School-to-Prison Pipeline: Wise Words from a White Man
The article The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Rhetoric and Reality by Aaron Kupchik unpacks the meaning behind the very popular phrase that we hear about today. The conversation is centered on the idea that schools can shape the future of children.
According to Kupchik schools are the first exposure that children have when it comes to the juvenile justice system. He believes that schools are the first institution to criminalize and stigmatize the behavior and emotions of children. He also argues that schools with harsh disciplinary polices are not meeting the needs of children but instead setting them up for greater hardships in the future. Kupchik argues that there should be less policing of children in
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schools and instead restorative programs that actually help students. He believes that in order to dismantle the pipeline, schools need to reconstruct their policies to serve their students. One of his main concerns is that schools are extremely focused on controlling the behavior of children. This focus then results in the creation and practice of many disciplinary polices that then fuel the school-to-prison pipeline. He provides the historic origin of schools as evidence. Early American schools were designed to Americanize those who were deemed as other. This included immigrant and lower class youth. Schools were teaching the “others” how to assimilate into American society instead of focusing on teaching them math. Many polices were later adopted in the 1990s to insure that children were not misbehaving. Kupchik believes that the introduction of some of these practices like surveillance cameras, police dogs, metal dectors, and locked gates around school became essential elements of the pipeline. These additions to school campuses began to mirror juvenile facilities. A huge part of the author’s focus is around the use of the metaphor the school-to-prison-pipeline. He believes that this metaphor makes it easier for many people to see the connection between education and prisons, but at the same time that it oversimplifies a very complicated issue. According to him there is a process that is often overlooked when talking about this issue. He argues that students get caught in the punishments that they are given in schools that then result in future consequences. For example when a student is expelled for misbehaving they are losing instructional time and falling even more behind then before. This then results in them being less likely to graduate and more likely to fall into a life of future arrests. Kupchik also believes that there are many different risk factors for entering the school-to-prison-pipeline.
He distinguishes them into three different categories. One of them being individual level risk factors, like that of race. Here he claims that students of color are perceived as disorderly and dangerous by default. That is why students of color face harsher disciplinary actions and at higher rates. This interconnects with school level risk factors like that of the presence of police officers on campus. Kupchik argues that the presence of police officers on campus criminalizes youth even more. Now students can be criminalized for behavior that before would only result in detention. This goes hand in hand with the social climate of school, which according to Kupchik plays an important role in the behavior of students. If students feel like they are cared about in school then they are less likely to misbehave. Community risk factors include the underfunding of schools in low-income communities that also tend to have high crime rates. Funding impacts the quality of education that the children will receive. Schools in poor communities will have larger classes and fewer resources available for
students. Kupchik argues that the pipeline can shrink if schools and the community change the way they are handling children now. He mentions that students often disrupt class when they do not understand the material, so a solution for that would be providing them with tutoring. He also proposes that schools hire more counselors and mentors instead of police officers. He believes that this would prevent the personal hardships of students from putting them at risk of the pipeline, since they will be receiving help. Overall showing students that the school cares about them. Kupchik claims that in order to effectively address the pipeline we must look at the source of the problem, which are school policies. He suggests that zero tolerance policies should be dismantled and the visibility of police officers should decrease in schools all over the nation. Suspensions should be reduced and alternative punishments should be used. Kupchik believes that suspension does not help the students but instead only hurts them, by depriving them of an education. Instead schools should practice conflict mediations as a response to misconduct. The main point is for schools to walk towards polices that practice restorative justice. Kupchik throughout his article argues that teachers and staff are the most important characters in the shaping of the connection between school and prison. His reasoning behind this is that teachers and staff are the first responders when students are misbehaving. Therefore it is important to have teachers and staff that look more like the students that they are overseeing. It is important for schools to diversify their staff. This interconnects with his earlier argument about racialized perceptions. If teachers and staff are members of racial minorities like their students, then the disproportionality of punishment towards students of color would decrease. It is also important to get parents and teachers to work together to show the children that they care. Community efforts are also important. Schools should not be working with the juvenile justice system to further punish children. Instead they should work together to make sure that children are able to reintegrate into school and society. The author concludes by stating that he does not believe that there should be less security or discipline in public schools, but that these concepts should only be practiced if evidence suggests that it is needed. He claims that although many of these plausible solutions can help shrink the pipeline, the likelihood of them getting adopted are slim because of the high costs. Even if polices were changed he argues that they would not make much of difference because the way students are treated in school reflects the feelings towards children in society. Adults have a constant anxiety and fear of children causing their eagerness to control their behavior. He ends by saying that although he is aware that it is very unlikely for one policy to have huge effects it is nevertheless important for schools to try to keep the number of students who are arrested or punished low. To the very end he holds his argument that the correlation between the experience of a child in school and prison is alive and well. Overall I think the author did a good job of explaining what the school-to-prison pipeline meant to him. I agreed with some of the points that he made to a certain extent. My understanding of the metaphor is very similar to the one he described; however I see it through a different lens. I see it from the lens of an individual that lived through a lot of the scenarios that he described as “research”. I see it from the perspective of a student of color who attended the public schools in the Los Angeles Unified District all of her life. I see it through the lens of someone who according to this article could have ended up behind bars instead of behind this keyboard that I’m typing on. It is because of my lived experiences that I cannot agree with everything that Aaorn Kupchik argues in his article. In order to get rid of the school-to-prison pipeline it is essential to note that this issue goes beyond the education system. The mere existence of this pipeline serves as evidence of the constant oppression that people of color face in this country. Before diving into my disagreements with the author, I want to first share what points I appreciated and agreed with. I agree with his overall argument about schools being essential when it comes to preventing youth from entering the pipeline. I also agree with his point around the harm that having police officers on campus can bring to students. I went to a middle school and a high school that had a high police officer presence, and it made me feel like I was a bad person. It made me feel like they were there because they thought I was going to do something illegal, when I just wanted to get my education. I was surprised to see that Kupchik mentions race in his article a couple of times. He mentions that students of color are often perceived as being dangerous and unruly by default causing them to experiences punishments at higher rates (Kupchik, 97). As a student of color myself growing up in a hood like Compton I saw this statement play out time and time again. However his discussion on race falls short and by no means mentions it as much it should. In the United States whiteness is seen as the automatic default and everything else is automatically treated as inferior. The article fails to even mention whiteness because it too uses it as an automatic default. Although Kupchik does mention race he only mentions it a few times. Within his dialogue about race he fails to explicitly acknowledge that students of color are fighting a system operated by white people. He fails to write the words white in his article. Kupchik himself is a white man, and perhaps that explains why he did not think it was necessary to mention whiteness. However if we look at the school-to-prison pipeline without talking about race in full, we have already failed. Kupchik mentioned that schools in early America taught students how to assimilate into society but he failed to mention that schools in early America were not for Black and Brown children. He failed to mention that for many years Black children were not allowed to go to school because of the color of their skin. He also failed to mention the power dynamics that were put into place from years of slavery. This text also engages in a very binary and male centered idea of students in the education system. It fails to mention the intersectionality of gender when speaking about the failed education system. Trans children are not mentioned at all even though they also suffer disproportionate disciplinary action. Black girls are the ones that suffer the most against the zero tolerance policies in schools, yet their narratives are completely erased in this article. Towards the end of his text Kupcik mentions that he does not believe that there should be less security in schools, but rather on imposing them only as proven necessary (115). I am not at all persuaded by this argument and I completely disagree with him on this point. Throughout the text he talks about police officers or student resource officers, as they are known in school through a very understanding lens. He understands that police officers are not trained to meet the needs of students as much as counselors would be, yet he still believes that their presence is necessary in certain schools. He talks about the violence in many schools where students are too frightened to go to school and where teachers are to scare to teach. He however does not connect that with the actual root of all these issues. These neighborhoods are dangerous because communities of color are pushed into living circumstances that cause them to turn to “crime” like selling drugs in order to survive. At one point Kupchik states that he understands why schools would want to keep students accused of selling drugs away from school, but I do not understand (113). For many students this is the only form of obtaining money to help out their families. I grew up in a community where children were selling drugs since elementary school, because they had no other choice. The school was not going to put food in the mouths of their families, so they had to resort to selling drugs in order to obtain money. Instead of criminalizing youth for playing the cards that they were dealt by society, we should start criminalizing the system that rigs the game in the first place. Now when it comes to police officers and policing in general Kupchik and I have very different views. He believes that security should not completely disappear from campuses, but I believe that if security means police officers then they should be abolished from schools. For Kupchik social climate is important for the success of students, but he fails to see that this social climate should not just be addressed in schools but in the country as a whole. Take current events for example, where police officers have been unjustly killing Black bodies left and right. Take for example the many videos surfing the web of police officers violently slamming Black students in schools. In a country where Black bodies are being treated with violence, police officers in schools are rather counterintuitive. The police and policing in general originates from the creation of slave patrols. The police for many years dedicated their efforts to capturing runaway slaves. With this historical connection between police and communities of color I find it hard to believe that having police officers in schools is a good thing. Schools should be safe spaces for students of color and in order for that to happen police officers should not be on school campuses. The marginalization of communities of color is very structured by nature. Various institutions not just the education systems are at fault of this constant marginalization of communities. The juvenile justice system, the health care system, and many other institutions work hand in hand in this oppression. The school-to-prison pipeline is fueled by the idea that people of color should continue to be controlled by those in power. Although this article did a good job on explaining what the pipeline actually is it overlooked larger concepts around race. However, I do appreciate his efforts when it comes to brining attention to this issue. I do not agree with all of his points as I mentioned above but I do whole-heartedly agree that the school-to-prison pipeline should be dismantled.
To understand this approach, he maps the ways that the justice system stigmatized and killed these Latino and African American youth future dreams. Children, these young kids that could be future doctors, scientists, and engineers are forced by this punishment that could lead them to prison or even killed in the streets with no hope or opportunity to prosper. The author described a Fifteen-year –old Latino kid born and raised in Oakland by name of Slick.
For my second article review I decided to do mine over the article Harry Wilson titled Turning off the School-to-Prison Pipeline. The main theme that this particular article deals with is how our school systems have become a direct pipeline for kids to end up in prison and the way to break this pipeline is through our schools changing certain policies they operate by. The main topic of this article that the author talks about frequently that contributes to the “pipeline” is the zero tolerance rule that school systems follow. The author speaks frequently about how the zero tolerance policy is a key factor to the school-to-prison pipeline being eliminated. Throughout the entire duration of the article the reader can expect to be confronted with
The novel offers insight into a corrupted system that is failing today’s youth. This system places children into state custody with environments that are academically and socially incompetent. These children suffer within a corrupted system that denies resources and attention during the most crucial period in their emotional development. They develop very few meaningful adult relationships, endure damaging environments, and ultimately become trapped in a system that often leads to a prison life.
The school-to-prison pipeline is the idea that schools funnel students into the prison system. This theory is narrow-minded and ignores how the government benefits from the surveillance of African Americans. With the imagery of a pipe, this complex issue is reduced to the single-minded idea that schools force people of color, most notably African Americans, and does not discuss the evolution of the larger society. The way society has evolved to discriminate against African Americans at the institutional level is a key factor in the increased incarceration rates. The school-to-prison pipeline is an outdated and prejudiced model that does not fully explain the situation many African Americans face.
The school to prison pipeline is a phenomenon that refers to the practices and policies that have pushed school children, especially the most at-risk children, out of classrooms and into the juvenile justice system. This disturbing occurrence indicates the prioritization of incarceration over the education of children. Most alarmingly, many of the children being targeted have learning disabilities or histories of poverty, abuse or neglect. Instead of being targeted, these children would much rather benefit from additional counseling and educational services. Moreover, the knowledge acquired in this course will be incorporated in this paper and used to explain the points made. In this term paper, what will be discussed is the expansion of the zero tolerance policy, the different views on the policy, who is mostly targeted, the effects on the juveniles and any alternative solutions that could diminish this dismaying occurrence for becoming a larger problem.
In the most recent years, the relationship between educational institutions and the juvenile justice system, which was once created to protect children, has displayed an ultimatum for minors through “zero tolerance” policies that result in sending individuals from school to prison to pipeline. Studies have shown that these policies are not beneficial to students or the educational environment that should be guaranteed to children. Opponents argue that the policies promote safety, but through this research it can be concluded that the policies actually increase danger. Studies demonstrate the factors that affect the enforcement of these policies which include media, the sociopolitical atmosphere, and the racial disproportionality, yet there are valid solutions for this issue that can be explored.
It is to no surprise that America has a large amount of its people incarcerated for a variety of reasons. One must ask themselves how we can help these individuals get back on track. The answer is America’s most powerful weapon known to man; an education. This is an annotated bibliography for research on the effects of education in the prison system and if these effects are worth taxpayer’s money.
These crime-ridden communities (or ghettos) are springing up all through the country, mainly in and around major metropolitan areas. These areas are the most populated, so that means that within these areas are the most people there to be influenced by the crimes committed by fellow people. In Male's reading he shows statistics that prove the fact that once the poverty factor is taken away then teen violence disappears. He later adds, “That if America wants to rid of juvenile violence than serious consideration needs to be given to the societally inflicted violence of raising three to 10 times more youth in poverty than other Western nations.” (Males p386)
Schools inevitably must deal with disciplinary action when it comes to misconduct in students. However, at what point should the courts and law enforcement intervene? “Zero tolerance” policies started as a trend in the school setting during the 1990s in “response to the widespread perception that juvenile violence was increasing and school officials needed to take desperate measures to address the problem” (Aull 2012:182-183). However, national statistics indicated a decrease in juvenile’s share of crime during the influx of zero tolerance policies in schools (National Crime Justice Reference Service 2005).
Studies and anecdotes have shown that our modern approach, however, is ill-equipped to reduce crime or deal with chronic delinquents while at the same time protecting their due liberties. We now stand on the precipice of decision: How can we strike an appropriate balance in the juvenile justice system? Should we even retain a separate system for children at all? The answers are usually difficult, sometimes subtle, but always possible to attain.
This theory however as some have argued has emerged from social disorganisation theory, which sees the causes of crime as a matter of macro level disadvantage. Macro level disadvantage are the following: low socioeconomic status, ethnic or racial heterogeneity, these things they believe are the reasons for crime due to the knock on effect these factors have on the community network and schools. Consequently, if th...
Tulman, J. B. (2008). Time to Reverse the School-to-Prison Pipeline. (Cover story). Policy & Practice (19426828), 66(1), 22-27.
In today’s society mainly anyone growing up in poverty stricken communities, single parent homes, domestic violence or infested and drug infested areas are at risk to being abducted by the school to prison pipeline. The school to prison pipeline is a system designed for at risk teens that do not do well in school. The effect is them being thrown in jail. Economically the black and the Latino community constantly after generation and generation are getting dealt the same hand because each child in the new generation is growing up in a broken home and are falling victim to the same problems that the generation before them have faced. By compiling annual reports on the total number of disciplinary
Khadaroo, Teicher. A. “School suspensions: Does racial bias feed the school-to-prison pipeline?” The Christian Science Monitor. March 31, 2013. Web.
If a child is raised in a good neighborhood they are likely to be raised well. Children in a good environment are likely to have a better attitude and behavior. Especially when it comes to schooling. They will do well in school and those school systems are likely to have a higher rate of graduating children and children who actually take their education seriously. Better neighborhoods are known to lead to higher test scores. Making sure that a child has a safe, clean, peaceful and comforting environment is necessary and important for your child’s development. Growing up in a bad neighborhood where children aren’t putting school as a main priority and concerned about getting a good education may rub off on a child as they follow one another not put there education first. If a child is raised in a bad neighborhood where there area has a lot of criminal activity and gangs it may influence the child towards joining ...