomes are no longer a necessity, thereby enabling parents to keep their kids from starting school until they’re eight years old, to home-school their children, or to supervise them as they access and learn from mysterious “resources outside of school.”
Option B
Address the reasons why many students miss so much school and/or incentivize attending school/consequent missing school.
I might be crazy, but Option B appears to me to be more within the realm of reality.
Comment by Anthony Guzzaldo — September 16, 2010 @ 7:11 pm
andrei radulescu-banu,
It does excuse ‘this’ or ‘that’ behavior because schools are designed to prevent kids from learning. The system of bells, clocks, departmentalization of subjects, age segregation, discipline, testing and grading is enough to make any sane kid go nuts.
Comment by AB — September 20, 2010 @ 12:26 pm