Recently, the Kinney Program for education put on an event on the School-to-Prison Pipeline; the panelists were directors of juvenile detention policy, Dr. Casey (Ed studies prof from Rhodes), and an employee from HopeWorks (a program trying to help ex-"felons" find jobs, housing, and support networks).
Of course, the panel and the event as a whole was amazing; a lot of community members, teachers, and people involved in juvenile courts were there. And not so surprisingly, they offered up incredible questions and insights into the phenomenon and the context of Memphis/Shelby County schools. However, there was this intense complexity within the very question that we were asking. For instance, while we were trying to discuss problems, solutions, and the students affected in schools, we were still missing something so foundational…. We were missing the other parts of these students – their lives, their histories, their realities, and their lives outside of these schools. We take the school for granted, and within the question, we get lost and refocus all of our attentions on the possibilities within those white and off-white concrete walls that make up those schools. All of our solutions are founded within the school. We begin to think that these issues are situated within schools, and then the blame, the harshness, and the guilt lies on the teachers, policymakers, and administrators. However, this could not be further from the truth. Teachers are just trying to do the best they can. Policymakers are just doing and completing acts that are ostensibly accepted by various populations. And administrators are just following the rules set up by our policymakers to keep their jobs and because they truly believe that they are doing “right” by the students that take up space in their schools and in these classrooms. Moreover, by looking at this issue through the lens of a school-problem, we are not only forgetting (willfully or not) the lives of students outside of these spaces, but we are also missing the question. For instance, prison conglomerates aren’t looking towards schools when calculating how many prisons need to be built for the future… they’re looking at the number of four-year old black youth in the US…. So why are we looking towards school as the problem and the thing that needs to be fixed? (Of course schools have their own issues, but that is not the issue within the School-to-Prison pipeline (if it should even be called that)). The issue is racism; the issue is racio-hyper(not)-panopticism in our society; the issue is our prison mentality towards punishment; the issue is not wholly within those concrete walls of schools but throughout our society; and that is where our energies and solutions should drive us.
I like some of the points that you made about it not just the schools; however, normally there is statistical evidence that literacy scores do affect high school drop out rates and that does affect crimes, which I believe is partly due to the school system these children are in. I was also reading an article about the school to prison pipeline and a student brought a toy gun to school casing him to be expelling from school and the principle knew he wasn't trying to hurt anyone but she was trying to uphold to name off the school and also was in the policy book that the student should be expelled because toy guns and real guns were looked at as the same. Although this didn't affect him, such as him turning to violence it could have lead to a life of crime.
ReplyDeleteWow, this is a really interesting and insightful blogpost! That is so true: we tend to use schools and educators as scapegoats to carry the burden and blame for the issues we see arising or present in our children/young adults/general culture today when in actuality, there ARE other factors of society that need to be changed radically as well. Just thinking of other huge influences of culture like social media and the news media and politicians… we are so quick to say, “If teachers would this” or “if our ed. policies could that, things would be better! Students would be more motivated, schools would be less horrible, life would be more equitable!” You say that our solution-aimed energies for this School-to-Prison pipeline (or whatever you want to call it) ought to be geared towards mentalities within our society (racism, prison for punishment, et cetera). Did any of the solutions discussed at this panel address this kind of mindset in any way? Or were there any solutions they offered or you have thought of that could be altered to address this issue in a more accurate and effective way? Not even for “solving” it, but also in communicating it more precisely?
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