Shame: to feel or not to feel – life history research from second chance education in Sweden

This article examines how shame, responsibility, and educational failure are narrated in one life history of return to education through the Swedish folk high school. Now eligible for higher education, the interviewee narrates his experiences through a pattern of defence, shifting between locating responsibility within himself and attributing it to external conditions. Difficulties such as dyslexia, ADHD, crime and anxiety appear in the narrative as symbols of the tension between individual responsibility and societal obligation. The analysis uses Thomas J. Scheff’s conceptual framework concerning the relationship between self and society, with particular attention to his discussions of shame and the ‘social bond’. The account repeatedly returns to questions of accountability – how responsibility is allocated, what counts as a legitimate excuse, and where the limits of personal culpability are drawn. In a Swedish context, the narrative offers insights that may help nuance ongoing discussions about disciplinary measures in schooling, particularly regarding how forms of structure can support learning without reinforcing the punitive practices that debates about a ‘tougher climate’ sometimes evoke.