resisting someone else's definition of "development"

Eugene,

You wrote "I wonder if we are not overusing the concept of resistance. It seems to me that our use is going something like that, "If something is not going our way, it means that somebody resists."

I think you are right about this, now I have thought some more about it.  And I realize that I was automatically thinking of my daughter's experience in school as resistance because that is how it was conceptualized by the authorities.  They would tell me that she didn't want to learn.  They saw her actions as a more active, anti-school sort of behavior, where really in many cases, especially in the beginning, she was aything BUT resistant in the way you describe below.  She easily accepted things that I was resistant to.  For example, when she began to fail even in her English class, she came home and told me that she needed to improve her English.  In other words, I think she should have been more resistant! 

But probably if we define resistance so broadly, as simply when a child does not follow the expectations of the school, than everybody who fails is automatically resistant, even if all they are doing is accepting the school's definition of themselves as failures.  And that is kind of a paradox, don't you think?

I also think this ties in with the idea of development, because I think of "development" as performing the sorts of behaviors expected and valued by someone else.  So if you are "developing" then probably you are not resisting.  To use my daughter's example again, from my standpoint she has developed a lot, since I am happy that she is really good at speaking and reading Spanish now, and she has learned many things about Spanish culture and how to live more or less comfortably in both places.  Defined this way, she is much more well-developed than me, since I am not yet as fluent in Spanish or comfortable in Spain. 

But from the school's point of view, she has not "developed" at all, which is why she has to repeat the year.  At one point both of my children received an eduacational evaluation by the school psychologist.  I refused to look at it, but my husband said it was really negative for both of them.  So I took out the little psychological chart and threw it away and made my own chart describing some of their strong points and put it in the official school evaluation folder.  My point is, I refused to let the school decide what is development for my kids.  This, to me, seems more like an example of resistance.  Well, in this case development is still defined by someone else, namely in this case, me instead of them. 

I am suspicious of the concept of development because it is so implicit in the definition, who decides what is development.  Maybe if it was more explicit that any development is always politically defined (I think...by those powerful enough to make these decisions) I would be less suspicious.  What do you (all) think?

Renee