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Armed Police Won't Fix Our Schools
Few headlines are more jarring than the one that accompanied a recent front-page Inquirer story on school policing in Houston: "Armed with guns and understanding." The image is at odds with what most people want in their public schools. Understanding? Yes. Guns? No.
The article implied that the officers assigned to Houston's public schools have been successful in preventing youth violence because they are armed, commissioned police officers, while Philadelphia's school police are not. But Texas' lawmakers and courts are now grappling with the resulting criminalization of minor misbehavior in the state's schools.
Extensive research has shown that increased police presence in schools has not solved student discipline problems. Nor is there any evidence that it has made schools safer - and that holds true whether the officers are armed or not. Research also shows that putting a commissioned police force in schools leads to increased court referrals, placing students at significantly higher risk of failure in school and extended involvement in the juvenile and adult criminal justice systems.
Before assigning armed, commissioned police officers to the Philadelphia schools, city leaders should carefully consider the drawbacks we've experienced in Texas. Texas Appleseed, the public-interest law center I work for, found that assigning more police officers to schools coincided with a dramatic increase in student arrests, as well as misdemeanor ticketing for low-level offenses that used to mean a trip to the principal's office. About 300,000 such tickets are issued annually in Texas to children as young as 6, triggering court appearances, fines, community service, and in some cases a criminal record.
As it happens, an Appleseed analysis of student ticketing in Texas school districts over the course of a year put Houston schools at the top of the list, with 4,828 tickets issued. Houston police did not produce data on student arrests, but thousands are arrested each year in districts of comparable size.
Texas legislative and judicial leaders are attempting to rein in such ticketing and arrests in schools, with the support of concerned parents, court personnel, advocacy groups, and educators. This year, state lawmakers moved to end the ticketing of elementary-school students for nonviolent offenses, a practice that was allowed to flourish because of the presence of commissioned police officers in Texas schools.
The chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Wallace B. Jefferson, has asked the judiciary's top policymaking body to look into the "criminalization of student misbehavior" and to recommend ways to minimize the courts' involvement in school discipline. He has strongly criticized the "uneven application of discretionary sanctions across school systems," which has resulted in disproportionate suspensions, expulsions, ticketing, and arrests among African American and special-education students.
Philadelphia can learn from Texas' experience and consider alternatives to rushing to place armed police officers in its schools. For example, a growing number of schools in Texas and across the country are investing in campus-wide training to reinforce positive student behavior and identify high-risk students for more intensive intervention.
Such strategies can prevent ordeals like the one endured by an 8-year-old autistic student in San Antonio. The student's mother appeared on a local news broadcast to express outrage that her son was handcuffed by a school police officer after he had a tantrum.
"It felt like some kind of freak show," she told a television reporter. "I could hear him begging. He was saying, 'Please take these off,' and he was crying. When I saw him on the floor, he was soaked in sweat."
No parent wants her child to experience this kind of needless trauma at school. When it comes to our children, we need to arm ourselves with understanding, not force.
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26 Comments so far
Show AllBut if they're not raised in prisons how can they get used to working/living in a prison?
/snark
Many critics of our public schools have noted the physical resemblance.
A police presence in any school is a sign of failure.
But so is the current policy, theory and administration of education. Our students (at least the ones that graduate) leave school learning more and more about less and less.
How to solve it? If you start with teachers they circle the wagons. If you start with parents you get all sorts of Bull Shit excuses like "they have to work," "both parents have to work," "they are tired," "they don't have enough money and are single parents" These are not new situations nor are they valid excuses. If you say that the obvious failure of the current policies and theories are the cause you are immediately attacked as a Right Winger that wants to force kids to acknowledge this or that (fill in the blank)
"campus-wide training to reinforce positive student behavior and identify high-risk students for more intensive intervention."
We have been hearing this kind of thing for years. Hasn't worked has it? If I seem angry about this its because I am. Its time to move past the BS because solutions will not be found as long as everyone clings to their pet ideology and refuses to acknowledge what works and what doesn't. And do it truthfully.
The need for both parents to work is indeed a new situation, one that has come about only during the last 30 years or so as part of the war against the middle class and the determination to roll back the New Deal, squeeze every nickle from working people, and increase profits to the wealthy few. To say that such explanations are invalid reflects bias, not facts, and to suggest that it is a new phenomenon is historically inaccurate.
Right! It's not working, obviously. Everyone involved has an excuse. Our children know it's bull.
I work in a school in a marginalized community. Bullying and aggression by students on other students are the norm. Students who don't do this do not intervene to stop it. The school has tried all sorts of things to stop this. The ones that have worked only stop it at certain places and times. The behavior continues in other places and times that the school can't monitor as closely. Even in the places and times that can be monitored the behavior continues, just subtly.
The reason for this is that the students live in a culture of violence and aggression. Drunkness, drug abuse, crime and domestic violence are the norm in the community. You can't expect students who've been socialized in this way of relating to others since infancy to jettison it because of some program in schools. Even talking about empathy fails because these kids have internalized that empathy is for weaklings and fools who want to be victimized.
The culture of violence in this community is so pervasive that even families who stand against this still find their children influenced by it. I'm talking about kindergartners adopting gang behavior.
But I don't blame the community. It's a psychological fact that social mammals are oriented to engage in lateral violence when two conditions occur. The first condition is consistent and intense vertical violence, aggression and marginalization from an exterior community. The second condition is an overwhelming sense of hopelessness in the marginalized community that there isn't anything they can do to change this.
We might think, looking at this dynamic, that the culprits in this are those who directly oppress and marginalize these communities. But the reality is that the direct oppressors, the shop keepers who follow them around accusing them of automatically being shoplifters, the local banks that won't lend them money to start up local small businesses, the white middle class that disdains them, or the police who mistreat them are only fulfilling the roles that they've been socialized to fill. I've said it over and over, modern social psychology has made it clear that human beings do not primarily behave based on inherent personality characteristics but based on their social role. The in group - out group dynamic, the tendency to submit to authority and that role shapes purpose, which then shapes value, are all behind this. Check out Zimbardo and Milgram's experiments.
This means that we won't stop this oppression until we change the roles of the middle class. But those roles have been designed and are reinforced by the elite in order to preserve their hegemony.
So the reality is that to change the schools we have to change the communities and to change the communities we have to change the roles of their direct oppressors and to change those roles we have to change the elite who control the system in order to preserve their privilege and hegemony.
Our resistance against the 1% is about healing our entire society, especially those most marginalized. Basically, despite what Madison Avenue (that close ally of Wall Street) tells us, we live in a very, very sick society. This is why we need a revolution and not just incremental reform that ultimately just justifies the ongoing system's continuance.
Whenever I mention revolution I always want to add that I'm convinced that only nonviolent revolution is right and has any chance of really succeeding.
Agreed, LibWingofLibWing. Zimbardo especially is pertinent, although both he and Milgram made one thing clear: the situation directs behavior. Contemporary psychiatric thought, however, tells us that feelings and resultant behavior is an issue of "brain chemistry," an unproved theory touted by Big Pharma and echoed, curiously reflexively, by the psychiatrists and psychologists. Unfortunately, and unfortunately predictably, this flimsy theory brings us back to eugenics, which was of course was itself supported by bad science, as scrupulously examined and debunked by Gould's Mismeasure of Man.
The brain chemistry theory allows the disapproving suburban free to believe that there's something wrong with those kids, and they need to be helped (i.e., drugged) at best--not such a great best--and now overseen by thugs with guns. While the PC movement kept people from saying what they thought, it has hardly eradicated racist thought; and as the rights of children were championed by the left, the chaos of poor public schools was encouraged to escalate. Now, gee, there’s nothing left to do but bring in the thugs! These children are insane! And looky there, their test scores do tend to show them as intellectually marginal, don’t they?
I tried to work in a ghetto school, and I admire and also pity people who do it year after year as a result. Everything in the kids’ environment goes against their ability to succeed, and as you say, they absorb this knowledge by the time they enter school. Everything they see tells them that this school thing is crap: you get power and money—those great Amerikan values—through being vicious and criminal, and if you play the school game nice, you’ll end up as a fast-food manager at best. Richard Price’s Clockers, a novel made into a movie, made this point quite well.
What amazes me as a college teacher and friend of people who have lived through the environment is the people who survive the conditions in which they were raised. For instance, I have a 36 year old student who grew up in the ghetto, got involved in drugs, ended up being busted at 19 for breaking and entering, and spent seven years in prison. He spent time in solitary confinement, and when I had the class read Atul Gawande’s “Hellhole” on the subject, was able to give firsthand experience. He also told the class about watching a guard kill an inmate by throwing him off a balcony. The guard got away with it by writing it off as an accident, natch. Lots of ghetto kids have parents with like experiences. He’s in many ways the educator of the class, much more than I am, because he shows the students what life is for the disenfranchised while simultaneously showing that one can survive it. He’s a deeply loving and spiritual person who spends his life trying to help ex-cons come to term with their experiences.
Ghettos are warzones. Like a veteran told me once, in a warzone you meet the best and the worst people.
Homeless Woman Faces 20 Years in Prison for Sending Her Kid to School
http://www.kidsandcrime.com/?p=106
NORWALK, Connecticut – A homeless Connecticut woman is being charged with larceny for using her friend’s address to illegally enroll her son in Brookside Elementary School outside his respective school district.
Right. It happens all the time in my city, Cleveland Heights, which doesn't want those East Cleveland and Cleveland kids in because they're already too damaged, or because the parents aren't paying the taxes.
When I hear people talk about the egalitarian aims of public education, I get a bit pissy.
Number one reason Finland has a higher rated school system then the USA.
It is not per capita money spent per student. It is not a homogeneous population.
It is not Finns are inherently smarter or their teachers more committed or better trained or do not belong to unions or do not have tenure.
It is because the wealth gap in Finland as measured by the GINI is much lower and there is little measured poverty among children. It is because as children they are not labeled as failures because they are poor.Neither are their parents.
That's certainly one of the top reasons--people just seem to be better respected in Finland, students, teachers, and the general population alike--and being rich at the expense of others doesn't seem to be their way. There are other reasons, all having to do with respect.
In Finland, students aren't penned into overloaded classrooms for 6-7 hours a day. Instruction is in small classes for 4 hours a day. The Finnish model is to respect the students and to consider how children really learn. They're given little homework. In the US, we think that if the students are doing poorly, they need more of the same. More hours penned up. More testing. More homework. It doesn't work. Funny we don't notice this.
In Finland, teachers have well-earned prestige. They need master's degrees; beyond primary school, master's in their subject plus another year of education training, and it's hard to get into that education training--only 10 percent of those who apply are accepted. Contrast that with the education majors in my classes, who are usually the least interested, the least capable. I have to all but pry their cellphones out of their hands. They don't get why they should have to think, or write, or read. Funny, they do fine in their education classes. Straight As, they tell me, so why am I yet again flunking freshman English?
I know that there are many intelligent people who go into education. But my lord, the idiots who get degrees and go into teaching astound me. They'll never think critically about what they're doing or why. They haven't been trained to. They'll pass out the curriculum like the mindless clerks they are.
Thank you, Lib Wing, for mentioning the culture of violence, and the financial pressures that allot parents far less time to BE THERE for their children. The third factor that's worth adding to any discussion on behavior is the American diet, or what passes for nutrition. When kids get little support at home, when parents get little support in their professional world, and when nourishment is in short supply... regardless of how good a teacher is, the odds of a child performing well are grossly reduced. And when honest statistics are observed, it's evident that schools with good funding generally produce better academic "outcomes."
You raised a number of good points, and I thank you for taking the time to do so. It amazes me how some will blame the public school system for the decimation of so many elements of society and how these reflect on education; added to who's being given the power to decide what curricula consists of, and what goals it's designed to serve.
Yes, Siouxrose, nutrition is a vital part of the equation. I want to add that poor nutrition in marginalized communities *IS* a political thing. Poor families do not have access to nice supermarkets or farmers' markets with fresh fruit and vegetables. Often the only source of food they have access to is a large convenience type store that only has junk food. This is political because we let a sick free market system decide these issues and extremely poor people can't generate enough profit for nice supermarkets, so the sick free market ignores them.
The degradation of marginalized children starts in the womb as the mother is stressed, not able to get good nutrition and too often is medicating her own trauma with drugs and alcohol. Then in infancy too many of these children do not receive the nurturing needed to learn how to bond because their mothers are not ready to be parents but young girls who got pregnant while medicating their own trauma in ways that have become the norm in these marginalize communities. Meanwhile the establishment keeps it all illegal with the war on drugs so someone can make an enormous profit, someone who lives up town and is far removed from the daily warfare of the streets.
In a few years these children who have been so negatively impacted by all this are the ones trying to raise their own children and the cycle continues.
The play is to disempowed the working class. It is done by using our own nature against us. Materialism, status seeking, sloth, greed, and selfishness. We are being played, and the schools are part of the play. The children of the lower classes know the system as corrupt, they understand the play. Therefore, the school authorities are either fools, idiots, or liars, and any disapproval or punishment they receive is not an honest attempt to educate but part of the play, designed to set them up for failure. Everything they see around them just confirms their beliefs are correct. They don't believe the system is there for them, and there is no outlet for their anger, and frustration. Schools should be put back under local control, not police control. These lower class kids are viewed as a problem to be dealt with, and they know it.
Yes, I mostly agree. They know what a game it is. Unfortunately, they have two outlets: their teachers and each other. I had a student last year who'd been so abused by her fellow students that she put herself on disability and what she called solitary confinement after barely graduating, and read a huge number of great literary works. At 23, with only her public library as her guide, she entered college with more literature under her belt than most English graduate students I know, and had read it all with great intelligence and heart.
I am senior who's contact with the public School system ended years ago. I remember my childern saying:,when ask why they did very bad things, their answer was always I'm Bored. I think young people are bored because, no child leaft behind, forces Teachers to treat Students like they were a Computer Hard Drive,and fails to incurrage them to think for themselves. If children are taught to think: then school becomes more interesting, Students will think less unconstructive thought, because if given a Choice, they would Choose good over Evil.
Right you are. Boredom is a powerful tool.
Not living in the USA myself, it seem totally BAZAAR that you have ARMED police in a school. Police are just not pointing guns at everyone in most countries. If it happened here it would really shock the system. I hope I wouldnt pee myself. Dont you get sick of it? Dont USA'ns get get paranoid about having guns trained on them by authorities.
Suggestion, watch Bowling for Columbine
"If you don't pay your student loans you may find yourself getting dragged out of your home by a SWAT team.
You doubt this?
The following is how an article in The Daily Mail recently described one recent SWAT team raid in California that was apparently ordered by the Department of Education....
A father was dragged from his home and handcuffed in front of his children by a SWAT team looking for his estranged wife - to collect her unpaid student loans.
A stunned Kenneth Wright had his front door kicked in by the raiding party at 6 am yesterday before being dragged onto his front porch, handcuffed and led to a police car with his three children.
He says he was then detained for six hours while officers looked for his wife - who no longer lives at the house."
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/18-signs-the-collapse-of-society-is-accelerating (contained unavail dailymail link - possibly June 2011)
Most Principals derive from the school coaching staff. If we want humane schools first fire the coach/principals. Coaches are often pedophiles. In High Schools when a coach pedophile is discovered, he is often given a second chance at another school district, arranged of course by coach/principals. Sounds like the Catholic Church. It is worse. Knowing that they are protected by coach/principal culture of the school, coaches offend regularly. The American Society has thus far refused to see reality preferring instead to bask in the myth that coaches are morally upright. Our children suffer needlessly as a result. Our problem in American High Schools is so prevalent that a solid argument can be made that we have abandoned our children.
Ha Ha HA!
So, you have kids, ignoring the state of the world. You ignore that climate has changed, that resources are running out, and that wars and oppression have reached epidemic proportions.
You have kids anyway.
Why? Well, because they are the future! lol!
Finite planet. Finite resources. Some people didn't learn math in school.
So, now the military state has your kids in their target. Welcome to what much of the rest of the world has lived with for a very long time.
Which part of resource limitations due to climate change, , consumer greed, population, and habitat destruction did you not understand?
Those police and the military protect a supply chain. The one that keeps your stores open.
Now if you want real change, you have to start with the information provided.
Occupy a Condom.
As someone who went to high school under the presence of an armed officer, all that officer ever did was skulk around the hallways amid the snide remarks made by many students under their breath as they made their way to class. It appears schools are trying the scared straight method but that didn't stop the at least 15 to 20 bomb threats in my sophomore year.
The officer was ineffectual, having no real jurisdiction unless someone was caught doing something wrong(and on rare occasions a person was caught), thus the students learned to take their law breaking activities in another direction. As long as nobody was caught doing the bomb threats, they could still get away with it.