Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And
Speaker 1: today we have a topic that some of you listening
Speaker 1: might uh might might have just read the title about
Speaker 1: the school to prison pipeline, and you might be a
Speaker 1: little a little cautious about it. But but trust us,
Speaker 1: this is a fascinating topic and it ties directly into
Speaker 1: our subsequent topic that will publish next week. That's right,
Speaker 1: we are taking a closer look at racial biases and
Speaker 1: how it shapes society. And in order to get into
Speaker 1: the mindset of today's show, let's all sort of do
Speaker 1: a little pretend imagination thing here. Imagine that you're lining
Speaker 1: up with other students and about twenty steps in front
Speaker 1: of you, someone is holding a dollar bill. But it's
Speaker 1: not just any dollar bill. I mean, this is the
Speaker 1: brass ring. This is the thing that's going to to
Speaker 1: determine and who you're going to marry, what sort of
Speaker 1: job you're going to take, um, what sort of overall
Speaker 1: wealth you're going to amass, what your own healthcare um
Speaker 1: access will be, and the level of your well being. Okay,
Speaker 1: it just determines where you're going to be in life.
Speaker 1: This dollar bill, So it's a really important dollar bill. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's why everybody is lining up for it, all these students. Now,
Speaker 1: imagine that before you can step forward, you discover that
Speaker 1: you have been scooted back about five steps because you
Speaker 1: live and say a poor community where you have little
Speaker 1: or no access to educational resources. Now imagine you look
Speaker 1: down and your skin is not white, but it is
Speaker 1: of color. Now you have been scooted back another five
Speaker 1: steps because statistically, the experience you have in school is
Speaker 1: going to be different from the white kid who is
Speaker 1: now ten steps in front of you. So when you
Speaker 1: hear ready set go, who do you think is going
Speaker 1: to get to that dollar bill first, that brass ring,
Speaker 1: It's going to be the white kids. It's the white kid.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, um, that analogy is the reality of the
Speaker 1: education system today in the United States. And uh, that
Speaker 1: is setting up some some very serious ramifications for what's
Speaker 1: happening with students success. And in some ways you might
Speaker 1: even say that it determines who is going to go
Speaker 1: on to college and who is going to go on
Speaker 1: to say maybe even a life of crime and poverty. Indeed,
Speaker 1: and to and to reference the title of the podcast,
Speaker 1: to prison into directly into the prison system. Uh. And
Speaker 1: in the course of the United States, it goes without saying,
Speaker 1: we have quite a prison system. As of two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: US prisons contain an all time high of two point
Speaker 1: four million people that, by the way, exceeds the population's
Speaker 1: entire populations of such countries as Cutter, Nambia, and Iceland. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. The US has close to twenty five percent
Speaker 1: of the world's prisoners, even though the U s accounts
Speaker 1: for only five percent of the world's populations. And some
Speaker 1: point to the war on drugs as uh, one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why the US prison population is so high.
Speaker 1: On September and the end of the most recent fiscal
Speaker 1: year for which federal offense data were available, eight thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred inmates we're talking about fifty one of the
Speaker 1: federal prison population were imprisoned for possession, trafficking, or other
Speaker 1: drug crimes. Yeah. And in fact, in the federal prison system,
Speaker 1: more than half of those sentenced to stints of a
Speaker 1: year or longer are are still there for drug crimes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, now keep in mind that more than fifty
Speaker 1: of the US prisoners are black and Hispanic. And when
Speaker 1: you look again at possession, trafficking other drug crimes, now
Speaker 1: consider that about fourteen million white people report using illicit
Speaker 1: drug as opposed to only two point six million African Americans,
Speaker 1: and so there are five times as many whites using
Speaker 1: drugs as African Americans. Yet African Americans are sent to
Speaker 1: prison for drug offenses at ten times the rate of whites.
Speaker 1: And what you begin to see emerge here is this
Speaker 1: the story of inequality, um, and not just circumstance. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's the same laws are on the books,
Speaker 1: but it's almost like there are two separate books of laws. Um.
Speaker 1: Here are just a couple of more factoids that come,
Speaker 1: figures that come to us from then double a cp um.
Speaker 1: African Americans now constitute nearly one million of that total
Speaker 1: incarcerated population that we mentioned. African Americans are incarcerated at
Speaker 1: nearly six times the rate of whites, and one in
Speaker 1: one hundred African American women are in prison. So what
Speaker 1: if we told you that the cards had been stacked
Speaker 1: against this particular prison population from the get go, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it had to do with education. Well,
Speaker 1: you might look at Brown versus the Board of Education
Speaker 1: and say, how can that be? That's right? Now, just
Speaker 1: to refresh Brown versus Board of Education, we're talking about
Speaker 1: the landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the
Speaker 1: court declared state laws establishing separate separate public schools for
Speaker 1: black and white students to be unconstitutional. Um, of course,
Speaker 1: it would be a number of years before all segregated
Speaker 1: school systems were desegregated. But this was responsible that this
Speaker 1: Brown and Brown two were responsible for getting the process underway. Right.
Speaker 1: This was and this is a moment in time that
Speaker 1: we still look back to and say, this is when
Speaker 1: the playing field at least is supposedly leveling out right.
Speaker 1: Chief Justice Earl Warren had said, quote, in these days,
Speaker 1: it's doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to
Speaker 1: succeed in life if he has denied the opportunities of
Speaker 1: an education. Such an opportunity where the state has undertaken
Speaker 1: to provide it is a right that must be made
Speaker 1: available on equal terms. Now. In a two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen interview with The New York Times, Daniel J. Loison,
Speaker 1: who is the director of the Center for Civil Rights
Speaker 1: Remedies at the University of California at Los Angeles Civil
Speaker 1: Rights Project said, quote, we here, we are sixty years
Speaker 1: after Brown versus Board of Education, and the data altogether
Speaker 1: still show a picture of gross inequity and educational opportunity.
Speaker 1: So the bottom line is still separate and still unequal.
Speaker 1: Even though we sort of dismantled this machine um of segregation,
Speaker 1: we end up rebuilding the machine. And uh and and
Speaker 1: and in the end, the machine does kind of what
Speaker 1: it did before. It's it's heartbreaking stuff. But we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna break down exactly how all of this works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and today's episode is ultimately about breakdown and failure, failure
Speaker 1: of a society to recognize its systems in place are
Speaker 1: so flawed that it's created this insidious atmosphere that is
Speaker 1: tantamount to a trap for a large segment of the population.
Speaker 1: And again, this is what we're calling the school to
Speaker 1: prison pipeline. And although we won't be able to cover
Speaker 1: this idea in its entirety, because it's really vast and
Speaker 1: it's really complicated, we do intend to discuss aspects of
Speaker 1: this acute inequality and education. And one that has created
Speaker 1: this metaphorical pipeline to crime and poverty. Yeah, and again
Speaker 1: it comes back to just like the basic idea of
Speaker 1: what school should be. Right, But the school is the
Speaker 1: launching pad for the rest of your life. It's it's
Speaker 1: your your education, your forming the tools that you're gonna
Speaker 1: need to succeed and uh and and setting setting the
Speaker 1: baseline for for what you're going to be as an
Speaker 1: adult in society. Yeah, and school is one of those
Speaker 1: things that everybody had as these robust, great utopian ideas
Speaker 1: of what it can be and should be. But when
Speaker 1: the you know, the rubber meets the road, the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is it's just not living up to
Speaker 1: a lot of ideals. And the reason we know that
Speaker 1: is that we finally have data because last year the
Speaker 1: Department of Education Office for Civil Rights conducted the first
Speaker 1: analysis in fifteen years of the US public schools and
Speaker 1: they found startling inequities. We're talking about nine seven thousand
Speaker 1: schools representing forty nine million students. Now, if you are
Speaker 1: a white kid, if you are a Caucasian kid, you
Speaker 1: are probably going to get these offerings. In fact, seventy
Speaker 1: percent of white kids get these offerings. A full range
Speaker 1: of math and science courses including algebra, biology, calculus, chemistry, geometry,
Speaker 1: and physics. And this really sets those students up for
Speaker 1: a the robust future, right because all of those classes,
Speaker 1: in particular the science classes are going to lend themselves
Speaker 1: to higher scores on s A t um tests and
Speaker 1: it's also going to set them up for a career
Speaker 1: in STEM. Right then the sciences, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: those those key STEM classes that that are so important,
Speaker 1: especially if you're you're looking to enter a pipeline into
Speaker 1: a career, uh in in some sort of STEM discipline. Alright, So,
Speaker 1: like you said, seventy of white students attend to classes
Speaker 1: with this full full range of these math and science courses.
Speaker 1: How does that break down for Black and Latino kids. Well,
Speaker 1: according to the to the fifteen year study, slightly more
Speaker 1: than half of all Black students have access to the
Speaker 1: full range of math and science courses. Slightly more than
Speaker 1: two thirds of Latinos have access and uh and then
Speaker 1: if you look to Native American Native Alaskan students, less
Speaker 1: than half of them are able to enroll in the
Speaker 1: in the sort of high level math and science courses
Speaker 1: that again, are available to the white student population. Now,
Speaker 1: the survey found that in terms of access to seasoned
Speaker 1: teachers for kids of colors, that Black, Latino, American, Indian,
Speaker 1: and Native Alaskan students are three times as likely as
Speaker 1: white students to attend schools with higher concentrations of first
Speaker 1: year teachers, and Black students are more than four times
Speaker 1: as likely as white students to attend schools where one
Speaker 1: out of every five teachers does not meet all state
Speaker 1: teaching requirements, and for Latino students there twice as likely. Now,
Speaker 1: one other statistic in here we're gonna throw at you
Speaker 1: is that the teacher salary gap between high schools with
Speaker 1: the highest concentrations of Black and Latino students and those
Speaker 1: with the lowest is more than five thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: meaning the incentive is not there for seasons teachers really
Speaker 1: qualified teachers to go to the schools that need the most.
Speaker 1: So the end result here, I mean it's pretty staggerant
Speaker 1: because basically you were talking about a situation where students
Speaker 1: of color simply do not have the same access two
Speaker 1: STEM classes that pave the way for a STEM career
Speaker 1: in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and you typically have new
Speaker 1: inexperienced teachers tackling low income in African American schools, the
Speaker 1: the the the very teaching environments where you ideally would
Speaker 1: want to have an experienced educator, someone with the necessary
Speaker 1: tools to tackle the students and uh and and engage them. Um.
Speaker 1: And this is what Daniel J. Lowson calls a gross
Speaker 1: inequity and educational opportunity. And I think there's there's no
Speaker 1: there's no more succinct way to say it. Um, Like
Speaker 1: the the deck is stacked, and you can get into
Speaker 1: a very long discussion about how that deck comes to
Speaker 1: be so stacked, how much of it is intentional, how
Speaker 1: much of it is accident, how much of it just
Speaker 1: comes of building this current educational machines, current school to
Speaker 1: prison pipeline without really looking at it for fifteen years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you think about it, those first year teachers
Speaker 1: are not just inexperienced, it's it's that they they've lacked
Speaker 1: all of the additional courses that teachers get throughout their career.
Speaker 1: So if you're a teacher with fifteen years experience, it's
Speaker 1: not just that you've been teaching for fifteen years. You've
Speaker 1: had additional instruction every single year and many different areas,
Speaker 1: and some of those areas may even be sensitivity, right. Um,
Speaker 1: So it's it's really important to note that the students
Speaker 1: again that need these experience really well qualified teachers the
Speaker 1: most are not getting them. And if these students lack
Speaker 1: any sort of additional educational resources anyway, right, may they
Speaker 1: might not have money to go and take extra courses
Speaker 1: to um beef up on s A T questions for instance,
Speaker 1: Then they're really going to fall behind. So this sort
Speaker 1: of data gives you an idea of the disparity in
Speaker 1: quality in terms of education. But what about the outcomes
Speaker 1: of the white kid versus the kid of color inside
Speaker 1: the actual school. Well, it turns out that racial bias
Speaker 1: is certainly at play here. Expulsion and suspension rates for
Speaker 1: black kids are as you guessed it, quite a bit higher.
Speaker 1: A two thousand and intense study of seventy two thousand
Speaker 1: schools kindergarten through high school shows that while black students
Speaker 1: make up only of those enrolled in the school sampled,
Speaker 1: they account for thirty five percent of those suspended once,
Speaker 1: of those suspended more than once, and thirty of all
Speaker 1: expulsions and overall, black students were three and a half
Speaker 1: times more likely to be suspended or expelled than their
Speaker 1: white counterparts. And this was interesting too. Black girls were
Speaker 1: suspended at higher rates than all other girls and most boys.
Speaker 1: And this leads right into the in school arrest rate.
Speaker 1: And this is really interesting because you know, I think
Speaker 1: back on my days in school, and I specifically remember, like,
Speaker 1: one guy committed a murder on school property. So of
Speaker 1: course the police showed up and dealt with it. That's
Speaker 1: pretty cut and dry. There's a murder is when committed
Speaker 1: you bringing, you bringing the police. It's no longer a
Speaker 1: school matter. But but we see this this disturbing national
Speaker 1: trend in which you have you have schools turning to
Speaker 1: police who are then arresting kids for minor infractions. So
Speaker 1: so you end up treating the students more like criminals
Speaker 1: and less like students, even for the little stuff. So
Speaker 1: they're getting the stigma of criminal instead of just mirror,
Speaker 1: you know, misbehavior leveled at them. Uh, in many cases,
Speaker 1: they're being they're they're getting thrown out, they're being sent
Speaker 1: back to places of stress and disadvantage, which again is crazy,
Speaker 1: since the school should be a place of hope, a
Speaker 1: place a springboard, a refuge from uh, those those places
Speaker 1: of disadvantage and uh and the statistics are pretty uh
Speaker 1: pretty depressing when you when you when you shake it
Speaker 1: shake it out along these lines. For instance, seventy of
Speaker 1: students involved in in school arrest are referred to law
Speaker 1: enforcement and referred to law floor enforcement or black or Latino.
Speaker 1: And by the way, sixty of all males in state
Speaker 1: or federal printed prison do not have high school diplomas.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you just have this disturbing trend where the
Speaker 1: student is just treated as a de facto criminal, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, almost right off the bat, which is heartbreaking
Speaker 1: when you think that if that student doesn't have a
Speaker 1: safe haven at home, and they don't have a safe
Speaker 1: haven at school, then they truly are set up for this.
Speaker 1: And by the way, just to throw some more stats
Speaker 1: at this from the l a c P. Nationwide, African
Speaker 1: Americans represent of juvenile arrest, of youth who are detained,
Speaker 1: forty ex percent of the youth who are judicially way
Speaker 1: to criminal court, and fifty eight percent of the youth
Speaker 1: admitted to state prisons. And we see another disturbing trend
Speaker 1: with foster care. Again, another um area where Ideally, there
Speaker 1: should be a lot of hope. This should be about
Speaker 1: children getting a leg up on society, on their lives,
Speaker 1: but instead we see some very disturbing trends. Black and
Speaker 1: Latinos make up fifty percent of children in the foster
Speaker 1: care system, of foster care youths entering the juvenile justice system,
Speaker 1: our placement related behavior cases of young people leaving foster
Speaker 1: care will be incarcerated within a few years of turning
Speaker 1: eighteen and fifty percent of young people leaving foster care
Speaker 1: will be unemployed within a few years of turning eighteen um.
Speaker 1: And then an even more startling figure here, uh, this
Speaker 1: comes from Community Coalition of South l a nonprofit um
Speaker 1: dartling inmates in California State Prison our former foster care youth.
Speaker 1: So you see that direct funnel from the foster care
Speaker 1: system into criminal and into the prison system. And again
Speaker 1: it's telling this story that this is one of the
Speaker 1: least supported segments of society. Right, So, if you have
Speaker 1: marginalized communities of color and you have foster care kids,
Speaker 1: they are not getting the support, the safe haven that
Speaker 1: they need. And this kind of stigmatization actually begins shockingly early.
Speaker 1: In fact, in preschool because one of the things that
Speaker 1: the survey found from the Department of Education uh that
Speaker 1: while black children make up of preschool enrollment, close to
Speaker 1: half of all preschool children who are suspended more than
Speaker 1: once are African American and Latitia Smith Evans of the
Speaker 1: u c l A And an interview with The New
Speaker 1: York Times said about this quote, it's incredible to think
Speaker 1: about or fathom what pre case students could be doing
Speaker 1: to get suspended from schools. Yeah, indeed, it just boggles
Speaker 1: the mind. I mean, I've I've been watching preschooler and
Speaker 1: younger age kid kids and there's what are they doing
Speaker 1: that requires drastically different disciplinary action? Yeah, there are four
Speaker 1: and five year olds all right. There is no you know,
Speaker 1: magic silver bullet here that we can point to that
Speaker 1: says it is the reason for why the system is
Speaker 1: the way it is. But one of the contributing factors
Speaker 1: is something called zero tolerance. Now, this is a policy
Speaker 1: that was put into place after the nineteen nine Columbine
Speaker 1: High School massacres. It's a basically a bunch of policies
Speaker 1: that escalated infractions among the student body, and it was
Speaker 1: never intended to be misused, but certainly this is what
Speaker 1: has happened over the years. According to Amanda Marcatti, writing
Speaker 1: for Slate magazine, quote, students, especially students of color, are
Speaker 1: hit with outrageous and disproportionate disciplinary measures in the school system,
Speaker 1: and this is what is contributing to those higher rates
Speaker 1: of in school arrests, expulsions, and suspensions. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: in this you're just you're seeing a situation where, out
Speaker 1: of a time of fear and and in particular cases
Speaker 1: a time of need for advanced, more powerful tools to
Speaker 1: deal with with threats, um, you end up having the
Speaker 1: tool chest opened, uh for abuse. You you know, you
Speaker 1: see this pretty much in any area of life, right
Speaker 1: when you end up giving um law enforcement or government
Speaker 1: or any kind of power more power to deal with
Speaker 1: a scenario than what happens when they want to use
Speaker 1: those powers just across the board. Yeah, absolute power absolutely corrupts.
Speaker 1: And we discussed this a bit too in our episode
Speaker 1: on the Panopticon, which has definitely some other, uh similar
Speaker 1: threads lowing through it. Indeed, now another another theory as
Speaker 1: to what's going on here comes down to standardized test um.
Speaker 1: Some critics blame the educators. The accusation accusation here being
Speaker 1: that they push out students who score lower un standardized
Speaker 1: test in order to improve the school's overall test scores.
Speaker 1: And if there's a if there's an educator in your life,
Speaker 1: then you've probably you've probably heard plenty about what standardized
Speaker 1: tests bring to the teaching scenario, what the various pros
Speaker 1: and cons are and uh. And here the argument is
Speaker 1: that the you know, the the cart ends up pulling
Speaker 1: the horse. Uh. Instead of the test being this measuring
Speaker 1: stick stick for what the students are doing and being
Speaker 1: about uh, you know, gauging the students, helping the students,
Speaker 1: it ends up being a situation where you're you're calling
Speaker 1: the herd with the with the whole mindset being based
Speaker 1: around the performance of the test. So you end up
Speaker 1: racially calling the student population in order to achieve higher
Speaker 1: test scores for that school. Everything is just completely backwards, right,
Speaker 1: because the school would like to purge those test scores, right,
Speaker 1: And in that way, the students are purged from the
Speaker 1: student body just so that they can rise their numbers
Speaker 1: and look all clean and squeaky. Unfortunately, now, another factor
Speaker 1: in play is something called implicit bias. In the current
Speaker 1: institutes paper on this, they define implicit biases the mental
Speaker 1: process that causes us to have negative feelings and attitudes
Speaker 1: about people based on characteristics like race, ethnicity, age, and appearance.
Speaker 1: Because this cognitive process functions in our unconscious mind, we
Speaker 1: are typically not consciously aware of the negative racial biases
Speaker 1: that we developed over the course of our lifetimes. So,
Speaker 1: of course, in a perfect world administration, school administrations, and
Speaker 1: students and teachers would all understand this and be aware
Speaker 1: of this implicit bias and be able to bring this
Speaker 1: awareness to the classroom and the way that they behave
Speaker 1: and they doll out disciplinary measures. But this doesn't exactly happen.
Speaker 1: For example, a two thousand and three study found that
Speaker 1: students who displayed quote a black walking style were perceived
Speaker 1: by their teachers as lower in academic achievement, highly aggressive,
Speaker 1: and more likely to be in need of special education services.
Speaker 1: In addition, a two thousand and seven meta analysis of
Speaker 1: research founds statistically significant evidence that teachers hold lower expectations
Speaker 1: either implicitly or explicitly, or both for African American and
Speaker 1: Latino children compared to European American children. And this is
Speaker 1: something that we touched upon when we talked about, um,
Speaker 1: how we behave toward one another, and the sort of
Speaker 1: expectations that we communicate, uh, even non verbally, and how
Speaker 1: that child will absorb that and then actually it will
Speaker 1: become a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, I mean it's the
Speaker 1: basis of stigma. You end up attaching stigma and up
Speaker 1: attaching titles and expectations of these students and then they
Speaker 1: they they match the form. So the cumulative effect here
Speaker 1: is is pretty devastating. Um, you have this disproportionate give,
Speaker 1: this disproportionate disciplinary action in place, and so the students
Speaker 1: that are affected, they end up falling behind in their classes,
Speaker 1: you know, in the in some of the better scenarios,
Speaker 1: right Uh, and then the worst scenarios, they're suspended, they're
Speaker 1: shuffled off to separate classes, etcetera. And this leads to
Speaker 1: higher dropout rates, uh, you know, and uh and also
Speaker 1: those the subsequent higher unemployment and imprison rates imprisonment rates
Speaker 1: that we've already discussed. So this leaves black and Latino
Speaker 1: students two times less likely to graduate high school than
Speaker 1: their white peers. So again you see the pipeline in
Speaker 1: place here where uh, these kids end up falling through
Speaker 1: the cracks and uh, and then are far more likely
Speaker 1: to wind up in the in the prison system. And
Speaker 1: just to bring this down to an individual level too,
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody out there has had that teacher that
Speaker 1: nurtured them, that that really fostered their abilities, who saw
Speaker 1: something in them, and then you know, you acted accordingly, right,
Speaker 1: you rose to the occasion. UM, on the opposite end
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, I'm sure everybody also has had that
Speaker 1: one teacher that they thought had it out for them
Speaker 1: that they kind of maybe shied away from, maybe even
Speaker 1: in class, your body language change and you try to
Speaker 1: make yourself invisible because you felt like that teacher didn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of confidence. And you now imagine that
Speaker 1: that was the majority of your experience and how that
Speaker 1: would call your perception of the world and your own abilities. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you end up with a situation where the again, the
Speaker 1: deck is stacked from the start. Now, this, uh, this
Speaker 1: sort of school to prison pipeline doesn't exist solely in
Speaker 1: the population of children of color. Recently, I had volunteered
Speaker 1: with a fantastic group here in Atlanta called Vox teen
Speaker 1: and it was a day in which um, the girls
Speaker 1: were exploring sex and sexuality, and my group was dealing
Speaker 1: with gender equality but also l gb QT equality, and
Speaker 1: there were some representatives from Georgia Equality and they talked
Speaker 1: a lot about the school to pipeline problem with the
Speaker 1: lgb QT community, and it turns out that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of parallels here. Indeed, LGB youth, particularly gender
Speaker 1: nonconforming girls, are up to three times more likely to
Speaker 1: experience harsh disciplinary treatment by school administrators than their non
Speaker 1: LGB counterparts. LGB youth are overrepresented in the juvenile justice system.
Speaker 1: They make up just five to seven percent of the
Speaker 1: overall youth population, but they rep in fift of those
Speaker 1: in the juvenile justice system. And LGBT youth reports significant
Speaker 1: distrust of school administrators and generally say they don't believe
Speaker 1: that the school fishers officials do enough to foster safe
Speaker 1: and welcoming, welcoming school climate. So again you have a
Speaker 1: situation where for many of these students, they don't feel
Speaker 1: they don't feel feel supported, they don't feel safe even
Speaker 1: in the in the in these school environments, and it
Speaker 1: ends up, you know, being a failure of the school
Speaker 1: as a as a safe haven, as a launching path,
Speaker 1: as a as a place of hope. Again because you know,
Speaker 1: the the administrations and some of the teachers and again
Speaker 1: not all, but some of them carry with them certain
Speaker 1: biases and that colors our perception of that kid. And
Speaker 1: so if that kid is doing something, then it can
Speaker 1: be uh, grossly misperceived as this even sort of grotesque
Speaker 1: ory of their behavior, when in fact the kid wasn't
Speaker 1: doing any right. Um. Again, the punishment doesn't always correlate
Speaker 1: with the actual misbehavior or any it may not even
Speaker 1: be misbehavior. So we wanted to bring this topic to
Speaker 1: you guys today. Again, we know it's not a light
Speaker 1: and everyone, but we thought that you would appreciate it
Speaker 1: because this is, uh, this is a huge problem the
Speaker 1: prison population. We we are responsible for the largest prison
Speaker 1: population in the world. And in order to drill down
Speaker 1: into that and try to figure out why, you have
Speaker 1: to look at schools. Yeah, I mean, certainly there are
Speaker 1: other other parts of the problem. You can get into
Speaker 1: the privatization of prisons, etcetera. But this is a major
Speaker 1: component and and his uh, you know, it's it's not
Speaker 1: pleasant information, but particularly if you're if you're a citizen
Speaker 1: in the United States, I feel like it's it's really
Speaker 1: important to have some of these facts bouncing around in
Speaker 1: your skull. And as we get into um greater discussion
Speaker 1: of of how racial bias works in the brain in
Speaker 1: a subsequent episode. UM, you know, it's important to have
Speaker 1: this to the all back to because it's easy to
Speaker 1: sort of fall back on, oh, well, you know, implicit
Speaker 1: bias that just relates to how I, you know, how
Speaker 1: I interact with you know, a person of another race
Speaker 1: and the elevator or something. Uh, it's it's good too,
Speaker 1: but it's good to to remember that they are far larger,
Speaker 1: overreaching um issues in play that are shaping children right
Speaker 1: now in classrooms and their future behavior and their future
Speaker 1: successes and failure. All right, so there you have it again. Uh,
Speaker 1: stay tuned for another episode coming up that's going to
Speaker 1: really get into racial racial bias and how that works
Speaker 1: with with the human mind and you know, how we
Speaker 1: can approach it as individual humans. Uh. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out more of our content,
Speaker 1: past episodes, etcetera. Videos, anything you like, you'll find them
Speaker 1: a stuffabole your mind dot com. That is the homepage
Speaker 1: the Mothership and uh that's where you also find links
Speaker 1: up of social media accounts that we handle, and if
Speaker 1: you guys have any first person experiences you would like
Speaker 1: to share with us, we hope you do so, and
Speaker 1: you can email us blow the mind at how staff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics, visit how stuff works dot com