The Path to Prison

4.01.11 By Rachel Singh

A dear friend from college just posted this article on Facebook.  Lest we delude ourselves about how far our society has come, the headline informs us that there are currently more black men in the prison system than were enslaved 160 years ago.  I studied mass incarceration in college because at the time, it felt like the most pressing racial and social justice issue of our time.  I wrote my senior thesis on the co-evolution of prions and welfare, so this article was not a surprise to me.  Instead, it was a reminder of how my new career relates to my previous work as a student and the ways in which racial oppression is perpetuated in our society. 

What I find interesting is that my friend, who is not doing work in or around prisons, made the same connection that I made, and recognizes that mass incarceration is fundamentally connected to the radical youth organizing work that she does.  Her post (and the subsequent re-posts of my many dear friends doing a wide variety of justice work) reaffirmed my belief that prisons are a powerful and revelatory lens through which we can examine so many of the injustices of our society.  I believe that prisons lie at the intersection of almost every social problem we have—with respect to race, class, gender, education, employment, addiction, the list goes on.  It is not a coincidence that a black male in America is more likely to go to prison than to college, or that the average American prisoner only has a 10th grade education, or even that 60% of women in prisons are the victims of sexual assault.  The forces that concentrate poverty in inner cities, that deprive public schools of funding and quality teachers, and that deny people legitimate ways of making a living in America are deeply interconnected.  I take that as a given.  Now that I am a teacher in Boston Public Schools and no longer a student of prisons, my question is: what is the role of public schools in preparing children of color for their futures?  If schools are part of a larger social system that tracks some students for college and others for prison, then schools not only feed into prisons, but also replicate broader social institutions from within and prepare young children for their perceived place in our society.  Of course public schools are not even the major reason why some people are more likely to go to prison than others, but even the most well-intentioned teacher plays a part in maintaining the status quo.  As a well-intentioned teacher, I must ask myself what are the myriad of subtle—even invisible—ways in which I put my students on the path to prison rather than to college.

At a recent staff meeting, an excellent teacher whom I greatly admire asked what kinds of consequences we needed in order to properly address a particular behavior problem that was being discussed.  (I have written in previous blog posts about the importance of consequences in teaching, and I thought it was an excellent question.)  My principal responded by pointing out that the U.S. imprisons more of its citizens than any other society in our world and that it’s not working.  In comparing the consequences for students to incarceration for adults, and alluding to one of the most alarming injustices of contemporary society, my principal was arguing that an orientation toward consequences not only does not work, but furthermore creates injustice and sets students up for a lifetime of futile punishment.  She implied that responding to behaviors first with consequences is as misguided and ineffective as incarcerating two million American adults. 

But the comparison goes deeper still.  I wrote in January that the students we punish in our classrooms are more likely than not to become the citizens that our legal system punishes with prison sentences.  How do even well-intentioned teachers set students on the path to crime and incarceration and reproduce oppression in their classrooms? 

When I punish a student for being disruptive, I think I am teaching them that there are consequences to wasting their learning time and distracting their peers.  When they talk back and I choose to escalate the situation by aggravating the punishment, I think I am teaching them that there are consequences to being disrespectful.  However, as I wrote last time, this strategy is probably a whole lot less effective than building bonds with each individual student so they know that I care for them and have their best interests in mind.  Without those bonds, my “consequences”—which are supposed to be teaching them—are more likely interpreted as meanness and injustice.  Do consequences really teach what we think they do: respect for learning time, obedience to teachers?  Looking at it this way, I’m not so sure.  Do consequences teach unforeseen lessons?  Most definitely.  Students may or may not learn that being “disrespectful” has a cost, but they will certainly learn that there are ways to anger their teacher with their words.  Consequences can teach students to feel as though school is not a place where they are welcomed or valued.  They can teach students that adults are unjust and quick-tempered, vindictive and mean.  They can teach students to obey and be powerless. 

There are a million ways that schools set students on the path to prison: unqualified teachers, low expectations, facile curricula, lackluster lessons, authoritarian management.  Right now, I am more interested in the subtle ways that good teachers can contribute to combating this society-wide phenomenon.  We may believe that we became teachers to fight the school-to-prison pipeline, but if we are to combat it, we need to look really hard at the ways in which prisons, education, poverty, and gender issues intersect in our classrooms.  But what does that really mean?  In practice, I think this means that I have to make sure that my ideals about and inspiration for teaching always translate into my actions in the classroom.  I believe a person with integrity lives out her beliefs in her actions.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I am always behaving in ways that are consistent with my beliefs in the classroom.  What does it say about me when I am impatient or angry or authoritative or rude to my students?  Nothing very palatable.  I am hoping, however, that the only way to stop these moments I regret is to examine them honestly.  I know I have a long way to go to be the kind of teacher my students deserve to have and to being my best self every day in the classroom.  But I also know that it’s only by teaching in accordance with those ideals that I can honestly confront my place in this system, as either putting my students on the path to college or the path to prison.