Hey, there is always a draft when you get out, kiddos!!!
Oh, and please HOME SCHOOL, parents!!!!!
"Problem students in pipeline to prison"
"by Daniel G. Meyer | May 28, 2008
Daniel G. Meyer is a volunteer at the Youth Advocacy Project at the Committee for Public Counsel Services.
A 13-YEAR-OLD girl was handcuffed and arrested at Brockton High School last June for wearing a T-shirt. The T-shirt, which she was asked by school officials to remove, bore the image of her ex-boyfriend, 14-year-old Marvin Constant, who had recently been killed in a Boston area shooting. The girl refused to remove the memorial shirt and was arrested for "causing a disturbance."
In Texas, 14-year-old high school freshman, Shaquanda Cotton, was sentenced to seven years in prison. Her crime was pushing a hall monitor out of the way when she was stopped from entering a school building. The official charge was "assault on a public servant."
Can you say Sig Heil, kids? Can you click your heels when you do it?
While extreme, these cases are not unusual. In Massachusetts and across the country, an increasing number of incidents that traditionally have been handled in schools by trips to the principal's office are being dealt with by law enforcement officials and judges in the juvenile justice system.
I'm SO GLAD I'm a broken-down old man who can't even hold in his farts anymore!!
I would NEVER want to be a kid now; the fascistas are DESTROYING CHILDHOOD!!!!
Countless school children, particularly children of color in poverty-stricken zip codes, are being pushed out of schools and into juvenile correctional facilities for minor misconduct.
WAKE UP, America!!!!!
Unless you want to be heading to the jail for VISITING HOURS!!!!
A variety of overzealous disciplinary measures, including a mandatory "zero-tolerance" policy, are removing children as early as elementary school from mainstream educational environments and funneling them into a one-way pipeline to prison.
Almost as if it is a PLAN, huh?
But here in America, yup, we LOVE OUR KIDS -- so much so that we IMPRISON THEM!!!
So HOW DOES IT FEEL to be an IRAQI KID, 'murkn kids?
This "school-to-prison pipeline" begins in the nation's neglected and under-resourced public education system and flows directly into the country's expansive ocean of overcrowded, privatized, profit-producing prisons.
Do you think the PROFIT has anything to do worth it?
America's Promise Alliance released a report in April that said that 17 of the nation's 50 largest cities have high school graduation rates of lower than 50 percent. Boston barely boasted a graduation rate of 57 percent, placing it 27th among the 50 cities. It is no surprise that urban public high schools ranked lower in graduation rates than their suburban counterparts.
Translation: Public schools suck, so don't send your kids there please!!!
When school funding is based on student test performance, lack of resources creates heinous incentives for school officials to funnel out "problem" students believed likely to drag down a school's scores.
Yeah, toss the kid in JAIL because of NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND!!!
Please, America, WAKE UP before it is too late!!!!!!
Don't you love your children?
Then why are you letting this happen to them?
This bottom line business is a convenient method of concealing schools' educational deficiencies, but it does little to address the systemic problem of poor performance.
But it makes $$$$ for the PRISON-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX!!!
See ya in the camps, kids!!!!
Racial disproportion runs through every level of the system. A black male born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime compared with a white male's 1 in 17 chance. Incarceration rates are directly correlated with school performance. Children of color are more likely to be suspended or expelled than their Caucasian classmates. More than 70 percent of the prison population in Massachusetts is functionally illiterate. The cycle begins early and is hard to break. A black child is nine times more likely to have an incarcerated parent, and children with imprisoned parents far more likely to be imprisoned themselves.
But AmeriKa isn't racist or anything!!!!
Abraham Lincoln wrote that "the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present." There remains a deeply ingrained punitive paradigm in the psyche of the American criminal justice system. Our overzealous "get tough on crime" philosophy is totally inadequate to the stormy present. Americans are far more likely to be victimized by a violent assault, rape, murder, or robbery than our European counterparts who incarcerate relatively tiny percentages of the population. There, prison is viewed as a fundamentally "criminogenic" institution that creates more crime than it deters.
Well, that's those European pansies we are told over here.
This is AmeriKa, and we are tough on our criminals -- at least, as long as they don't reside in corporate boardrooms and Washington D.C.!!!!
Prisoners are a major fiscal burden on the rest of society. It costs Massachusetts $43,000 a year to keep an inmate behind bars. States are spending on average more than three times as much per prisoner as per public school pupil.
Cha-CHING for the PRISON INDUSTRY, huh?
But the state doesn't have enough to build schools (second article down)!!!!
Pffffffffftttt!!!!!
Is it more valuable to imprison than to teach? The majority of suspended students and juveniles in detention did not commit violent offenses. Is society safer with nonviolent criminals in jail or in school?
Should they even be crimes (something I will be touching upon in my next Ron Paul's Revolution excerpts post)?
Relying on incarceration as the sole solution to crime is ineffective. Academic achievement is the leading determining factor for delinquency. Improving school performance will be an effective strategy for reducing chronic court involvement.
We have the resources. It is not a question of funds but rather a question of will. Will Massachusetts be first to say enough and dam the flow of the school-to-prison pipeline?"
I doubt it.
This state -- for all its "liberal" reputation -- sucks.
Take it from a RESIDENT, readers!!!!
I LIVE HERE!!!!!
