Schools and the Pedagogy of Punishment
(via bonesarecoralmade)
Once seen as an invaluable public good and laboratory for critical learning and engaged citizenship, public schools are increasingly viewed as a site of crime, warehouses or containment centers. Consequently, students are also reconceived through the optic of crime as populations to be managed and controlled primarily by security forces. In accordance with this perception of students as potential criminals and the school as a site of disorder and delinquency, schools across the country since the 1980’s have implemented zero tolerance policies that involve automatic imposition of severe penalties for first offenses of a wide range of undesirable, but often harmless, behaviors.
