ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the emotions that arise when consent gets overruled. It focuses on the anger and despair that children and teachers feel in the absence of consent, and on the ways that these emotions fester due to a lack of open expression or sanction in schools. The chapter focuses on the idea that school’s way of circumventing and ignoring processes of consent can lead to tremendous anger and despair among children and teachers. Anger is something a lot of people feel physiologically, via increased heart rates, trouble sleeping, a desire to punch or hit, a sense of heat. Anger also varies among individuals. Some of people may feel angry and instantly turn it inward, and others might start banging pots and pans around in a cabinet as a way of recognizing, and then releasing, the anger. Anger is a feeling with an object, even when the object may be hard to pinpoint.
