Summary Of Being Bad: The School To Prison Pipeline

The School to Prison Pipeline is something I was previously unaware of. Crystal T. Laura’s Book, Being Bad: My Baby Brother and the School to Prison Pipeline (2014) was eye opening and disturbing. To learn that students of color, particularly male students, are being described at eleven years old as unsalvageable because of subjective behaviors is heartbreaking and infuriating. Most of all this book, the personal essay describing the story of Laura’s brother Chris, left me wondering why people, who chose the field of education as their profession, cannot commit to the vision of love, justice and joy in education that Laura describes in her book. The facts laid out in Laura’s book make it clear that there is inequity within the schools of this country. Some that I found to be particularly disturbing include: “Black students are nearly twice as likely to be labeled ‘learning disabled’ as White students, almost twice …show more content…
Meaning that the teacher pushes themselves and their students to take a step back and to truly think about what is important to them and why this is important. The teacher as an activist would them help students explore how to change circumstances they do not agree with. Laura also said that a teacher activist does not recognize “a neat split between their work and their lives…they want to use each for the enrichment of the other” (p. 82).
Finally, Laura’s vision calls for joy in education. She reminds us through many descriptions of Leif Gustavson’s book, Youth Learning on Their Own Terms (2007), that teachers need to make learning youth-oriented by being ethnographers and amateurs in the classroom. Laura says, and I agree, “that any safe and productive learning space is one in which every student is valued and encouraged to explore, learn, and work in his or her own ways. An oh, what a job this brings!”