Lockdown High
When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the dozen years since the Columbine High School shootings, school violence has fallen steadily. Yet, as Annette Fuentes visits schools across America she finds metal detectors and drug tests for aspirin, police profiling of students with no records, arbitrary expulsions, teachers carrying guns, and all-seeing electronic surveillance. Her moving stories will astonish readers, as she makes the case that our public schools reflect a society with an unhealthy fixation on crime and violence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this well-argued book, Fuentes, a journalist with a special interest in children's issues, sums up the "slippery slope" from the school to the jailhouse: "If yesterday's prank got a slap on the wrist, today those wrists could be slapped with handcuffs." Her book is packed with the anecdotally eye-catching and hard, persuasive data ("African-American students were 17 percent of the entire public school population, but account for 34 percent of all out-of-school suspensions and 30 percent of expulsions"). She reviews the legislative history (e.g., Safe and Gun Free School Act, 1994) that buttresses these developments and the "security industry" that profits from it, and she concludes with an assessment of "alternative paths to safe schools." The proper education of children, her book warns, is not promoted when "orseplay on the playground or a shove in the hallway is no longer just youthful shenanigans disorderly conduct and assault." Fuentes's detailed and daunting investigation of the "lockdown" philosophy and practices as "the criminal justice model" that shapes security and discipline in our schools is a wakeup call.
