Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

The ten-year anniversary publication of the bestselling paradigm-shifting inquiry into the accepted, normal demands of school, as illuminated by moving portraits of four young “problem children,” with a new preface by the author

“Riveting, luminous, and terrifying, this little book gives us the tools, the vision, and the confidence to free our children to change the world.” —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams

In this dazzling debut that Monique Couvson says “challenges us to rethink oppressive and punitive responses to problematic student behavior,” former elementary school teacher Carla Shalaby explores the everyday lives of four young children, challenging the ways we identify and understand “troublemakers.” Through delicately crafted portraits of these memorable children—Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus—Troublemakers allows us to see school through the eyes of those who know firsthand what it means to be labeled a problem.

From Zora’s proud individuality and Marcus’s open willfulness, to Sean’s struggle with authority and Lucas’s tenacious imagination, comes profound insight—for educators and parents alike—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 child’s path to excessive punishment and exclusion in fact begins at a much younger age.

Shalaby’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 demands—despite good intentions—work to undermine the pursuit of a free and just society.