As up as down – working together with problematic young people

Mari Kerényi, József Braun

In most of the highly developed and developing countries it is becoming a more and more serious problem that the number of students is increasing with whom most of the schools are not able to establish a relationship. These students’ behaviour goes beyond the schools’ tolerance level. The teachers can at the most bare these students. These students’ school-story is a series of troubles and failures. So it is in Hungary.

Who are these “unmanageable” young people?

Who are the teachers who cannot handle them?

Who are the teachers who can make a relationship with them?

There are not too many places where these problematic young people are taken seriously. One of these places is the Green Rooster Lyceum Mental-hygienic Specialized Secondary School.

According to our experiences and our continuous researches in the past decade we start to discover that these problematic children have some special features compared to other young people. Briefly they have a drive for autonomy. They want to become what they could become.

And slowly we also start to discover that only a teacher with a similar drive can establish a real relationship with them.

To this relationship a special organizational atmosphere is necessary where everyone – student, teacher and helper – becomes what he or she can become.

As up, as down.