This paper examines the possibilities and limits of educational concepts whereby educationalists feel obliged to support the idea of compulsory schooling and the right of every child and young person to education to the same extent. This paper concentrates on how to deal with educational demands in the wider context of truancy. My interest is focused mainly on the relationship between the incompatibility of the educational demand for individual autonomy and social integration that can be systematically described, and the educationalists' subjective interpretation of these kinds of incompatibilities. Considerations are made of the need to reflect on the different forms of guidance and educational support for children and young people, who cannot and do not want to attend school or have left school without gaining any qualifications. Both theoretical and practical solutions are discussed on the basis of an acceptance of systematic and systemic limits to the formation of educational relationships. This involves analysing the prospects of justifying this concept, and the right of educationalists to discuss educational issues with children and young people who play truant (the analysis is orientated towards the possibility of autonomous subjectivity and equal opportunities of social integration for everyone by separation as opposed to systematic disciplining and social selection). In conjunction with this, a multi-facetted analysis is carried out of the demands made on those working with children and young people who play truant. On the one hand, it is necessary to question to what extent these demands are legitimate and, on the other hand, to reflect upon them in the context of a justification of the already existent educational methods. |