In The Mystery of School Refusal writers Gaute Brochmann and Ole Jacob Madsen tries to get to the bottom of school refusal as a phenomenon. What is going on in our families, at school or in society that makes something that was so easy and obvious just one generation ago is now becoming increasingly impossible for so very many.

Before, everyone went to school. Both the good pupils and the not so good pupils. The practical students and the ponderers. Those who had a good life at home, and those who didn´t. Those who played football in the breaks and those smoking behind the shed. There was probably very few who thought of school as great fun, and everybody had something they did not like about school, from moody teachers to rowdy fellow students. From hard subjects to the fact that you must sit still all day long. Still, we went there. All of us. Day after day, year after year.

Today this is not the case.

A growing number of children are not going to school. They want to. But they just can´t. The phenomenon has spread down the ages, from High School through Junior High and down to Elementary School and it is known as School Refusal. Professional communities now agree that School Refusal is turning into a considerable challenge when it comes to the public health.

What has caused this development? And why is it happening now? In this book the authors try to look at what is causing this development. They try to look at it in a wider social perspective, with the stories of the children as a natural point of focus.