hobia could not have lasted beyond the middle 1920’s, and may have been an attempt less to explain truancy than to attract larger government funding for it’s treatments through the use of fashionable semi – medical terms. Even so, the tradition was set. Since then, many researchers have devoted themselves to discovering what is wrong with the personalities or backgrounds or both of those children who play truant. It is clear that school phobia was observed as being very different from truancy. It was accepted that the family background of a truant is believed to be equally unfortunate. They are said to come predominantly from poor families, where the father, if actually present and working has a job with low earnings and low status and low security (Tyerman, 1968, Farrington, 1980 ; Reid, 1986). They live usually in the inner cities, in bad and overcrowded properties (Tyerman, 1968; Galloway, 1980). There is a tendency for truancy their parents not to care about functuality or attendance or homework. Other factors that can lead to truancy is based on unfavorable external circumstances where the educational pressures have been too high for a dull child or where the child’s own expectations are too high and they feel that they are not learning anything at school (Reid, 1986). Whether as by the teachers interviewed by Farrington (1980) we regard truants in a moralistic light, or as the pitiable victims of circumstances, the conclusions reached by this line of research are straight forward. If children play truant, it is because they are for various reasons unable to cope with school. Truancy is their problem, and any attempt to stop them from playing truant must be concerned with readjusting them. However, this whole line research has been challenged. Carroll et al (1977), looking at schools in South Wales, doubt if children or their backgrounds can be the sole or even the principle cause of truancy. Reynolds and Mu...
