Discipline and Demographics

By Michael Casserly

Days before Washington hosted the "Million Man March" and the National African-American Leadership Summit last fall, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report showing that one-third of the African-American men between the ages of 20 and 29 are in the criminal-justice system, either in prison, in jail awaiting trial, on probation, or paroled. Unfortunately, America's schools helped put many of them where they are.

How? The process is well known. It starts on a child's first day of school and continues subtly throughout his or her academic career. Schoolchildren are tracked, sorted, labeled, and pigeonholed. Some are chronically detained, expelled, suspended, or removed. Either they are "pushed out" or they are graduated knowing little. Either way, they have failed and been failed.

The honing process creates public schools that look very much like demographic prisons, with the least preferred children holding the short straw--and with the career path between schools and prisons becoming all too direct. The process is grounded in our often subliminal perceptions of children according to race, class, religion, sex, disability, and demeanor, and is acted out by teachers, administrators, and others. Then, it is legitimized with arguments for greater...