Can history help us understand why children do not like going to school?

Many people probably remember the feeling of sitting in school as a child while time goes by all too slowly. It would have been far more fun to be anywhere else. Children and young people have had a complex relationship with school for as long as school has existed. Some skipped school or pretended to be sick, while others showed up every day without caring about being there. 

Today, children's low school attendance is often a topic that is up for discussion in the media. But is this new at all, and how has children's relationship with school changed over the past decades?

With a Sapere Aude-grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark, Mante Vertelyte, Associate Professor at the Department of Culture and Communication at Aalborg University, will lead a research project that seeks to understand the phenomenon of school dislike from the late 1950s onwards, in the context of primary school.

»It is my ambition that we look at what is actually new about the current youth crisis and what is not so new. It's a historical project about not liking school and about pedagogy and politics trying to do something about it. The project will help us understand where we are now and give us perspective,« says Mante Vertelyte and elaborates:

»There is a tendency to talk about the current youth crisis as if it were something entirely new. The risk is that this leads us to focus on short-term solutions. If we want more lasting and grounded solutions, we need a historical perspective.«

The explanations for school dislike have changed over time

By combining history of emotions and education, the project examines how children's emotions about going to school have changed over time.

For example, school dislike has previously been interpreted as laziness, but over time this was gradually replaced by explanations such as boredom and lack of motivation. Later, the problem is understood as stress and anxiety. At the same time, the focus of pedagogy and educational policy has shifted from school phobia to school fatigue to the more contemporary school refusal.

As part of the research project, former students, teachers, school leaders and student counsellors will be interviewed. Former students will be invited to revisit their old schools. And teachers will be interviewed about how they dealt with the children's school dislike. The project will explore a wide range of expressions of school dislike, from truancy to student strikes.

»We look at how different emotions associated with school dislike have changed over time, and how different emotions have been problematised, for example policy-wise and pedagogically,« explains Mante Vertelyte.

Wants to be part of the current debate

The project will run for four years and Mante Vertelyte will work together with Nanna Ramsing Enemark, Assistant Professor at the Department of Culture and Communication at Aalborg University, as well as a PhD student who will be recruited to the project. The project will also be supported by an advisory board of international researchers.

»The ambition is to map students’ feelings and experiences of school through time. In this way, we can get a picture of what is new in the current youth crisis and what is not,« says Mante Vertelyte, adding:

»And then we would like to develop a comparative hypothesis in relation to school dislike, which can be used to expand the project into a European comparative project. Here we can include the educational policy histories of different countries to see how school dislike unfolded differently in different historical and political contexts.«

At the same time, Mante Vertelyte emphasises that even though the project has a historical approach, the current situation in primary and lower secondary schools also has a major focus.

»We want to be part of the conversation. Looking at history does not mean that we are detached from the current debate. On the contrary, we want to contribute historical perspectives to what is happening today. We are not turning to history to avoid contemporary challenges, but to better understand them.