Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline - Truthout

[Bozita]

Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Sunday 15 January 2012
by: Staff, Rethinking Schools | News Analysis

“Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try - that’s my fate, too.”
-11th-grade African American student, Berkeley, California



This young man isn’t being cynical or melodramatic; he’s articulating a terrifying reality for many of the children and youth sitting in our classrooms—a reality that is often invisible or misunderstood. Some have seen the growing numbers of security guards and police in our schools as unfortunate but necessary responses to the behavior of children from poor, crime-ridden neighborhoods. But what if something more ominous is happening? What if many of our students—particularly our African American, Latina/o, Native American, and Southeast Asian children—are being channeled toward prison and a lifetime of second-class status?

We believe that this is the case, and there is ample evidence to support that claim. What has come to be called the “school-to-prison pipeline” is turning too many schools into pathways to incarceration rather than opportunity. This trend has extraordinary implications for teachers and education activists. It affects everything from what we teach to how we build community in our classrooms, how we deal with conflicts with and among our students, how we build coalitions, and what demands we see as central to the fight for social justice education.

What Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

The school-to-prison pipeline begins in deep social and economic inequalities, and has taken root in the historic shortcomings of schooling in this country. The civil and human rights movements of the 1960s and ’70s spurred an effort to “rethink schools” to make them responsive to the needs of all students, their families, and communities. This rethinking included collaborative learning environments, multicultural curriculum, student-centered, experiential pedagogy—we were aiming for education as liberation. The back-to-basics backlash against that struggle has been more rigid enforcement of ever more alienating curriculum.

The “zero tolerance” policies that today are the most extreme form of this punishment paradigm were originally written for the war on drugs in the early 1980s, and later applied to schools. As Annette Fuentes explains, the resulting extraordinary rates of suspension and expulsion are linked nationally to increasing police presence, checkpoints, and surveillance inside schools.

more...
http://www.truth-out.org/stop-school-prison-pipeline/1326636604

[EFerrari]

1. We never had security or surveillance at my high school

until the school board closed the other high school "across the tracks". Then, the fence went up around the school and all of a sudden, there was armed security at the entrances.

[FarCenter]

2. What percentage of elementary school teachers are black males?

Could be a problem.

[Honeycombe8]

3. I don't buy this.

This theory takes the personal choice out of the pipeline. It is within that first young man's power not to go to prison. The school has rules. The students must obey the rules. The zero tolerance thing can get ridiculous, but you don't need police in the school for that to come into play. The schools turn in kids under zero tolerance, even white elementary school kids.

There are abuses and extremes in everything. Those should be rooted out. But police or security in a high-crime school are necessary, I would think, for the safety of everyone. As long as a student, and teacher, abides by the rules, there should be no problem. No pipeline to prison. In fact, most kids don't end up in prison, even those from the high-crime schools.

It does kids no favor to relieve them from personal responsibility for their actions.

[izquierdista]

5. You just keep thinking that....

....and then when it is your turn to be locked up, there will be no one to speak up for you.

[Honeycombe8]

7. Keep telling kids it's not their fault, when they've done something wrong...

and you end up with a kid in prison, surprised he was finally held accountable for his behavior.

I will not end up in prison because I've broken the law. That's because I don't break the law. I'm the kind of person who would accept the consequences for my actions, anyway, if I did break the law. I wouldn't blame the policeman who arrested me. You have to do something pretty severe to end up in prison....and do it more than once. That's not a conspiracy against someone. That's someone who thinks the law doesn't apply to him.

[saras]

9. So how do YOU avoid being charged for "driving while black"?

[Honeycombe8]

14. You're changing the subject, when the OP's point has fallen flat?

The OP is about schools and how police/security are persecuting kids with a no tolerance rule, which results in the kids going to prison. Ridiculous.

Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time. Personal responsibility. Maybe that's what's resulting in SOME kids ending up in prison....they've been told all their lives that things are beyond their control, that they are not responsible for assaulting that person, shooting that lady, robbing that store, or murdering that guy.

Keep living in your fog. Trying to blame someone else for an adult murdering someone doesn't do anyone any good. It has nothing to do with a security guard refusing to let him, when he was a kid, take a switchblade to school.

[Occulus]

13. "It is within that first young man's power not to go to prison."

This is not ever the case for any of us.

[Honeycombe8]

16. Yes it is. You wanna go to prison?

You for sure can arrange that. Rob a store with a gun, shoot someone, murder someone. You'll be able to go to prison w/o anyone helping you to do that (but not all criminals go to prison; it has to be proven...and depending on the offense, it may not be for a first offense).

Mistakes can happen. But the fact is: most lower-economic kids do not end up in prison. Most of those kids understand they can't take weapons to school, and if they do, they can expect consequences. When they get jobs, they will not be able to take a gun to work, or be late a lot for work, or shoot co-workers.

There are rules for everything. They apply to everyone. If you break the rules, there are, and should be, consequences. It's all in the choice of the person. We've all been faced with choices on whether to steal or go down the criminal path, or not. It's up to you, and me, and her, and him. To tell a kid otherwise does a kid no good. Any kid can choose not to take weapons to school, or assault someone, or shoot someone. Most do. Besides being immoral and wrong, there's a consequence if they choose to do that.

This is just a silly OP, trying to blame a school for an adult going to prison for committing a felony.

[Starry Messenger]

4. k&r

[jody]

6. I don't agree. it's family, often single parent, to prison pipeline. School can not teach morality

nor a work ethic unless those lessons are reinforced constantly in the family and social setting in which a child grows up.

[aikoaiko]

8. Yet another reason why I'm ponying up to pay for a secular private school for my 6 year old

I pay for the school administrators to think rather than automatically call the police.

We should require the same of our public school administrators, but resistance appears fierce.

[Odin2005]

10. Private Prison Labor = The New Slavery.

[TeeYiYi]

11. k + r ...nt

TYY

[T S Justly]

12. The Civil Rights Era is over, if there ever was one. K&R (nt)

[Fumesucker]

15. Civil rights are meaningless without civil liberties..