Non-attendance at school as a "puberty-problem" : An elucidation using phenomenological thought on "ego experience" as a clue

Abstract

In many cases school absentees cannot express the reason for their absence although they are disgusted at schools. According to Heidegger's thought about the relationship between being and "feeling," this means that school absentees refuse to attend school not on the level of cognition but on the level of being. But why is that so? In this paper, a paradigm will be proposed to understand the reason, using Sartre's thought about conscience and "nothingness" as a clue. In the field of juvenile psychology, "ego-experience" is commonly seen among young people. By the "annihilating function" of their own conscience, young people experience the separation of "the positive world and ego, " of "subjective ego and objective ego" and of "conscience and body. " So they often experience the world, especially their school, as a persecuting world, and cannot help but flee into safe places. However, they usually regard attending school as a possibility that is to be realized as a matter of course. They inevitably have a "sense of guilt" in front of others. So it would be useless trying to persuade them to attend school, because they would probably refuse school even after they understand that they have to attend school on the level of cognition. We should allow them to be in safe places and wait until they restore the relationship between the world and themselves and between the others and themselves.