Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a developmental disorder causing difficulty in focusing, sitting still, and controlling impulses. Diagnosis often occurs during elementary school years. In Troublemakers, Shalaby critiques how ADHD diagnoses often pathologize typical childhood behaviors and/or behaviors that arise from perceived injustice in classroom demands. ADHD is therefore central to Shalaby’s exploration of Disruption as Communication and Resistance. Zora, Lucas, and Sean all face ADHD diagnosis and medication for their restlessness, but Shalaby argues that a more contextual understanding of their behavior reveals the toxicity of boring, stressful school environments, while medicating children to ensure their compliance merely strips them of their freedom and dignity.

The concept of hypervisibility, as explored in Troublemakers, aligns closely with the theme of Imposing Conformity Through Exclusion in School Culture. Shalaby argues that students who deviate from mainstream (e.g., white, upper-middle-class, etc.) norms become subject to heightened scrutiny and negative attention in the school setting. Their hypervisibility often then results in a “troublemaker” label, further entrenching the cycle of exclusion and marginalization. Figures like Zora, Lucas, Sean, and Marcus reject their teachers’ erasure of their difference, but their disruptive resistance, counterintuitively to them, engenders greater surveillance and punishment.