Despite evidence that punitive punishment is ineffective and damaging— at worst, pushing vulnerable children out of school into the carceral system and, at best, driving student resentment and a breakdown of the teacher-student relationship— we still enact them in the forms of detention, suspension, expulsion, and in extreme cases, practices that replicate our carceral system by introducing police, surveillance, fines and probation into schools. However, if you consider our current system of punitive discipline in schools as a continuation of European colonialism, we can begin to pick apart the origins and evolution of how our schools are increasingly operating as an extension of the penal system through hundreds of years of intentionally oppressive design.

This episode is also available as a blog post: http://inquisitiveoutlet.com/2021/04/01/part-1-privilege-the-knapsack/. This episode, we introduce the concept of white privilege as it exists in America and we use the podcast, Nice White Parents, to take a close look at how that privilege manifests within our education system within the microcosm of NYC schools.