A note on AI: I have dysgraphia, so AI has been used solely to help with spelling and grammar. This is my writing, based on over 30 years of my own research. All the content, ideas, questions, research, and structure are my own.

Coercive Behaviour Within Education: Who Gets to Decide?

The School of Abnormal | A year-long investigation in the Netherlands and the UK

The ASK

Over the next year, I am investigating coercive behaviour within education in the Netherlands and the UK. I want to hear from students, parents, teachers, professionals and researchers who have experienced, witnessed, questioned or been involved in decisions that affect access to education and safety.

Four examples of the questions this investigation raises:

Parents and "vision". A professional asks parents for their "vision". They ask for adjustments to meet their child's needs and explain that these are adjustments, not a vision. The school later calls them the "parents' vision" and uses that framing in rejecting the child. Who gets to redefine what parents asked for?
Four minutes for the toilet. A teenage girl needs longer during her period, receives detention for exceeding a four-minute limit and stays home the next day because she feels unsafe. Who decides that four minutes is enough?
The wrong pencils. A student receives detention for arriving without the correct pencils. What educational purpose does this punishment serve?
The teacher who wants to help. A teacher recognises a student's needs but feels unable to offer support because of expectations imposed from higher up. Who decides what the teacher is allowed to do, and who is accountable for the consequences?

Why this research, and why now

More than 30 years of research into dopamine receptors led me into 15 years of burnout research, then six years investigating coercive behaviour online and offline, against others and against self. What is happening with our own son and many other families brings that work to this point: research becoming education and accountability.

We are creating The School of Abnormal for research, education, understanding and accountability, rather than daily lessons. It is part of Understanding Burnout and The Sessions, under Brilliantly Unbalanced, informed by Whole System Neuro-Endocrinology and my ongoing Permission Architecture thesis.

Who gets to decide, and who pays the price?

This is not neurodivergent people against neurotypical people. My investigation concerns how protection of self and protection of frameworks can become coercive, through choice or without full awareness. Yet neurodivergent students can pay a disproportionate price when rules override their needs.

At the moment, we are allowing the coercive behaviour of a few to influence decisions affecting many. A teacher may enforce a rule they did not create; a school leader may defend a framework; a policymaker may never experience its effects. This cannot be allowed to carry on.

We are also examining DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender): situations where a person raising concerns may be recast as the problem. Such patterns must be assessed carefully against evidence, rather than assumed in every disagreement.

Theory of Mind and educational adjustments

A major question in the Netherlands is whether older Theory of Mind accounts of autism are being used to dismiss adjustments, despite developments in autism research over approximately the past 15 years, including work on the double empathy problem. We will investigate specific decisions, the evidence used to justify them, and the experiences of autistic students and families. These are questions for research, not predetermined findings about every school.

Flipping the question, over 100 years later

The School of Abnormal asks what adults who might once have been classified and educated under the original School of the Abnormal are doing today: creating, researching, teaching and contributing, having once been spoken about rather than asked. This time, those people are part of the research and education.

Who gets to decide? Who gets to question? And who pays the price?

Our own school, research and frameworks must remain open to being questioned, challenged, corrected and developed. Accountability applies to us too.