A fantastic review of Homeroom Security: School Discipline in an Age of Fear
Kupchik’s detailed observations of four public high schools with vastly different student bodies paint a convincing picture of good intentions gone awry. In trying to keep kids safe, these schools — our schools — are rendering them even more vulnerable, not only to crime but to disillusionment, disenfranchisement, and ultimately to a passive acceptance of heavy-handed policing, limitations on free speech, ubiquitous video surveillance, and other intrusions on civil liberties.
This is a book that deserves a wider audience than it likely will get. As Kupchik points out, what our students learn about crime, punishment, justice, and liberty is crucial to the society we’ll all inhabit as today’s graduates leave school behind.
Aaron will appear on WAMC’s “The Roundtable” (Albany NPR) this Wednesday, 8/18.
