Over the past decade, I’ve worked in two therapeutic day school environments—a school focused on behavioural issues and a school focused on mental health. Both schools offer additional student support, such as therapeutically trained teachers, classroom aids, learning specialists, in-school therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, to create an environment where the student can access both academics and therapy. These schools understand that regular school districts often cannot properly support students with a constellation of special needs, especially acute behavioural and mental health needs.
Therapeutic schools have operated under the radar for most people but have recently become the subject of increased debate. Critics put forward a plethora of arguments going so far as to claim the rise of therapeutic education as an existential threat, and their arguments can be boiled down to two simple concerns: 1) a therapeutic or social-emotional education ultimately crowds out an academic education; and 2) that these approaches lead to overdiagnosis and pathologize normal emotions, which, in turn, lead children to become overly concerned with the self. Ecclestone and Hayes, in their provocative book, The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education, write, “The wish and the will to change the world characterizes humanity; to turn humanity inwards is to diminish all our selves.” In other words, children are becoming too emotional and self-absorbed. These criticisms have merit to some degree, but the reality of therapeutic education is more nuanced and complex.
In an attempt to keep this article relatable and not overly academic, I’ll continue to frame the discussion through my own experiences. First, I’ve noticed that working in an environment that allows space for social-emotional learning has led to a significant drop in disruptive behaviour. In fact, I could count on one hand the number of instances where I’ve had to be involved in a behaviour dispute with a student since I began working in a therapeutic environment, which was not the case when I taught in a large public high school. I’ve appreciated how this has allowed me to focus on teaching, how it’s reduced the danger of burnout, and how it’s transformed the dynamic between me and my students to be more relaxed and genuine. This has been perhaps the most significant benefit of working in a therapeutic setting.
I do notice students are sometimes more sensitive in therapeutic schools. I’d be lying if I said otherwise. But is this a result of the environment? Well, that’s a chicken and an egg scenario. I’ve observed that, to some degree, with some students, it is very likely the environment. However, we need to keep in mind that students who attend therapeutic schools do so for a reason. Do I believe that teaching social-emotional skills and allowing students space for their feelings causes otherwise well-adjusted students to become fragile human beings? No. That said, students in therapeutic environments are more attuned to the need for adequate trigger warnings about potentially disturbing content, as well as proper pronoun usage, etc. In other words, there’s an increased awareness of the individual self that may not be present to the same degree in a more mainstream, institutionalized school environment. Is this a bad thing? Not in my opinion. Ecclestone and Hayes posit that this kind of environment “erodes subject disciplines and encourages a curriculum which assumes that topics and processes can only be engaging if they relate to the self.” This has not been my experience. On the whole, I’ve had more time and space for curricula and more engaged students in therapeutic settings. Ecclestone and Hayes also forget that people do, in fact, engage more when material is relatable to the self.
Therapeutic schooling aims to allow students the time and space to safely learn about themselves and strategies for managing and appropriately expressing their feelings and emotions. It also places great emphasis on setting personal and academic goals and meeting them. When we acknowledge that we are attending to the whole child and not merely the “academic” side of a student, education becomes more complex because it is more complex. Social-emotional well-being needs to be part of the equation because it is part of the equation. As broader society has come to understand and accept this reality, and many students and parents see positive benefits from a therapeutic approach, therapeutic schooling has become more prevalent and visible. No doubt other factors are responsible for its rise as well—a more affluent society is more likely to be concerned with personal well-being, and our current world has certainly introduced more uncertainty to greater numbers of people (mostly as a result of technology and the spread of information). Children today, it may be argued, are more anxious because they have more to be anxious about. Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation seems to bear this out.
Yes, there are understandable concerns with therapeutic schooling initiatives: the potential for curricula dilution, the blurring of lines between school and therapy, as well as the possibility that some students may come to over-rely on therapeutic interventions, i.e. not learn real-world coping skills. But what new concerns arise when we balance these potential stumbling blocks against not respecting and attending to the social-emotional well-being of the child in front of us? And what are real-world coping skills in our contemporary world? Perhaps therapy and self-care are among them. Furthermore, I would assert that teachers and schools have always been concerned with well-being. This is not a wholly new phenomenon. Therapeutic schools simply act with more intention in regard to implicitly teaching students social-emotional skills and providing immediate and ongoing access to mental health professionals. Rather than vilifying therapeutic education as the result of some political conspiracy or a “therapeutic or emotionality” turn in society, it would seem as though finding a balance is the better approach. It need not be an impossibility that schools simultaneously and implicitly foster both academics and emotional well-being. Collaboration between teachers, mental health professionals, and families is a common sense approach. It is also an approach that has been proven to produce positive results, even when implemented in mainstream schooling. Indeed, it does take a village to raise a child.
The rise of therapeutic schooling is not inherently a danger, as proposed by Ecclestone and Hayes. Nor is it an oddity that is robbing students of an academic education or turning children into self-absorbed, fragile adults. Therapeutic schooling offers an opening toward a schooling model that acknowledges students are complex human beings with a range of needs and that schools must evolve to better meet those needs. And what of an affective turn in society? Isn’t a world where people can access and express their feelings openly and freely preferable to one where they cannot?
Michael Sweet
Michael Sweet is a teacher and writer. A recipient of both a Canadian Prime Minister’s Award and a Queen’s Medal for significant contributions to the field of education, Michael taught for the English Montreal School Board for twelve years. Currently, Michael is on the faculty of the Robert Louis Stevenson School, a private therapeutic school in New York City.
This article is featured in Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Fall 2024 issue.