Originally published in 1980, Absent with Cause, reissued here with a new preface, looks at the Bayswater Centre, which provided full-time education for young people who had stopped attending comprehensive schools, and for whom the alternative may well have been home tuition or residential provision in community homes or assessment centres. By describing what actually happened in a documented year with a whole intake of youngsters, the intention was to probe beneath the label of ‘failure’ to show that a meaningful full-time educational programme could be offered and accepted despite disastrous home backgrounds or a history of complete disenchantment with school. By pointing to the success of an ethos that redefined the three most important educational objectives as Responsibility, Articulation and Relevance, and which actually offered young people a real opportunity to participate in determining their own educational programme, and by reference to other units and schools working along similar lines, the intention was to discuss the implications for state provision. Today it can be read in its historical context.
This book is a re-issue originally published in 1980. The language used is a reflection of its era and no offence is meant by the Publishers to any reader by this re-publication.
New Preface for the Reissue. Acknowledgments. Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Danish Lessons in Practical Education 2. Alternative Provision in Britain 3. A Tale of Two Classrooms: The Rs That Count 4. School Phobias: The Myth of Labelling 5. Autumn Term 6. Ancillary Factors: Resourcefulness, the Fourth R 7. Spring Term 8. Self-Analysis 9. Leaving School: The Final Term 10. Student Involvement 11. Metamorphosis of a School: Three Rs 12. Conclusion: Implications for Mainstream Education. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Schools, Centres and Units Consulted or Visited.
Biography
Roger White
Reviews for the original edition:
‘This is a study of the practice of alternative education, largely based on an examination of the Bayswater Centre in Bristol, and its relationship with a similar Danish institution. The ethnographic accounts of the life and work of the children and staff are quite outstanding; the motivations and concerns of the “problem children” and the determinants of their identity and self-image shine out from the pages in a way that must give powerful illumination to many readers. It demonstrates not only the sociological imagination but also what it can deliver.’ – John Eggleston
'Much has been written on the secondary school curriculum since the Great Education Debate, but I have read nothing more imaginative and practical than Roger White’s book. This is in part because he so rightly refuses to divorce curricular issues from their social context. From a hidden corner of the system, he has helped us to specify the directions in which we ought to grow.' - Professor David Hargreaves
