All this, often without their or their parents’ knowledge or informed consent. If a student is flagged, police may be called if an administrator isn’t available. In an op-ed last winter, a piece in the Los Angeles Times revealed an effort in California and elsewhere to monitor students’ laptops for signs of mental health struggles at school and at home. Author Laurie Udetsky reported that “Such beatings are disproportionately meted out to Black students…as well as to Latinos.” We’re talking beatings serious enough to require a trip to the emergency room, like that inflicted on an eight-year-old Mississippi girl described in the story. MindSite News recently wrote that the practice of “paddling” students as a form of public school “discipline” persists in 19 states (48 allow it at private schools). And when the tickets go unpaid, local governments sometimes sic the state on the parents to collect the “debt.” These fines were found to have a disparate impact on BIPOC and/or low-income kids and their families. Fines can run into the hundreds of dollars and, ironically, kids have to miss school in the process. These children are being “thrown into a legal system designed for adults,” write lead authors Jodi S.
Pro Publica and the Chicago Tribune reported last month that in Illinois, schools have arranged for police to ticket students and bring them before a judge for rule infractions fairly common among teens–skipping class/being late, vaping, fighting, or having contraband items in or on their backpacks. Namely, the de-facto criminalization and surveillance of students by the very institutions meant to help them thrive: But some of what I am reading lately points to in-school dynamics that also seem inherently damaging to young psyches.
That makes sense, at least for those who were already doing okay or even thriving in that setting.
Much has been written about how missing in-person school during the pandemic has damaged kids’ academic progress and emotional wellness.