Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

Content Warning: The source material contains discussions of racism, including racialized mass incarceration.

Educator Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot argues that concepts like freedom and love are too rarely discussed in conversations about education today; classrooms instead focus on testing standards, individual accountability, and quantifiable metrics. Shalaby contends that this promotes uniformity over individuality and management over creativity, rewarding teachers who suppress “troublemaking” students rather than seek to understand them. Lawrence-Lightfoot advocates viewing education as a human enterprise centering imagination and relationships, not test scores. Classrooms should practice freedom by lifting up students’ voices; they should also practice love, cultivating supportive teacher-student relationships.

Lawrence-Lightfoot contends that Troublemakers provides a model for this through its exploration of exclusionary school practices and centering of excluded students’ voices. She praises Shalaby’s methodology, arguing that her approach allowed her to cultivate trust with students and present them holistically to readers: “Combining portraiture, person-centered ethnography, and visual-arts methods […] she is an attentive listener, discerning observer, intensely curious questioner, and occasionally a playful co-conspirator” (xiii). However, she also notes Shalaby’s balanced portrayal of the educators she profiles; Shalaby recognizes the constraints such teachers work under and levels her primary critique at the system, which ultimately harms all children—not just “troublemakers.