Essay: The Importance Of School-To-Prison Discipline

With the most read news story this week being the video of a white sheriff deputy throwing a black high school girl to the floor earlier this week it is not wonder that the latest national discussion about race has to do with discipline and punishment. Several videos of the occurrence have spread like wildfire, a video that supposedly shows Deputy Ben Fields forcibly dragging a female African American student from her desk and slamming her into the floor after she supposedly ignored the teacher when he told her to leave and was being disruptive.

Now I have never heard of anyone being arrested and treated with such violence for “disrupting a class” or “disobeying a teacher;” generally students are at most given detention or suspended from school but never responded to with violence. I personally believe that there is no given “context” or situation that justifies a police officer slamming a child around like in this case, especially in a classroom setting.

What is causing much of the uproar about this particular incident is
Students in large public schools are increasingly searched, tested, and observed by school administrators. Teachers are becoming more concerned with policing students and punishing their every move rather than educating them and preparing for the real world. These changes in the public education system have resulted in a growing potential for students to drop out and be incarcerated instead of guaranteeing them decent healthcare, the opportunity and access to jobs, and shelter. This system categorizes students by their class and race and simply fuel the flow of people into the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, these failures in the education system results in lower educational quality and higher interest in driving more school drop