Public Schools Are Becoming Prisons!

[La Comédie Noire]

I went back to visit my high school recently and I noticed most of the students were hispanic or Latin American. "Awesome!" I thought, but then I was confronted by a very stand offish women at the front desk who wanted to see some I.D. before they would let me visit one of my teachers. Not only that, but where once you could leave school without question there was now a fence surrounding the outside of the back exit. It was like a prison!


It seems as white and middle class flight increases public schools are being less funded and more of those funds are being devoted to security and administrative measures. Then I saw this:


There was no profanity, no hate. Just the words, "I love my friends Abby and Faith. Lex was here 2/1/10 :)" scrawled on the classroom desk with a green marker.

Alexa Gonzalez, an outgoing 12-year-old who likes to dance and draw, expected a lecture or maybe detention for her doodles earlier this month. Instead, the principal of the Junior High School in Forest Hills, New York, called police, and the seventh-grader was taken across the street to the police precinct.


http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/new.york.doodle.arrest/index.html?hpt=C1

Towards the end of my High school career I got into a fist fight with a kid and ended up in court. In fact they wanted to put us both in hand cuffs right then, but it was decided it was too extreme. I thought that was ridiculous, but this is just insane.

[Robocommie]

Well hopefully they put her in a minimum security installation.

But yes, the schools are turning into prisons. I've known a lot of Education majors and working teachers in my college career, and they've all talked about the same things; public schools that service lower income areas are gradually and intentionally being transformed into juvenile detention facilities.

That is to say, the powers that be are finding it far easier and cheaper to keep troubled kids from troubled areas in school and increase security, rather than build an additional facility to handle delinquent kids. By the time they're 18, they become the adult judicial system's problem.

This isn't happening really in affluent areas, those places are still staying schools, and so the well off, usually white kids, will get an education, while minorities and poor folks who live in high crime areas are going to be corralled like cattle.

[Jimmie Higgins]

When I was in school it felt like purgatory or a holding cell at a police station, but now it must really be like hell.

In California (and many other states) the public schools are de-facto segregated institutions and so even if some better off kids go to "public schools" in nice neighborhoods, they actually have art and music programs - just funded by the parents.

Everybody else is sitting in overcrowded classrooms with textbooks that are too few for the teachers to allow the students to take home.

Unfortunately this shitty state of things has allowed the right to make inroads in arguing for the privatization of the school system. Many parents and students in public systems feel like anything would have to be better. The left has a lot of ground to make up for on this issue but if something good can come from the economic crisis and the ensuing state-budget cuts, hopefully it will be a movement that re-frames the struggle around public schools and connects it to the bigger pictures of neoliberalism and ruling class attacks on workers and past reforms.

[Outinleftfield]

Students shouldn't stand for this. Students should unionize. They should hold strikes. Students in more affluent areas should realize that this kind of shit can happen to them too. My sociology teacher back in high school talked approvingly about how some schools were starting to use cameras. My school hadn't yet, but there's been talk of it. On an unrelated note he ran for office as a Democrat but he got caught drinking and driving.:p

If students would get organized there could be a lot of changes.

[#FF0000]

Reminds me a lot of my district. There were two schools in it, basically, that used to be on the same campus. They built a new one, and they became separate schools. The one I went to had the best teachers, most active after-school activities and all that. The sports teams sucked but everything else (the Student Council, the Band, the Choir, the show choir, the gospel choir, the foreign language program) was literally award winning.

And as I got closer to graduating they started doing things like cutting the budget to all these programs, installing security cameras, hiring fucking guards (not "hall monitors") and locking every single door that leads out of the building, which are all controlled at the security desk. Then they built the police station next door.

All of this because our school had a bad reputation for drugs and violence, even though the other campus had kids selling coke and LSD out of the bathrooms, suicide pacts, tons of meth, and a failed shooting. I mean we had fights and drugs, but not to that extent.

Oh, but the school I went to is where all the black and working class families sent their kids. That explains it.

Total bullshit.

[ChrisK]

I went to a school that, I'm pretty sure by complete accident, had both working class students and rich students. What was interesting was that we had special "advanced" classes for kids with money (and a few working class kids who actaully were advanced). As I remeber kids with money got a lot of respect from the administration, but poorer kids were treated like trash who weren't going anywhere.

We also had a cop and he was a real prick. We also had a jewish kid expelled. He was called a "kike fag" by a rich kid and he knocked the guys front tooth out for it.

Strangely, when other kids fought they didn't get expelled.

[Agnapostate]

They've been prisons, which is why I'm generally supportive of the literature that advocates a more libertarian approach to education, which includes Ivan Illich, John Holt, John Taylor Gatto, etc. I also keep an eye towards Bowles and Gintis, though.

[#FF0000]

Strangely, when other kids fought they didn't get expelled.

I remember a year ago the rich fucks on the school's wrestling team ganged up on a mentally challenged 7th grader and forced him into one of the gym showers before they took turns urinating on him.

School district covered it up for them lol fuck this town goddamn

Anyway, this topic reminds me of something I read not long ago about how American schools are still absurdly segregated. I just found the link again, from Salon.com (http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/09/22/kozol/). Also reminds me of how Obama's encouraging more charter schools, which have been shown to apparently even further segregate students (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/11/charter_study).

Miserable.

[Hexen]

They've been prisons

Yep, it's more like their slowly tearing away that 'normal' disguise and reverting back to how public schools were first started (as they truly were/are all along) as prisons (as I remember reading somewhere that modern day public schooling were actually originated from prisons).

[La Comédie Noire]

Anyway, this topic reminds me of something I read not long ago about how American schools are still absurdly segregated. I just found the link again, from Salon.com (http://www.anonym.to/?http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/09/22/kozol/). Also reminds me of how Obama's encouraging more charter schools, which have been shown to apparently even further segregate students (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/11/charter_study).

Miserable.

It's the truth, even in the liberal north!

http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123050/2180573/2188133/2188647/1_soiling.jpg

[ChrisK]

I remember a year ago the rich fucks on the school's wrestling team ganged up on a mentally challenged 7th grader and forced him into one of the gym showers before they took turns urinating on him.

School district covered it up for them lol fuck this town goddamn

Thats horrible.


Anyway, this topic reminds me of something I read not long ago about how American schools are still absurdly segregated. I just found the link again, from Salon.com (http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/09/22/kozol/). Also reminds me of how Obama's encouraging more charter schools, which have been shown to apparently even further segregate students (http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/11/charter_study).

Miserable.


Speaking of segregated I remeber that the rich kids and extremely smart poor kids got one section of the school, and the poor kids were in a different section.

[Tablo]

This stuff disgusts me. I know students are not going to lead any type of revolution, but we need some student organizing going on. The students need to stand up and fight for better education and less segregation!

[The Vegan Marxist]

I actually posted an article that I had written up on how schooling is becoming somewhat of a capitalist indoctrination. Everyone should read it: http://www.revleft.com/vb/schooling-capitalist-indoctrination-t129466/index.html?t=129466

[Agnapostate]

That line of thought was the basis behind Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis's Schooling in Capitalist America (http://www.amazon.com/Schooling-Capitalist-America-Educational-Contradictions/dp/0465097189), in which they argued that the hierarchical and authoritarian nature of the classroom is designed to condition students for entry into the capitalist labor market.

[The Vegan Marxist]

That line of thought was the basis behind Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis's Schooling in Capitalist America (http://www.amazon.com/Schooling-Capitalist-America-Educational-Contradictions/dp/0465097189), in which they argued that the hierarchical and authoritarian nature of the classroom is designed to condition students for entry into the capitalist labor market.

Never read it, but I'll do that now. Thanks.

[GPDP]

I went to a school that, I'm pretty sure by complete accident, had both working class students and rich students. What was interesting was that we had special "advanced" classes for kids with money (and a few working class kids who actaully were advanced). As I remeber kids with money got a lot of respect from the administration, but poorer kids were treated like trash who weren't going anywhere.

Wow, sounds just like my high school.

In the school district I belonged to, there were three high schools (well, four if you count the "correctional" one). Two of them had relatively homogeneous populations of students, mostly working class and lower middle class, and were situated in the east and west sides of the district. The third one, and the one I went to, however, had the kids from both the north AND the south side, with the north having all the middle and upper class kids (many of whom tended to be white), and the south being primarily working and lower class kids (mostly Hispanics).

Thinking back, the school was quite polarized in many ways. Consider the cafeteria arrangements, for instance. From the school entrance, going to the left, one would eventually see two cafeteria halls: one on the left, and one on the right. The one on the right was kind of like a pit, as it had a few stairs going down. It was large, relatively ugly and dreary (kind of like a prison cafeteria), and it had the actual cafeteria kitchen right next to it where you get your free lunch. The one on the left, however, was enclosed with glass windows and doors. It was much smaller, had a more pleasant outside view to the front of the school, and had a snack shop inside it where you could buy candy, pizza, and other such food.

Needless to say, the "pit" was predominantly populated by the poor kids, while the rich kids mostly stuck to the "booth." I myself sat in the "booth," since I knew some of the rich kids (due to no small part to the fact that I took advanced (read: rich kids) classes myself).

And yeah, I was one of those lucky few poor kids who managed to get into the advanced classes, but there were a few classes (mostly English courses) where I decided to stay on the regular, "college prep" courses, and the distinctions between them was glaring. The college prep courses were typically attended by Hispanic, working class students, while the advanced courses were populated by middle and upper class kids, many of whom were, unsurprisingly, white or "Americanized" Hispanics. Also unsurprising was the way the classes were taught. The college prep courses dealt with more rote work and stressed discipline, while the advanced courses offered more chances for students to express their ideas and were, on the whole, less boring (not counting AP US History; that teacher made that class the definition of boredom).

So if schools are prisons, then my school was like a white collar and blue collar prison combined. Luckily, I managed to stay on the white collar side for much of my stay there, though I did have some experiences with the rougher side.

Oh, and I totally agree about the administration (and even some faculty members!) totally favoring the rich kids. For instance, football is a huge deal in the school, and a large part, if not the majority of the football team was made up of preppy rich kids. Too bad the team has historically sucked hard, bar a couple of years when a (rich) black guy, who I'm almost expecting to see hit the NFL someday, led the team to victory back in my senior year. Meanwhile, basketball was mostly played by the less well off kids, and well, no one cared. The administration certainly doesn't hype up the basketball team anywhere as much as they do the football team.