Integr Psych Behav DOI 10.1007/s12124-015-9319-1 R E G U L A R A RT I C L E

Borders in Education and Living– a Case of Trench Warfare Pernille Hviid 1

# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Abstract In this paper the notion of border will be examined in a cultural life course perspective. I will investigate borders as psycho-cultural constructions created to enable and control meaning–making in the intersection between subjects engagements and concerns and collectively constructed and guiding meanings. An empirical analysis of one boy’s life course in and between home, school and a Leisure Time Activity Center in the years 1st to 3rd grade demonstrates a systemic construction of borders involving him, his teachers and his parents and renders the boy to choose between becoming an engaged pupil or a dedicated son. As such, the analysis can illuminate processes of school – home interactions that work opposite of what is intended and become detrimental to children’s life. In a cultural life course perspective borders show how life is maintained as meaningful and not only guide the present living but also serve as directional guides into the future. Keywords Borders . Home-and-school interaction . Concerns . Cultural life course

Introduction Why does 9 year old Martin quietly hum Dad, dad, dad, my stupid dad, dad, dad, he doesn’t understand a shit, shit, shit. Dad, dad, dad, my stupid dad, dad, dad, he doesn’t understand a shit, shit, shit. … while doing his math in the classroom, when we know he loves his father and wants to be a garbage man, just like him? Why does the special-education teacher say: BYes, very fine, good!^ to Martin just after he said: BGrim goat^ to her? Why does the

* Pernille Hviid [email protected] 1

Copenhagen, Denmark

Integr Psych Behav

Danish teacher ask me not to tell her colleagues about some of her most successful work with Martin? In this paper I will argue that these examples are cases of actual or anticipated borders-crossing. As one might imagine, each situation above is uneasy and unpleasant, either for Martin or his teachers. This is probably the reason why they build borders. Over time a pattern of trench-building is appearing in the landscape of Martin’s life from where each can either hide or attack the other. As such Martin’s life was a systemic network of trenches. This outcome is not only tragic in relation to Martin, who should benefit productively from around 10.000 h in school, and to his family who depends on public school as a cultivating institution for their children, but also to Martins teachers and the whole institutional arrangement, the public school of Denmark itself. As will be shown, it is in particular the contradictory interpretations of Martin’s family that set the borderbuilding into motion. The case is in particular a concern of pedagogical thinking and school reforms, which advocate for responsible and mutually giving parent-school collaboration. This paper investigates borders as co-constructed strategies to maintain meaningful life courses in a conflicting and potentially damaging environment with regard to one’s concerns in life. As such, they articulate paths in life not to be taken and provides directionality for the future.

A Cultural Life-Course Conceptualization of Border-Making The notion of borders is quite young in socio-cultural theory and most strongly promoted by Pina Marsico (Marsico et al. 2013; Marsico and Iannacone 2012) but its roots are old. The work draws on different disciplines such as mereotopology,1 (Varzi 1998), sociology and a number of psychological theoretical contributions who share an epistemological interest in the relation between the historic subject and his or hers historic context. This counts Lewin and his field theory (1935) and Werner, whose orthogenetic principle said: BWherever development occurs it proceeds from a state of relative globality and lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation, articulation, and hierarchic integration^ (Werner 1957, p. 126.). Hence it seems in line with Vygotsky’s work on the mediated mind and the processes of internalization and externalization (Vygotsky 1978). Also Jaan Valsiner’s work on the culturally channeled, dependent–independent goal-generative subject and his or hers meaningmaking is prominent in the development of the notion of borders (1997, 2006; Valsiner 2014a, b). This places borders in the interdependency of what they delimit; the individual creating his or her environment while always already being constrained (thus enabled) by it. Borders are thus presented as interdependent organizing principles that are at work in and between person and environment. They function to delimit and to organize meanings, and by doing so they not only make distinctions in the human mind but also in the environment in which he or she is living. It is most welcomed and inspiring to be confronted with a conceptualization of the interdependency of the subject and his or her environment that works on a completely 1

Mereotopology is the qualitative mathematical perspective on the issue of borders in the abstract sense.

Integr Psych Behav

different dynamic than commonly presented. Most conceptualizations of this interdependency highlight the subject embracing cultural meanings and the subject being empowered by cultural meanings, while making them into his or her own. This counts concepts like internalization (Vygotsky 1998), appropriation (for the varied use by earlier and contemporary researchers, see Valsiner 1998) and notions that are part of developmental concepts such as Bmaking use of cultural resources^ in life (Zittoun 2006). Here, on the contrary, we are presented with a concept that implies a process of blocking cultural meanings from interfering in the subject’s meaning-making system or his or her everyday life. In the following I intend to investigate borders as they are made and given meaning, maintained or given up in human being’s everyday living with other human beings. Creating a border to cultural meanings is quite a drastic step since one is blocking the environment, and I will attempt to show how borders and existential concerns of the one blocking them are interrelated. Thus, processes that account for how collective meanings are treated, re-configured or blocked – according to what makes them meaningful to the individual subject - and how these gives rise to new personal understandings, expressions and actions and leaves traces in the collective culture are in the center of this investigation of borders. In such an investigation coming to know the persons perspectives on the life lived is an imperative, precisely because the human psyche does not have a natural fit with the structures of their environment, which is why an analysis of the environment in itself cannot shed light on what persons will attain by acting as they do. This discrepancy is the basis for collective and individual development. As Holzkamp writes, human beings have always-already action-possibilities (Holzkamp 1983), and thus choices in life are fundamental to becoming a person. Choices intersect personal engagements and cultural constraints and border-making represents a radical choice. In this perspective human beings are intentional and develop engagements and projects in the course of living. Following Heidegger’s fundamental ontology a person’s being-in-the-world (existence) and a person’s experience is related by that person’s practice with the world (Heidegger 1962; Bertelsen 1994; Stenner 1998; Hviid and Waag Villadsen 2014a, b). To be concerned means being involved in the world, in a particular way, due to one’s project(s). Thus concerned one understands situations in the light of one’s project, and so are one’s actions, talk and emotions expressed, defended, elaborated or given up in the daily life, in the light of one’s concerns (Packer and Scott 1992). Existential concerns are not some inner kernel inside the person hidden from others; they are created and expressed in concrete living. Borders are thus seen as parts of meaning-making systems created as people interact with their environment, and made to protect what is of existential concern. They belong obviously to the more conservative - but dramatic - dynamics of human development, since they are made to protect what is already considered valuable to the subject (in an existential sense, not in a normative sense). From a functional developmental perspective this selfpreservation must be energy consuming to an open system (Valsiner 1997); one that constantly generates new goals. One would assume that such mechanisms wouldn’t appear unless something was at stake. I propose borders to meaning-making is made (consciously or not) when threats to one’s concerns is perceived. In that sense borders guard or protect what is dear to us. Moreover I propose that such a protective mechanism would not be created if one was not already vulnerable, sensitive or

Integr Psych Behav

somehow receptive precisely to these intruding meanings and meaning-complexes as they dialogue with ones concerns. The choices human beings make are necessarily historical, and in experienced irreversible time (Bergson 1915), they are interrelated - although rarely in any straightforward way. As seen in the introductory excerpts the interaction between Martin and his teachers has taken very strange shapes during their acquaintance, and these shapes have had their historic crescendos and will have their postludes. Although my knowledge of Martin’s life only counts three years (from his 7th to his 9th year of age), a historically informed analysis is intended (Hviid and Waag Villadsen 2014a, b). As human beings acts and thus project their lives into the future, they co-create future culture for others as well. Thus, cultivation (Josephs and Fuhrer 1998) of a border-landscape always involve social others and represents a radical suggestion to an alternative social order. A context inclusive perspective on borders can advance from knowing perspectives and points of view from different Bangles^ to understanding the dynamics of the dependent-independent relationship that constitute the borders. Critical psychology is precisely critical to how traditional psychology views the relationship between individual and the collective as one of immediate character (Holzkamp 1983, 2005) because this perspective not only fails to grasp the object of research, but it also follows from the immediacy that an applied psychology asks how human beings can be made to fit their given collectively constrained circumstances rather than the other way around.

Empirical Analysis – One Boy’s Life In the following data from an empirical investigation of children’s lives in school and afterschool care will be presented (Hviid 2001). I visited two schools and after schools for three years, and stayed in Martin’s class approximately once every second week. During the period I made around 300 h of observations in 6 classes and the leisure-time activity centers, and 100 h of interviews with children and professionals. I focused on children’s (and professionals) engagements in the world in whatever emotional color they had, since those engagements could point to concrete empirical foci where much was at stake for the person. This, to my logic, would enhance the possibility of witnessing fuzziness and absorption in one’s cultivation and reconstruction of the person’s relation with the world – in my terms, development (Hviid 2001). Following person’s engagements over time and crisscrossing contexts which they inhabit opens the possibility to make an analysis of the person’s concerns in his or hers living. This is a process of following the traces of engagements and Breading^ them together like pages in a book – in their wholeness - while asking the question: What basic concerns in life are at work for this boy or girl? Arriving at such interpretations makes it possible to re-approach the daily life, potentially closer informed by the subject’s concerns and in this sense having this possibility to analyze microgenetic daily life events in relation to persons’ projections of concerns into the future. It is from such an analysis that borders appeared in Martin’s life. Martin’s life is unique in some aspects and similar to other human beings in other. I have chosen Martins life, rather

Integr Psych Behav

than any other child’s life, because it is exemplary in its laud expressions of border-making.

Martin’s Life in School I don’t know precisely what started the avalanche. Maybe it was Martin’s slow pace, maybe it was the Bout-of-school-talks^ in the morning in the classroom. Maybe it was a combination. Had he been fast, the morning-talks might have been different. Or perhaps completely reverse. The fact is that Martin from first grade worked slower that the average in the classroom. He did not do things that were unimaginable to happen in a schoolroom, rather they were not the things teachers promoted him to do. He made the paper to write on fly and flutter, he drove race with his two erasers, he played with his teddy bear in the bag, he tried to cut the metal on the end of his pencil with his pencil sharpener and he made fun with some of his neighbors. Recreational reading Martin has a book on animals on the farm, Thor has one on circus. Martin: Martin looks through Thor’s book. Do you know those elephants? He tells Thor that they have long conks two places. The male elephants, you know. Ha ha ha. Together they look in Martins book. They stop at a picture of a cow. Thor: Cute, isn’t it? Next picture: A cow has its udder washed. YUK!, says Martin. Next picture: a Jersey cow. Thor: Have you ever seen a square cow? They smile to each other. (2nd grade) But he wrote and read very little. The two teachers, Nina (teacher in Danish) and Vita (teacher in Math) were frustrated. First (1st grade) they considered him immature and maybe confused, later (2nd /start 3rd) they considered him to be lazy and superficial. Nina felt he had an BI-am-only-here-because-I-haveto^- expression on his face. She said that Bother people^ could be provoked by that. But basically they didn’t feel they knew him very well. Somehow his behavior resisted their understanding. In the second half of 3rd grade both Vita and Nina tried to look for something else, other signs. He looked sorry when they at the beginning of their acquaintance in 1st grade scolded him (mildly) for not working, but it did not solve the problem, so they stopped. Despite this problem they insisted that Martin should also experience more fun and playful parts of school hours, and thus they constructed an arrangement where Martin should do at home, what he didn’t reach doing at school, in order for him to take part in more fun exercises such as playing chess or scrabble. We will get back to that. It was not that Martin Bhated^ being in school and he didn’t dislike Vita and Nina either. He liked the short schooldays and the recesses the most. But most of all he liked to be at home, lying on his bed watching cartoons or helping his father with something. His father was a big man in whose hand one’s own disappeared. His profession was a garbage man. Over time I came to understand

Integr Psych Behav

that Martin admired his father deeply and that he considered becoming a garbage man himself. To Martin, he was everything: Big, strong, funny and smart. During the time I knew him I think that Martin also became worried if his father was dumb. While school entered the zone of family living through extra homework, the family entered the classroom through morning conversations with the children in the classroom about what had happened lately at home. These morning séances were important to Nina’s and Vita’s idea of being schoolteachers. Nina: I do not think we have ever discussed if it was waste of time to listen to them [the children, ed.]. They have an opinion and we have to listen. Because we know them as well as we do we ask about their family, their home and house and everything else. We try to make things personal. Despite the intentions to remain accessible, Martin disturbed what Nina and Vita considered being public classroom topics or just classroom topics. There was almost always silence after Martin’s stories. When he one Monday morning told that he had seen around 12 Disney films and thus hadn’t slept much during the weekend it released big sighs of envy amongst his fellow pupils, but Nina and Vita quickly turned to the next child in line, Kenneth, without further probing. When Martin, at another session managed (in 1st grade) to reproduce quite juicy stupid-blonds-withbig-tits jokes that his father had taught him the day before, the boys laughed a raw laughter and the girls looked bewildered. The teachers quickly turned to the next boy in line to get his story. When Martin told that he had spent Saturday in Givskud Lion Park, the teachers looked interested: It seemed that they anticipated that this was something they could take part in. So they probed for further information. Unfortunately the story ended dramatic: During the trip Martin’s father was kicked in the groin by a donkey and couldn’t drive the car back home. In empathy the boys in the class instinctively held on their crotch while moaning while the girls once again looked bewildered. One can hardly avoid imagining this scenery: The big father moaning on the back seat with three other kids while mama takes the lead on the highway back to Copenhagen. It’s a perfect film scene. Maybe because of such tempting imagination Nina and Vita avoided the issue altogether and turned to the next pupil. Martin’s reports and narratives mostly ended with the teachers’ silence. It was as if Nina’s and Vita’s mere relation to what Martin told had a damaging impact on them as teachers: Could they cheer his weekend marathon in cartoon watching when they considered him too slow working and distracted in school? Could they allow themselves to be amused by or even explain his juicy blondjokes to the uncomprehending girls (and maybe boys) thus peddling a sexist view on females (parents could get angry?) and could they touch upon the issue of a parent’s groin in the classroom? They obviously felt they could not. Such talks seemed to threaten them as teachers, maybe as women or maybe as middle class women. In the absence of a better alternative they remained silent and passed the speaker’s turn to the next. So there was almost always

Integr Psych Behav

NOTHING after Martins stories of his life at home. I don’t know how Martin understood the nothingness that followed his engagements, potentially as Bnotengagements^ (Josephs et al. 1999), not even worth saying anything to, nor shareable. At least as something that didn’t belong to a school. Please read this in relationship with Martins concern: He was proud of his father. He wanted to be like him. I believe that this distancing meant a lot to Martins border-making. Back to the Homework Book The parents of Martin did however appear in the discourse of Vita and Nina, but in an interpretation very different from Martins. The teachers were critical and considered them irresponsible in letting Martin have too many days off, to attend school too late and to be unprepared. BIt is he who pays a high prize. It is not mom and dad who pay the prize. It is Martin^, Nina said. From time to time they passed on this point of view to Martin in sentences like: BBut your parents should have done those exercises with you. Haven’t your mother looked at your schoolbooks at all during this weekend?^ From the tone of their voice it was quite clear, that something was wrong. Nina: We had to make a home-work book. Vita: The parents say: BWe will not make control of Martin. We want to trust him, if he says he has no homework.^ Therefore we have made the home-work-book-agreement. Whether or not an Bagreement^ between the two parties was literally made, the Bhome-work-book-agreement^ didn’t work either. The parents rejected the school’s intrusion in their home. They didn’t take upon them the controlling authority of the school in front of their son. I do not have much information about this refusal, but the father told me that he had bad school experiences himself. He had, he explained, taken the Bobligatory 8 years^. But he was not sorry for his life today; he had a permanent job, well-paid, a house and a family counting four children. But to ask him to accept the socialization by school under his roof, enacted by him, was obviously too much. That was his border and it didn’t happen. Was Martin lazy? At a first glance Martin truly looked lazy, distant and not caring about what went on in the classroom teaching, and he did develop some kind of Bwhat-doI-care?- attitude^. But sitting close to Martin, as I often did during school hours, it became clear that he did often discretely take part in what was going on. He often commented on the dialogue between teachers and pupils in inaudible ways. He was not always right in his reasoning, but he took part, silently and on a distance. There were obviously also things that interested him in school, mostly in Science and Math. He was, as I came to know, very fast in math but no one, not he, nor his peers or his teacher knew. Looking over his shoulder I am positive he did most operations correctly, but the traces of engagement were erased very quickly.

Integr Psych Behav

Math’s. They calculate distances on a map of Denmark. Martin sits next to Christian, the fastest pupil in the class; they are expected to work together. BSæby - Skagen^ [two Danish towns, ed.], they write in their exercise book. Christian waits until Martin is ready. Martin: Go! They count each on their own calculator. Martin is first, his result is 53 km. Christian: It is your turn to show first. Martin: No. Christian: Yes, or I will not show mine. Martin smiles apologizing and deletes his result: BOops!^ Christian: Ah, I know that … when one forgets to write B+^ [Martin deleted his result, ed.] Martin: BYeah.^ They do the task again. Martin hurries. He gets 26 km and shows it reluctantly to Christian. Christian: No, no. I have done it twice and I get the same result: 53 km. Martin doesn’t protest. He pushes the square root button and a lot of numbers appear on the display. BAnd I got this!^ Christian laughs: Na-na!

Martin was much better than he, his classmates and Vita knew of. Vita discovered with big surprise that he scored second best in the class on a national test in third grade. At first she considered it as a technical mistake but little by little the truth sunk in and she felt she had to get Bused to a completely different boy^. The problem was still puzzling. Martin made a border to something completely legitimate in school, math, which was even an interest to him. Why this hiding or distancing oneself from what one obviously can be engaged in? Did he want to do well in school? Did he want to know, that he did well at school? I doubt that. Rather I believe Martin couldn’t help getting engaged in math (Kohl 1991). When being engaged in school tasks and being supported by an enthusiastic teacher, he was in great trouble. It was during such math work that Martin quietly hummed:Dad,dad,dad,mystupiddad,dad,dad,hedoesn’tunderstandashit,shit,shit.Itwas as if the mere giving into school work, showing engagement and doing well simultaneously opened to existential questions, which were not related to the concrete task at hand but to the potential meaningfulness of being a dedicated pupil. Allowing such potential meaningfulness

Integr Psych Behav

of school did, to Martin, also mean taking part in the school-view, that his father was dumb. In that sense the energetic math-making and the song fitted painfully well together. Needing Extra Danish-Lessons Martin was not doing particularly well in Danish. In 3rd grade he was recommended extra lessons in Danish by a teacher trained as special educator. Martin was neither fond of her, nor of her teaching. Shortly speaking he characterized BExtra-Danish^ as Bshit^ and explained: BShe gets angry and she only help the other ones^. In the classroom four pupils and the teacher, Ann, is positioned. Ann asks each pupil to read the text they have practiced at home. Martin reads in a choppy and rather incomprehensible way. Ann asks if he has done his home-work. Martin nods, BYes!^. BWith whom?^ Ann asks. Martin replies:BWith my mom and my dad and my bigger brother and my bigger sister …^ Ann stops him:BYou haven’t rehearsed at all, have you?^ Martin replies BNo^ and the teacher scolds him, and ends by saying that Bshe cannot teach him to read and write if his parents doesn’t take upon them the responsibility they have as parents!^ She repeats talking about the responsibility they don’t take. Big silence ….Martin looks at her. She looks back and tries to shake her frustration of herself and says much calmer and softer: BOk, let’s do something different now, let’s practice the sounds of the letters. Can you do the G-sound, Martin?^ Martin tries: BG^, BG^, BG^.BVery well^, Ann says. BNow, can you find words that start with such Bg^ sound?^ Upon that Martin looks into her eyes and replies: BGrim Goat^, making a special effort to pronounce the Bg’s^. BYes, very good - fine!^ Ann replies. During the rest of the lesson they didn’t speak. Martin got stock in some exercise, but she didn’t help him even though he asked for help. Martin attacked, and Ann was obviously offended. I guess she felt she at first went too far in her critique of Martins parents and that made her soften up. But Martin was angry and she was unpreparedly caught in a language game and was humiliated in her praising Martin for his choice of words BGrim Goat^. He had got behind her lines of defense, while shielding himself with the school-proper G-sounds. I can only understand Martins anger as response to her critique of his family. At a later recess I heard Ann talking to colleagues about Martin as a very rude person. Alternatives: Looking for BAnother Martin^ and Making School Homey After the results of the national math test Vita tried to imagine Martin as a person who was strong in math. Interestingly she didn’t engage with the question of how she could have been so wrong or how and why Martins competences had remained hidden for that long. She remarked that she had to see Banother Martin^ - as if the genesis of the problem had nothing to do with her. In that sense she didn’t really care about the meaning of the border. However, in searching for new clues of who Martin was, she showed that she was ready to reinterpret her pedagogical practice: Maybe children didn’t have to look engaged or perform engagement in school participation, maybe it was enough that they dealt with the required tasks? In that sense she split the meaning

Integr Psych Behav

of doing a task from the meaning of being a pupil. This happened to be a functional solution – but without any understanding of why. She could have skipped her demands of homework, since Martin obviously did okay without doing it, but she did not go that far in her reconstruction of her pedagogy. It would probably have sounded wrong: BHe is smart, but lazy, so we skipped the homework in his case^. In the late hours of the school day Nina had what she called Bmixed bonbons^. These lessons were generally less tightly constrained to specific exercises and more open to the pupil’s suggestions. In such circumstances I watched Martin lying under a table with a pillow under his head. He read Donald Duck in the light of a flashlight. Laying there it looked like he was having a cozy time. Nina crawled under the table and I heard her discuss Donald Duck with him. On her way out she moved the pillow in order for him to feel more comfortable. During such lessons I noticed that the classroom door was closed. Normally, and due to cramped conditions, Nina kept the door to the hall open and quite regularly a group of children sat working in the hall. But during Bmixed bonbons^ the door remained shot. In a – to me – rather successful way, Nina managed to bridge Martins life at home. Rather than imperialistic claims of dominance on foreign territory, she invited the stranger (the home) into her own zone. The scene reminded me of Martins passion for lying on his bed and watching cartoons. Nina crawled around and took an active part in his engagement. They shared something. And she showed care for Martin in stuffing his pillow underneath him. It was as if she tried to make him feel at home, in school. Martin didn’t resist at all. Yet, Nina asked me not to tell any of her colleagues about Bmixed bonbons^. She sounded worried. It was as if the trouble Martin had in school could be transferred to her shoulders if colleagues like Ann saw her ways of teaching. Allowing herself to recompose the idea of what the classroom could and should accept, and thus in fact working on modeling a new type of dialogue with Martin, she simultaneously worried about the judgements of her colleagues. Basically she was afraid of being viewed as a bad teacher and she had nagging worry that they could be right. Nina: I promise you: We are still criticized for many things. We have been under fire. From time to time I still get nervous and think: Will there be more headwinds? Vita: But I have chosen to ignore it. As soon as something different happens in this class, we hear: BBut will they complete curriculum?^ Of course they will! They will learn even if they spend two hours in the supermarket and bake balls for another two hours. Of course they will learn. I am sure of that. Nina: But I wear belt and braces, Vita. You don’t. When they tell about what they have achieved in the other 2nd grade I worry: Will we make it? Vita: Yes, you regularly worry. Such weird seizures do you get regularly (Smiles).

Integr Psych Behav

The door closed off from what Nina intuitively felt was good teaching since she feared the critique of her colleagues, and even more she feared that the critique was justifiable. Their teaching practices had obviously already provoked colleagues who defended their own practice by ventilating their concern that Nina and Vita wasted valuable time on extra-curricular activities, and that they didn’t demonstrate enough firmness. That was probably not the whole story the colleagues could tell but something resisted their understanding. Ann would probably consider Nina’s crawling around under the table as a disloyal act to her, had she seen it. I her eyes, and due to her concern, Nina’s act would look spineless, even to the degree of rewarding Martin for his Bmisbehavior^. This is unless, of course, she was ready to do a thorough introspection of her own pedagogy. Nina agreed on that in closing the door.

At the Leisure Time Center The Leisure Time Center (LTC) offered Martin completely different developmental possibilities but as we shall see, the two zones were repeatedly and mutually reconstructed by the crisscrossing children. Since LTC’s might not be as well known as a school, a bit of cultural history is introduced for the reader to open the door and step in. Drawing on a 150 year old Danish tradition those kinds of institutions grew out of asylums and became Bhomes, with big children’s rooms^ especially for troubled families or the single-mother’s families where the mother was courageous and strong and managed to provide Bbread on the table^ through work, but meanwhile leaving the home Bcold^. This situation, it was argued by the end of the nineteenth century, exposed the children to the most Bdishonorable hazards, when they were left to the microbe of the streets.^ (Hviid et al. 2012 p. 167). Leisure Time Centers have through 120 years offered themselves as supplementary to the family life, with home-pursuits like gardening, sewing, cooking, household carpentering, play, theater, sport and homework and later, all sorts of modern games, to choose for the children. It echoes in the walls that it is the CHILDREN’S leisure time - thus they are to choose within quite minimal constraints how to spend their afternoons (Hviid and Højholt 2012). Around 240.000 children are enrolled in LTC’s. At present the number of LTC’s decreases due to governmental streamlining and extension of school hours. At the LTC Martin did not resist taking part in the practices and opportunities. Rather, he often contributed profoundly and expanded willfully and delighted his being into the environment. And he fitted well in. Martin could be bold and brave, wild and cocky and even his antics, such as stealing apples from the neighbor or creating wrestling contests, spiced up the afternoons in the center. His contributions were much appreciated by the other children, since he made their center dramatic and exciting. It is an ordinary afternoon in May, around 18°, cold for mud-play. Martin is playing outside with three other boys from 1st grade. They are digging and playing with water on a small hill. They make dams and channels and mud. As the pool of mud grows, it tempts them. The boys start by throwing big stones into the mud puddles. Other children from the playground flock together.

Integr Psych Behav

Then - as one - the boys tumble down the hill. The yell deep sounds from their bellies. They fall and glide down on their behinds and stomps in the dam until it breaks. A big wave of mud is released. With their hands they dig out the last mud. Mud-water is everywhere, everything is miry and soggy – their trousers are brown, wet and heavy. They crawl to the top with big stones, lift them above their heads and throw them with all the force they can muster into the biggest mud piles. Deep, raw and delighted laughs. Their hands, arms, head, t-shirts, trousers and shoes – all are now brown and wet. The girls whine and step back to avoid the cascades of mud. The audience counts now around 30–40 children and Hans (pedagogue – who watches that things does not get Bout of hand^) in the background. They fill the buckets with mud and throw it on each other. The girls scream, but they are not noticed. The boys are completely absorbed in the mud. They throw, fall, crawl, wrestle and yell sounds. Jacob approaches Martin from behind with a filled bucket. He pours the thick, slurping mass over his head. Martin gasps with delight, it’s cold and complete. Hans: Enough now!!! The boys stop. The girls whisper: BUsh! They need a shower!^ BAnd clean clothes!^, BI bet!^.BGO TO THE SHOWER - NOW!^ the pedagogue commands in a brusque voice, which makes him fit well into the scenery as a sheriff. The crowd opens to their exit and they leave in an aura of disgusted-delighted admiration. During the rest of the day the story was present all over the LTC, also amongst the bigger 2nd and 3rd graders. Quite many of the parents were also consecrated in the cultural productions when they came to pick up their child. Martin’s contributions did not make the professionals angry or made them withdraw, but on the other hand, and due to the internal logic of the institution, they rarely promoted him to do specific things either. Such Bvom-Kinder-aus^ 2 pedagogies are known for offering great freedom and recognition, but they also balance on a knives edge to negligence (Hviid 1998), especially when staff is reduced. Martin was respected, but no one among the professionals considered their relationship with him as Bclose^. Lars (Manager of Leisure Time Center): He recently told me:BI saw your partner yesterday^. So, I became happy, right? And then he said:^He looked really sweet!^ Lars laughs. He takes the adults off-guard! The pedagogues knew to some degree of his trouble in school, but for many inter-institutional historic reasons, summed up in differences of power, LTC never took action to improve his schooldays, and had they done, they would most likely not have been listened to. The professional school and the 2 BVom Kinder aus^ refers to pedagogies, inspired amongst other by the French philosopher Rousseau, and building on the idea of the healthy and benevolent nature of the child.

Integr Psych Behav

professional home has still today great difficulty in finding a common ground (or meta-level) on which to collaborate. Martin was well respected by the other children at the LTC. The girls who did not want to sit next to him in the classroom could swirl around him at the center. He had a big group of boys to join. During the years he achieved a reputation as courageous and strong. This I believe is shown in some classmates’ narrative on how he broke his arm – twice, second time only six days after getting of the plaster. Christian: Yes, he broke it on his roller-skates. And his father said: You will God damn next time get suction cups on instead! The boys laugh. But Martin, he just sat down in the sofa [without crying, ed.], and his father looked at it. Rasmus: The arm – it dangled! It dangled like this! (Shows me how) – It simply dangled! (3rd grade) Yet, when it came to matters that were taught by an adult, the boys did not count on Martin’s knowledge. I believe that many of his classmates considered him out of reach for education, and that did not stop at the school-gate. Confronted with such positioning, which Martin knew more than well, he only protested little to being positioned as dumb. Christian and Rasmus attended a workshop and while they worked Christian’s thread came out of the needle (3rd grade). Martin: I can take the nettle-threader. Rasmus: It is needle-threader. Martin: Nettle! Christian: Needle! Martin helps Cristian by pulling the needle-threader through the eye of the needle [correct, ed.] but the needle is very thin. BIt’s difficult^, he says. Christian: It’s because you do it all wrong – it’s not effective! Christian gives it a try, in an incorrect way, sticking the thread in the needle threader. Rasmus comes back after having asked a pedagogue and says: BFirst you put the needle on (the needle-threader)^ Martin: That was what I did! Christian: No! And why didn’t you do that? Martin (sounds disengaged): Because I couldn’t remember. It is hardly surprising that people are selective of which sources to trust and on what matters, but in this case these two otherwise socially sharp boys could not get a full grasp of the resistance Martin had built up. They could simply not believe that Martin

Integr Psych Behav

was right and they were wrong in something they were taught by an adult. Concretely Martin supported that interpretation with his Bnettle-threader^. In spite of what happened in front of their eyes, that he actually knew the procedure, their interpretation of him was not put out of balance. Their certainty had probably something to do with the fact that they took part in the Vita’s and Nina’s cultivation of the schoolroom with much less ambivalence and had much more success in claiming classroom-space as also their space. Thus, they basically trusted the competences of Vita and Nina and they did consider them overall fair, BOtherwise I had left school long time ago^ Rasmus explained in 1st grade. Irrespectively of the precise rationality that guided Rasmus and Christian, the interpretation that the problem existed Bin^ Martin - and not in his concerned relations with the world - was transferred to a new context. He became uneducational in the Leisure Time Activity Center. Martin confirmed that interpretation in his reply: BBecause I couldn’t remember.^ From the case we see how the borders have a systemic historic life, on culturemeso- onto- and microgenetic levels. All these are weaved firmly together over long time. The worrying part, for those who want changes, is the duration of the constraints of each single institution; the family, the LTC and the school - and their interrelated fit, that made their difficulties redundant. Borders popped up in Martins landscape and promoted each other in a seemingly endless way. I lost track of Martin by the end of third grade. I know that he a couple of years later had a stay in a BChristmas-stamp-home^ (Julemærkehjem), a national network of boarding schools for overweighed kids with existential difficulties. From there on I know nothing more.

Discussion In the case above I have attempted to demonstrate how borders, as self-protective constructions, are created in a child’s existence and his contexts. They have in this paper been investigated as psycho-cultural constraints controlling access to meanings and concerns. Through the case it has been shown how they regulate potential meaning-making and social order. Borders appoint the paths one could tread but presently refrain from. Over time their co-construction might grow strong and redundant and seem impossible to cross. For better or for worse. The analysis has shown how all of the contexts that Martin inhabited played a part in the construction of the problem Martin reacted to and tried keep out of his concerns. These institutions were constrained by different rationalities that guided the interaction of the inhabitants and this tended to double the trouble. Yet, the border Martin created was not related in any direct way to any of these concrete contexts, not to the schoolcontext either. On the contrary Martin found at least some of the classical school activities quite engaging, and did pretty well here and not all children who decline homework are concerned like Martin. He also seemed to fit well into his family and he was the all-time typical LTC-boy. The border was neither the school’s way nor his father’s way. It was Martin’s way. It represented his historic comprehension of what was going on putting many pieces together; and this was his personal reply (I am not postulating that he had a full analytical understanding of what was going on). It was a border to a proposal not said directly, but

Integr Psych Behav

never the less audible to Martin over long periods of time and across his contexts. It was a proposal he did not want to come into contact with and so he blocked it. He resisted the meaningfulness of becoming a school-fit pupil, since school, to him, considered his father irrelevant, maybe dumb. Intended or not by school, that was what he heard. Catching himself in enjoying math-tasks was to him betraying his father and his love for his father. A symbolic alliance with school was therefore a critical existential matter to Martin, but this had basically nothing to do with the concrete content of school-tasks, out of which he liked some. Rather his border worked in spite of his interest in math and science. In a similar vein Kohl (1991) wrote: Learning how to not-learn is an intellectual and social challenge; sometimes you have to work very hard at it. It consists of an active, often ingenious, willful rejection of even the most compassionate and well-designed teaching (1991, p. 10) Martin defended himself towards an interpretation that would otherwise corrupt the meaningfulness of his life. In that sense the borders being investigated and the concerns they stood for could not be understood with reference to any specific environmental condition in itself, they could not be attributed to a concrete location or a concrete practice. Still they were true; the everyday was seen and heard and felt in the light of his concerns. In this sense the analysis of borders at work has pointed to the problems that the postulate of immediacy bears with it, and supports the interdependent principles of development already conceptualized by Vygotsky in the Bsocial situation of development^ (Vygotsky 1998). Borders – in a Cultural Life Course Perspective I would like to follow the line Marsico et al. (2013) and Ingerslev Nedergaard et al. (2015) have recently suggested. They appointed meaning-making, distinction-making, and value-adding as three central processes in construction of borders in mind and in society. I could not disagree here. But I would like to take these concepts in a certain direction and address the level of the cultural life course of concrete human beings. In doing so, the border-making consists of meaning-makings, distinction-makings and value-addings. In plural. This plurality stems from a multitude of persons and their concerns in living; persons being guided by what they find meaningful in life. It is within these lives and their interrelatedness that the meaning-making becomes meaningful, and where the borders constrain and provide the cultural life course with a certain developmental directedness. While Martin protected his father and his vision of his father, the school saw his reluctance as either rude (Ann) or as a combination of him being a lazy boy or a boy being (mildly) neglected at home, through an upbringing that lacked firmness. Martin’s father was, on the other hand, sorry that school time was so hard on Martin. He interpreted the problems as Martins lack of confidence in himself. He said: BHe is a good lad, but he hasn’t much confidence in himself.^ LTC did (I suspect) perceive the problem as a typical working-class problem with a public (middleclass) school. In either case the border through which to gain understanding of the situation did not tempt them to climb over, dig into. It did not appeal to their reflection as they already knew the reason for its genesis, and this had in their perspective nothing to do with

Integr Psych Behav

them but rather with Martin (in person), or with the dynamics and constraints in other contexts. To my knowledge utterances like: BWhy didn’t you tell me that you are good in math?^, BWhy do you snap at me – did I say something wrong?^, BWhy do you say bad things of my father – I don’t want it!^ were never spoken out. There was no need to understand this in new ways for anyone. Without having any kind of documentation for this, I assume that the single-stringed explanation holding the back of each person free was most needed. Each of the persons was concerned, but mainly with the meaningfulness of their own lives and this meaningfulness would, I assume, be compromised by acknowledging their partaking in the construction of Martin’s difficulties. Nina’s way was somehow an exception. She managed most successfully to bridge Martin’s contexts and smooth out the conflict between them. Interestingly, or maybe obviously, she also had the strongest ambivalence towards her own (school) context and her partaking in that, and probably Martin’s trouble resonated with that ambivalence.

Concluding Remarks: The Road Not Taken

I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. (Frost 1916, The Road Not Taken, last verse) As I have sought to show the varied interpretations of Martin, and by Martin, maintained and developed over the three years I knew him, the trenches got deeper around him and multiplied in a logical sense. Martins concerned living and other important people’s living with him dug trenches that channeled Martin’s potential future. The channeling did not Bhappen^; Martin chose Bhis way^ due to his love for his father, his interpretation of his environment and due to his perception of his range of action possibilities. To him this was the only solution he had, might I add, in the period of time that I knew him. What we see here is a boy making choices that influences his life deeply and this is NOT related to the concrete activities in his contexts in themselves, but to his interpretation of them seen from the context of his own life. He knew the games of being a pupil, as he excellently demonstrated in the BGrim Goat-situation^. We also saw that he could engage in school matters, as he did in math. Moreover, he could maintain his engagement in his home, his beloved father and his aspirations to become like him. But he could not make himself do both. This had to do with his concerns, his existence - not with the concrete contextual activities as such.

Integr Psych Behav

This advocates for a particular attention towards people’s concerns in living (Hviid 2012) and this is at the center of a cultural life course perspective. This differs from a classical lifecourse perspective, since it not only investigates subjects’ changing cultural embedment over time (e.g., living in changing environmental conditions from kindergarten, to school, education and work and the transitions in between) but investigates how such a life makes meaning and is lead in a meaningful way. In this theoretical frame borders is of significant importance since they articulate a person’s concerns of perceived existential threat and thus prescribes choices and the not-chosen for the person and environmental responses to such choosing. As such this adds directedness to the notion of border. Borders demark roads not to take. It is in this interdependently constructed (Valsiner 1997) directedness that the existential concern or personal choice takes form and feed into the future life of the person, pointing not only at who he/she once where and who he/she currently is, but just as much at who he/ she might be it the unpredictable future.

References Bergson, H. (1915). Den skabende udvikling. [Creative development]. Copenhagen: Gads Forlag. Bertelsen, P. (1994). Tilværelsesprojektet. Det menneskeliges niveauer belyst i den terapeutiske proces. [The project of being.]. Copenhagen: Dansk Psykologisk Forlag. Frost, R. (1916) . The road not taken. Mountain interval, New York: Henry Holt And Company. Heidegger, M. D1962]. Being and time. New York: HarperCollins DOriginal work published 1927]. Holzkamp, K. (1983). Grundlegung der Psychologie. Frankfurt AM: Campus Verlag. Holzkamp, K. (2005). Mennesket som subjekt for videnskabelig metodik [The human being as subject to scientific methodology], (translated and re-printed by T. B. Jensen & P. Hviid) Nordiske Udkast, 33(1), 5– 33. Hviid, P. (1998). Deltagelse eller reaktiv pædagik [Participatory or reactive pedagogy] in Bryderup, I. (Ed.) Pædagogens faglighed i daginstitutioner. Copenhagen: DPI Hviid, P. (2001). Børneliv i udvikling. Om børns engagementer i skole og fritidsinstitutioner.[Child-life in development- On children’s engagements in school and afterschool] PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen: Unpublished. Hviid, P. (2012). “Remaining the same” and children’s experience of development. In M. Hedegaard, K. Aronsson, C. Højholt & O. Skjær Ulvik (Eds.), Children, childhood and everyday life: Children’s perspectives (pp. 37–52). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing. Hviid, P., & Højholt, C. (2012). Fritidspædagogik og børneliv. [Leisuretime pedagogy and children’s lives]. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Hviid, P., & Waag Villadsen, J. (2014a). Cultural identities and their relevance to school practice. Culture & Psychology, 20(1), 59–69. Hviid, P., & Waag Villadsen, J. (2014b). Ruptures and repairs in the course of living – challenges to developmental psychology. In A. Joerchel & G. Bentka (Eds.), Biographical ruptures and their repairs: Cultural transitions in development. Charlotte: IAP. Hviid, P., Gammelgaard, K., & Bak, S. (2012). Frihed og fritidspædagogik. In P. Hviid & C. Højholt (Eds.), Fritidspædagogik og børneliv. [Leisuretime pedagogy and children’s lives]. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Ingerslev Nedergaard, J., Valsiner, J., & Marsico, G. (2015). “I am not THAT KIND OF...”: Personal Relating With Social Borders. In B. Wagoner, N. Chaudhary and P. Hviid (Eds), Integrating experiences: Body and mind moving between contexts. Niels Bohr Professorship Lectures In Cultural Psychology, vol 2. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishers Josephs, I., & Fuhrer, U. (1998). The cultivated mind: from mental mediation to cultivation. Developmental Review, 18(3), 279–312.

Integr Psych Behav Josephs, I., Valsiner, J., & Surgan, S. E. (1999). The process of meaning construction – dissecting the flow of semiotic activity. In J. Brandtstäder & R. Lerner (Eds.), Action and self development (pp. 257–282). CA: Thousand Oaks. Kohl, H. (1991). I won’t learn from you! The role of assent in learning (Thistle Series of Essays). Minnesota: Milkweed Editions. Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill. Marsico, G., & Iannacone, A. (2012). The work of schooling (The Oxford handbook of Culture and psychology, pp. 830–869). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marsico, P., Cabell, K. R., Valsiner, J., & Kharlamov, N. A. (2013). Interobjectivity as a border: The fluid dynamics of BBetweenness^. In G. Sammut, P. Daanen, & F. Moghaddam (Eds.), Understanding the self and others: Explorations in intersubjectivity and interobjectivity (pp. 51–65). London: Routledge. Packer, M. J., & Scott B. (1992). The hermeneutic investigation of peer relationship. In J. Winegard & J. Valsiner (Eds.), Children's development within social contexts: Research and methodology, vol II, pp. 75– 111. Hillsdale, NJ, Erlbaum. Stenner, P. (1998). Heidegger and the subject: questioning concerning psychology. Theory & Psychology, 8, 59–77. Valsiner, J. (1997). Culture and the development of children’s action: A cultural-historical theory of developmental psychology (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley. Valsiner, J. (1998) . The guided mind – a sociogenetic guide to personality. Howard University Press. Valsiner, J. (2006). The semiotic construction of solitude: processes of internalization and externalization. Sign System Studies, 34(1), 9–25. Valsiner, J. (2014a). An invitation to cultural psychology. London: Sage. Valsiner, J. (2014a) . The Raumaesthetik of Theodor Lipps as a dialogical research program. Lecture at the 8th international Conference on Dialogical Self, Haag. Varzi, A. (1998). Basic problems of mereotopology. In N. Guarino (Ed.), Formal ontology in information systems (pp. 29–38)). Amsterdam: Ios Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978) . Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman (Eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Vygotsky, L. S. (1998) . The collected works of L. S. Vygotsky. R. W. Rieber (Ed.), Vol. 5. New York: Kluwer Academic /Plenum Publishers. Werner, H. (1957). The concept of development from a comparative and organismic point of view. In D. B. Harris (Ed.), The concept of development: An issue in the study of human behavior (pp. 125–148). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Zittoun, T. (2006). Transitions: Development through symbolic ressources. Charlotte NC: Information Age Publishing. Pernille Hviid is associate professor at Department of Psychology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. She does research and teaches within the field of developmental psychology, with special foci on children’s development and their experiences of living, and the institutional constraining of their lives and development. Recent work are BCultural Psychology and its future^ (IAP, 2014), and BIntegrating experiences: Body and mind moving between contexts^ (IAP, 2015), co-edited with Wagoner and Chaudhary. She edits the journal BOutlines – Critical Practice Studies^ Email: [email protected]