Review of Therapeutic Education: Working Alongside Troubled and Troublesome Children (Book Review)

Therapeutic education requires a move from “a punitive, blame-based, unfairly competitive and deviant-defined culture” to “one that celebrates diversity and cultural differences” (p.11), from a deficit model of SEN and deviant model of challenging behaviour to “a more humane and therapeutic approach to education and learning generally (p.12). Therapeutic education is holistic and encourages agency and responsibility. How adults relate to learners is viewed as more important than what is taught. The authors invite this to be a model of whole school change, and indeed of a fundamental review of the values of the whole education system. “This book promotes a bio-psycho-social standpoint” (p.49).