School or prison?

            In an effort to make schools safer, schools have added police officers and metal detectors which end up making students feel like criminals instead of students. Schools also conduct frequent locker and bag checks to check for drugs, weapons, and other banned and harmful items. Feinstein (2015) believes that “[w]hat was sacrificed along the way was an institutional commitment to fairness, due process in administering discipline, getting to the root of conflicts, and coming up with solutions that would likely prevent future conflicts”.

These attempts at safety add to the school-to-prison pipeline and subject students to very unproductive learning environments. Dukes (2017) makes the point that schools “expect poor Black and Brown kids to sit, be quiet, and obey the rules  just like correctional officers expect from the disproportionate number of Black and Brown men and women housed as inmates in prisons”. She goes on to discuss that students “are being trained to be compliant beings in order to obey arbitrary, racially-motivated rules” (Dukes, 2017). This begs the question, how do we expect children to behave when we treat them like prisoners? Why are we not encouraging them to be different and excited about learning? School has become a place that students dread and where they are constantly beaten down and told they are not good enough, smart enough, or conforming to the norms enough. School is now a place that forces everyone to be the same. This adds to students falling on the path of the school-to-prison pipeline. They are unwilling to go to school and participate because the way they are being treated and taught. They feel as though school is trying to stifle their creativity and uniqueness and those feelings would be pretty valid. Students do not become as responsive to teachers and administrators when they feel they are being threatened or judged. These attempts to make the students feel safer has only hurt them because they no longer feel comfortable in the environment they are in and begin to act out. The educators just assume something is wrong with the child instead of assuming anything they might be doing could be wrong. I think that educators and administrators need to take a step back and examine what it is they are doing wrong because there is plenty. We should really focus on how to keep kids safe without making them feel like inmates and pushing them down this path to prison.

 Furthermore, schools in low socio-economic neighborhoods are made to feel like prisons in order to encourage compliance (Dukes, 2017). They assume these children will misbehave because of their background and try to take precautionary measures as a result. All this does is make them more likely to act out as they are being punished for something they did not even do but rather for what they might do. Dukes (2017) also tells how “many schools that are filled with Black and Brown students who are deemed low-performing, they (the students) are not allowed to stand up in the cafeteria during their lunch period”. These schools are depriving students of the opportunity to act like children. This will even further cause them to act out and fulfill the expectations that their teachers have of them. These same schools sometimes do not allow their students to run around or play outside as it promotes unruly behavior. This sounds almost as if they are grooming the children to be robots. This is super problematic because children need to be able to have fun, play, and express themselves. They are almost forcing the kids to behave badly because they are depriving them of their basic needs as children and these students will act out in return.

In conclusion, although it may have good intentions, the measures taken to prevent violence and bad behavior only drives the children to act out. We should not be treating our children as prisoners because that is what they will end up being if that is what is expected of them. Schools are only reinforcing the idea of the school to prison pipeline instead of trying to prevent students from ending up in prison. School should revert back to encouraging success through creativity and individuality and deal with misbehavior when it arises. If we punish our children for acting out before they even do so, they will most definitely behave badly which will send them on the path to prison eventually if this cycle continues.

References

            The schools treat students as if they are prisoners.

Dukes, V. (2017). Why do our schools look like prisons? What is this doing to our students? New York School Talk. Retrieved from http://newyorkschooltalk.org/2017/05/schools-look-like-prisons-students/

Feinstein, B.D. (2015). The dangers of the “school-to-prison pipeline”. Public Policy Initiative. Retrieved from https://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/live/news/831-the-dangers-of-the-school-to-prison-pipeline