week 9-readings Daniel - Diversity, Justice & Community The -week9-WT_Summaries

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Daniel - Diversity, Justice & Community The - week9Candian Context - Chapter 5 - troubling the Cradle to Prison Pipeline (1).pdf Made by Wordtune | Open Page 1 This chapter will examine the factors that create the cradle to prison pipeline phenomenon for Black youth in Canada. It will use critical race theory as its primary theoretical framework. Education is seen as the great equalizer in democratic liberal societies, and there is an almost cult-like repetition of this idea. Western institutions of schooling privilege and create myths regarding rags-to-riches stories, while at the same time marking those who have not moved up the social, economic, or educational ladder as being weak and lazy. Schools are central to the production and replication of the myth of meritocracy. This chapter will examine how stereotypes that teachers and administrators hold regarding Black students can contribute to the criminalization of youth and their imprisonment, and how these stereotypes can have a negative impact on Black students' levels of academic success. Page 3 Poor children have limited access to health care, underperforming schools, broken child welfare and juvenile justice systems, and broken families. The United States has a problem with Black and Hispanic children being imprisoned because of ineffective schooling practices, issues of poverty, and mental health challenges. Black boys are three times more likely to be suspended than White boys. Page 4 In 2013, the Ontario Liberal government instituted all-day kindergarten programming, focusing on high-needs communities and economically deprived urban communities. Many teachers in Canada believe they are colour-blind and invest in multiculturalism, inclusion, equality, and liberalism. However, the uncritical replication of these “politically correct” sentiments by teachers limits any comprehensive analysis of the efficacy or impact of their practices on racialized students in kindergarten classes. Early years are core periods of development and learning for children. Teachers need to create differentiated learning environments that foster supportive learning for all children. Page 5 Some kindergarten classes in Toronto, Vancouver and Montréal have more than 50% of students born outside Canada, and the staff assist children who are learning English or French adapt to what may be very different norms and expectations. Research on the treatment of racialized children in early childhood environments in Canada has been limited; however, anecdotal data suggests that the pattern of hypervigilance of young Black male children in Canadian classrooms, including high

rates of suspension and targeting for minor subjective infractions, mirrors that evidenced in the research racism in the Canadian context. Many anecdotes point out that in a Canadian context, the differential treatment of Blacks and other racialized groups is essentially woven into the fabric of society like an invisible thread. Researchers have found that students of colour are disciplined differently than White students, and that this differential treatment begins in the early school years with teachers who possess many of the same dominant social stereotypes regarding Blackness. Research shows that children as young as three years old begin to notice and name racial differences. If the teachers do not notice these differences, the students are primed for failure and consequently for prison beginning in ECE classrooms. Page 7 When subjective levels of behaviour analysis are used, Black males are proportionally disciplined at higher levels than white males. However, when objective measures are employed, the ways in which teachers rated students remain relatively consistent. When Black males are sent to the office or removed from class, this is based on subjective behaviours such as "disrespect" or "perceived threat", and this is a pattern that is evidenced from kindergarten to Grade 12, and can contribute to the decline in academic engagement of Black students. Downey and Pribesh (2004) found that White teachers consistently rated Black students as having poor citizenship and externalizing behaviour. They posited that this breakdown in the teacher-student relationship occurs in the early schooling years. Raible and Irizarry (2010) argue that teachers engage in hypersurveillance of racially minoritized children, which results in them being pushed out of the classroom and into the prison. According to Noguera (2003), Black children in Canada are not being schooled to take on middle-class jobs, but are instead being made ready for the lower-end jobs in society, and are provided with a lowered quality of education that disconnects them from the processes and content of schooling. The Essentials program, which used to be termed the basic education program, does little to prepare Black students for academic or career development, and therefore, it is not difficult to make the connection between the school and the pathway to prison. Low income youth of color, especially males, overwhelmingly receive unequal educational opportunities, are labeled from an early age as 'bad boys,' and are suspended at twice the rate of White males. Angela Davis states that children attending schools that place a greater emphasis on discipline and security than on knowledge and intellectual development are attending prep schools for prison. Teachers are unable or unwilling to recognize the importance of ensuring a better educated populace, rather than resorting to prison-type surveillance and disciplining. According to Swain and Noblit (2011), schools cause delinquency by teaching students that they are failures and by structuring peer groups. Schools use discipline and special programs to start the exclusion process that eventually begins the school to prison pipeline. Page 11 Teachers have the power to build a love of learning and open up career and future options for students, or to destroy that desire and contribute to the intellectual death of those students. The Dream Killers Services released a report on youth violence in urban Canadian contexts, which identified three main aspects of the educational system.

Page 12 The Safe Schools Act and zero-tolerance policies have had an extremely negative impact on racially minoritized youth. The act was implemented in 2001 with the primary goal of limiting or reducing the prevalence of bad behaviour in schools. Teachers were given the authority to suspend or expel students, but such decisions are highly subjective. The Safe Schools Act was more familiarly known by respondents as the "Gang Recruitment Act", because it led to significant numbers of minoritized students being suspended or expelled. Bill 212, which repealed some sections of the Safe School Act, criminalized activities that could have been handled internally by school personnel, and resulted in thousands of children being pushed out of school, which is a direct correlation to youth becoming involved in the school to prison pipeline. Students' behaviours in the classroom can be regarded as learned patterns of coping, which lead them to compensate for their academic challenges through the stereotypical Black male and female presentation of "having attitude". Black students in secondary and post-secondary settings often experience repeated assaults by teachers who continually challenge their academic competency and express disdain for their academic interests and pursuits. Many students eventually refuse to attend school altogether to avoid what can be regarded as ongoing abuse at the hands of teachers. The Safe Schools Act gave principals the right to make arbitrary rules that increased the probability that students would be drawn to the streets to loiter. Children who are suspended from school can be affected in several different basic ways, including a loss of instruction time and subject information, a conflicted relationship with the teacher, stigmatization and labelling, and an ongoing sense of anomie or disengagement from schooling. The zero-tolerance policies put forth in the Safe Schools Act have been repealed, but other legal and structural developments are at play that continue to produce clients for the prison-industrial complex. A 2003 report to the Ontario Human Rights Commission examined the effect of the Safe Schools Act on students, including the disproportionate impact on Black students and the possibility that Black students are getting suspended for more subjective offences. Page 16 Many interviewees believe that increased suspension and expulsion of students is having a negative impact on students, families, communities, and society-at-large. The report indicates that the patterns that have been evidenced in American and British research studies are being replicated in Canada. Racially minoritized students experience greater academic challenges, and have higher rates of representation in special education classes. Page 17 The majority of students with learning disabilities, mild intellectual disabilities and other non-gifted exceptionalities in the Toronto District School Board are males. Black students have a lower rate of application to post-secondary education than the overall TDSB sample population. Students who feel comfortable with adults in the school environment perform better on various institutional tests. Jane Elliot demonstrated the ease with which prejudice can be taught by marginalizing students based on eye colour. Black students experience this marginalization and consequent disengagement from the day they enter the school system until they graduate. The

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Roots of Youth Violence report identified the limited cultural representation among staff and within the curriculum material as a problematic aspect of the school system. Page 19 Students often feel disconnected from staff who do not represent or understand their communities, and from the curriculum material being used in the classroom, which is focused on and privileges White histories rather than being representative of the diversity of student identities. Teachers often lack the cultural sensitivity to work effectively with children from backgrounds that include multiple sites of marginalization. This results in lowered expectations, a deficit mentality, and a focus on survival, which makes it more difficult for students to focus on achievement and find positive outlets or supports. Streaming racially minoritized children into non- academic pathways, combined with the punitive nature of the Safe Schools Act, and culturally irrelevant curriculum, can lead to the alienation of significant numbers of students from our schools and prepare them for a life of limited options, including the prison system. Hatt (2011) interviewed male prisoners who indicated that their experience in schooling played a significant role in pushing them to the streets and their eventual involvement in criminal and prison cultures. Schools and their employees target various racialized groups in our society through varying legalized practices of discrimination. The experiences of children with the school system and its representatives can be plotted to show the patterns of displacement, disengagement, and, ultimately, that eventual walk toward the prison gates. Page 22 Black students enter school better prepared than their peers, but their relative attainment falls dramatically as they move through the education system. Gillborn's research indicates that Black children's schooling experiences result in a dramatic loss of academic preparedness, and that Canada is uniquely situated to address this scenario by adopting equitable education practices that address the moral ineptitude evidenced within the education and social systems. Page 23 This chapter has explored how the current schooling system in Canada unfairly targets, disciplines, and pushes children of certain groups from the cradle to the prison. The preparation of teachers remains in the hands of professors whose commitment to true inclusion, social justice, and anti-opression discourses and practices remains at best superficial. A community-based justice approach to education requires teachers to be prepared to address the needs of a diverse range of students, and for school staff to adopt a strengths-based approach to their interactions with students and with each other. Page 24 A community justice approach to schooling and education would ensure that the school and its staff are connected in positive ways to local community groups, parents, and other stakeholders, and would be a welcoming space for students. Page 25

Milligan, S., Peters, W., Araujo, L., Strasser, J., Bell, C., Berry, B. J., Beyer, L., Bhattacharjee, K., & Bhattacharjee, A. (2003). Confronting prejudice in the early childhood education classroom. Page 26 Blumenreich, M., Falk, B., Calman, L. J., Tarr-Whelan, L., Skiba, R., Arredondo, M., Pollock, M., & Carter, P. R. (2014). You can't fix what you don't look at: Acknowledging race in addressing racial discipline disparities. Page 27 Codjoe, H. M., Cohen, G. L., Garcia, J., Apfel, N., & Master, A. (2001), Reducing the racial achievement gap: A social-psychological intervention, Daniel, B. M. (2007), Developing educational collectives and networks. Daniel, B. M., Solomon, R. P., Darensbourg, A., Perez, E., Blake, J., Day, R. J. F., and Dei, G. S. discuss the challenges of democratic engagement for tomorrow's teachers and the school to prison pipeline. Derman-Sparks, L., Downey, D. B., Pribesh, S., Edelman, M. W., Fleming, P., Rose, J., Friendly, M., Prabhu, N., Gillborn, D., Mirza, H. S., Hatt, B. (2011). Still I rise: Youth caught between the worlds of school and prison. Page 29 A collection of articles that discuss the importance of having conversations with young children about race and social class, including Husband, T. (2011), James, C. E. (2000), Kincheloe, J. L. (2000), Kohli, R. (2012), Solorzano, D. G. (2012), and Lee, E. (1998). Page 30 Leistyna, P., Levine-Rasky, C., McKinley, J., Trierweiler, S. J., Ford, B. C., & Muroff, J. (2003). Racial difference in DSM diagnosis using a semi-structured instrument: The importance of clinical judgment in the diagnosis of African Americans. Page 31 Noguera, P. (2003), Peters, W. (1985), A class divided, Polk, K., Schafer, W. E. (1972), Raible, J., Irizarry, J. G. (2010), Schaffer, R., Skinner, D. (2009), Solomon, R. P., & Palmer, H. (2006). Black boys through the school-prison pipeline.

week 9-readings Daniel - Diversity, Justice & Community The -week9-WT_Summaries

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