Abstract
Abstract: In this article, I present a theoretical analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline in relation to youth from diverse families and the politics of educational policy and practice and call for equitable education without recourse to incarceration. First, by deconstructing historical documents, I highlight the philosophical and discursive production of the criminalization of youth from diverse families who do not conform to dominant norms of Western European tradition. Second, I juxtapose historical documents with contemporary events showing how current educational policies normalize the school-to-prison pipeline and subjugate youth from diverse families to exclude them from equitable education. Third, bearing witness to the ways youth resist socialization and exclusion, I recommend an interdisciplinary, multilevel socio-eco-pol-edu approach calling upon policy makers, teacher educators and researchers to develop new theoretical frameworks, policies and practices for equitable education and social justice.
Highlights
In this article, I present a theoretical analysis of the school-to-prison pipeline in relation to youth from diverse families and the politics of educational policy and practice and call for equitable education without recourse to incarceration
The legacy of rationality and universality becomes transparent in educational policies such as the No Child Left Behind Act (United States Department of Education, 2001) and the Common Core State Standards (Council of Chief State School Officers, 2015) that
This socialization process of education operating within a network of institutional policies, politica l power, and curriculum practice bring to reality the school-to-prison pipeline
Summary
Contemporary conditions in education have transitioned from the goals of equal opportunities grounded in social justice to the service of economic theories and doctrines regulated through immigration and industrialization and put into practice through the legal system (Simmons, 2015). The legacy of the Enlightenment is visible in the network of historical policies that criminalize and exclude minority populations from the right to the ballot; prevent economic growth to reassign them as cheap prison labor; and deny minority youth from diverse families equitable education through the unwritten rules of socialization, normalizing the criminalization of diversity and difference in schools (Alexander, 2011) Social institutions such as schools are vehicles of power and knowledge operationalizing the Enlightenment vision, discursively reproducing categories, binaries, and hierarchies that rationalize privilege and exclusion, by this means, sustaining discrimination in policy, practice, and agendas. According to Foucault (1972a; 1972b), power is both structural and dynamic; discipline and control generate resistance to the established internal order of institutions by creating sites such as the classroom where the struggle for power is a complex and continuous process
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