Tales Out of School: Counselling African Caribbean Young People in Schools

Abstract

AFRICAN CARIBBEAN YOUNG PEOPLE IN SCHOOLSThis paper draws on my experience working as part of an innovative project that made it possible for a team of black therapists to work therapeutically in schools, in a community centre and at the Tavistock Clinic with black adolescents and their carers. It also draws on other experiences of being a black counsellor working in schools with black adolescents. I try to show that there are similarities between a child joining a school, this team of black counsellors joining the big school of provisions or services, and a black adolescent boy joining an adult world in which his loyalties, how he is perceived and his self-perception seem to offer him a ready-made place and way of being. This paper is about the power of pressures to conform, something that is intimately connected with or part of education, joining a culture, coming to know what is what and who belongs where and with whom, and who should be obeyed. It is also about the ability to resist conformity, and how terms such as 'freedom', 'choice' and 'agency' become applicable and warranted.