The Reflection Of Educational Dysfunctions

The School to Prison Pipeline was chosen as a topic because it is relevant, controversial and dramatically affecting the nation’s youth. The school to prison pipeline proposes youth to choose between an education and jail, though the decision has often already been decided for them. A child should never be pushed away from education for any reason. School is the one place society depends on to guarantee that youth discover world of knowledge, their identity and a safe haven away from home. This issue is no secret as it is very obvious to see in almost any school district that the pipeline is an ongoing practice. The author takes an interest in this topic being a strong advocate of academics. The author disapproves of the pipeline effect as it shows detrimental damages to educational systems and young children across the nation. From the earliest school age to the last, youth are being stripped of their educational privileges due to an unfair system.

Erikson theorizes that in such a period, adolescents have certain tasks, one of which is identifying who they are. An individual successfully completes the task by staying true to his or her self, whereas when a person fails that stage, it leads to role confusion; consequently creating a weak sense of self. (Block 2011). The stage also entails a variety of personal challenges and limitations faced as well as a series of needs to be met, including: attention, guidance, independence, stability, and acceptance, among other needs. Meeting an adolescent’s needs is fundamental to their healthy development and personal growth. Nevertheless, adolescence remains as puzzling of a period in time for both the teens experiencing it, as well as for the individuals surrounding them, watching them as they navigate through the trials that adolescence brings them.

Adolescence is Erikson’s fifth stage of development wherein the person must master the conflict of identity versus role confusion. The question, who I am? Is a question that arises during this time? The child is concerned with

Adolescence is a time when everything we've ever known is being changed. Relationships, friends, thoughts, and other things that shape who we are become more awkward and confusing and are changed from what they have been in the past. Consequently, we will change also because all these things shape who we are. During a period of such change, it's hard to know who we really are. Adolescence is the time when we find out who we truly are, but not until we know who we aren't. Adolescents use common words, actions, and rivalries to try to define their unique personalities, goals, and ideas. They label

In recent years, public schools have been accused of participating in the school to prison pipeline. The school to prison pipeline refers to the growing incarceration of youths, resulting from the zero tolerance policies implemented in schools. Therefore, I decided to do my research based on the school to prison pipeline to understand what these accusations mean and their consequences. My research will be divided into three main categories; what is it and how the pipeline became common practice, how it affects the United States, and some solutions to the problem. So far, my claim is that the public schools unintentionally started to connect more students with the judicial system because of growing concern over crime. But when it became known

“Seventy percent of students involved in “in school” arrests or referred to the law enforcement are Black or Latino” (Travis doc). A majority of students attend school to graduate or further their education, but many do not have the opportunity to accomplish neither of these achievements. A great majority of students are being sent down the school-to-prison pipeline, which is a transition from school to the juvenile or prison system. Schools have adopted a strict and militaristic policy to deal with defiant, violent, and slow learning students. Most students are expelled, suspended or referred to the police, but most issues could be handled without expelling, suspending, or notifying the police. “Far too often, students are suspended, expelled

For a portion of their lives, the average person most likely believes that the criminal justice system executes justice and disciplines offenders accordingly. Reflecting upon the United States’ history, it is proven that this is not always the case. When the phrases “school” and “prison” come to mind, they typically have no correlation to each other⎼until the topic of the "school-to-prison pipeline" is introduced. The school-to-prison pipeline refers to policies and procedures within the classroom that push our nation's schoolchildren, especially those most at-risk, out of classrooms and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems. This pipeline reflects the prioritization of incarceration over education. Reform within schools is crucial

In a news article by The Kansan, writer Jade Hudson Newson reports the correlation between high incarceration rates and discipline in high schools. Faculty member at Bethel College Gary Flory discusses the “School-to-Prison Pipeline” and the correlation between education and prison. Flory shares information about the inmates and what level of education they have and found that a majority of inmates did not have a high school diploma nor a GED. However; Flory makes sure to mention that it is not the lack of education that lands people in prison, but how they were punished in high school. Flory makes the connection that students who we suspended multiple times or expelled were more likely to drop out of high school.

A student enters Kindergarten who is not familiar with their ABC’s and struggles to retain a lot of information. Meanwhile their classmates are writing words making the student feel discouraged. The student is too far behind in class and does poorly causing them to misbehave in class to seek attention. The teachers constantly send the student to the Dean’s Office for punishment. By 6th grade the student is frustrated with school and never learns the material they miss out on. Rather they just get behind and drop out to pursue illegal activities to sustain themselves. Eventually, the dropped out student gets caught doing a crime and gets sent to Juvenile Court. According to Kupchik, within The School-to-Prison Pipeline: Rhetoric or Reality, schools and prison are interlinked as school reveal student’s deficits, some frustrated individuals may fail out of schools causing them to turn to illegal means, and the schools’ method in disciplining certain behavior causes students to be integrated in the Juvenile criminal system. Kupchik allows for a thoughtful discussion of the School-to-Prison Pipeline highlighting the metaphor’s implications, risk factors, and methods to remedy the issue.

The school pipeline is people encourage police presence at schools, harsh tactics including physical restraint, and automatic punishments that result in suspensions and out-of-class time are huge contributors to the pipeline, but the problem is more complex than that. According to Elias, schools are a pipeline to prison. In Jefferson Parish, La., according to a U.S. Department of Justice complaint, school officials have given armed police “unfettered authority to stop, frisk, detain, question, search and arrest schoolchildren on and off school grounds.” In fact, hundreds of school districts across the country employ discipline policies that push students out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system at alarming rates. Many of the

Our identity can sometimes be shaped by the way others see us. As we have seen, the way in which others view us can have some sort of impact on how we see ourselves. There are also other contributing factors such as our years of adolescence, the basic human need of wanting to belong and maturing; all play an equally important part in the forming of our character and who we are. On balance it appears that there is not only one influence in the shaping of our identity, but there are many.

All throughout our lives, we wrestle with the question of who am I and what do I want in life? However, it is usually during the adolescent years that this issue really comes to a head and we begin a more earnest search into finding ourselves and deciding the direction we want to take with our lives. One of the theorists who studied this idea of identity formation was James Marcia. Marcia proposed that there were four different stages or statuses in the development of identity which he labeled Identity Diffusion, Identity Foreclosure, Identity Moratorium, and Identity Achievement. In this essay, we will briefly summarize his four different stages and then apply his theory to my own identity development during the adolescent years.

For Erikson (1950) adolescence is a period during which individuals seek to avoid dangers of role diffusion and identity confusion by establishing a sense of personal identity. Individuals have to find answers for two major questions “who am I?” and “what is my place in society?” Identity is a “conscious sense of individual uniqueness” and an “unconscious striving for a continuity of experience” (Erikson, 1968, p. 208).

In entering adolescence, people heavily contemplate their ego identity. In the early 1900s, theorist Erik Erikson believed in eight stages of ego development from birth to death. For the purpose of this paper I have

While childhood seemed like a breeze, my adolescent years were anything but that. Adolescence, the transition between childhood and adulthood beginning with puberty, is a time full of physical and psychological changes both positive and negative. During this time individuals are in search of their identity, a task that can yield a lot of confusion. The question of who am I lingers in the back of adolescent minds and the answer anything but simple. This struggle for an identity and one’s place in society can lead to stress. Through exploration and soul searching, however, one might find their identity. For me, this question seemed impossible to answer, however, I always had a strong desire to fit in and be liked by others. Reading through the different developmental theories in the text, I started to compare them to events in my own life and noticed many significant similarities.