When students are struggling around issues of control-skipping school because they don't have supports at home that make it possible, because they don't believe in themselves enough to think they can learn, because their clashes with teachers or their absence of connection leaves them disengaged- the rigidity of the expectation of attendance can decrease the likelihood of attendance and the possibility of being fully present and learning. As one teacher observed:

There's something wrong about the attendance thing. If we could somehow come clean about the fact that part of our job as a teacher is to be a babysitter, then maybe we could say "You must be here. But you can come here and pretend it's jail, or you can come here and go to school." I don't know...I have kids who come to my class who don't want to be there and will not engage… Mandatory daily attendance in school means that most of them don't want to be there. I haven't seen anybody, never mind students with bad stuff, I haven't seen a group of adults get a damn thing out of a presentation that they really resent being at. They talk, they do all of those things that we object to in students. They don't hand in the assignment- the evaluation of the facilitator at the end of the lesson-they talk amongst themselves, they make rude comments about the facilitator. These are all teachers! I've seen them, they do it at OISE! They're badly behaved. There has to be some way in which school becomes a voluntary experience. (Julianne Hodgins)

Students' requests may seem contradictory: on the one hand many suggest it's crucial to pay attention when students are skipping classes or arriving late, on the other they are clear that critical attention will only increase their disengagement and disconnection from school. They want to be asked what is wrong and supported to learn, even when they are not fitting in with the required attendance policies. When, instead, they are suspended or punished in other ways for failing to attend regularly and on time, it becomes another way of moving students who have experienced violence out of the school system.

Labelling the problem

I want to draw attention to students who felt that labels were another way that they were silenced and made to feel different, without diminishing in any way the importance of recognizing learning disabilities and mental health conditions that can get in the way of learning. It is possible that labelling a learning disability or a disorder can become a way of deepening the silence about the impact of violence on learning by diverting attention from the origin of the behaviour and steering attention instead to diagnosis and treatment. One student described his experience: