by Kenneth J. Bernstein | a blog entry in TeacherKens Diary http://teacherken.dailykos.com/
smf: Bernstein, a Social Studies teacher at Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Prince George’s County, Maryland, wanders afield but finds and ties up some loose ends as he shares his thinking on The School-to-Prison Pipeline
Gulag politics. The idea of locking up your opponents. In the old USSR it was political opponents and critics of the Communist regime. Perhaps it seems inappropriate to use that term here, in what is supposedly a democratic republic. But consider this:
“With 1 out of every 100 Americans - more than 2.3 million - now behind bars, the United States imprisons far more people - both proportionally and absolutely - than any other country in the world, including China. Representing only 5% of the world's population, America has 25% of the world's inmates.”
Those words are from a book by Linda Darling-Hammond titled The Flat World and Education: How America's Commitment to Equity Will Determine Our Future. The application of the term "Gulag politics" is courtesy of Derrick Jackson, who writes
“It is a good bet that the United States has frittered away a decent chunk of our former global advantages with gulag politics.”
Darling-Hammond is a major figure in education policy. Now holding an endowed chair at Stanford University, she was a close adviser to Obama during the campaign, and was the favorite of many of those with whom I associate in educational policy circles to be the Secretary of Education, if for no other reason that besides being a well-known writer and policy expert, she actually taught school.
Current National Teacher of the Year Anthony Mullen recently wrote in his "Road Diaries: Teacher of the Year" blog, in a piece titled Teachers Should Be Seen and Not Heard, about his experiences at a recent conference with three governors, a professor and others describing how schools need to be redesigned.
Eventually the moderator asked Mullen what he thought. The response?”
“Where do I begin? I spent the last thirty minutes listening to a group of arrogant and condescending non educators disrespect my colleagues and profession. I listened to a group of disingenuous people whose own self-interests guide their policies rather than the interests of children. I listened to a cabal of people who sit on national education committees that will have a profound impact on classroom teaching practices. And I heard nothing of value.
"I'm thinking about the current health care debate," I said. "And I am wondering if I will be asked to sit on a national committee charged with the task of creating a core curriculum of medical procedures to be used in hospital emergency rooms."
The strange little man cocks his head and, suddenly, the fly on the wall has everyone's attention.
"I realize that most people would think I am unqualified to sit on such a committee because I am not a doctor, I have never worked in an emergency room, and I have never treated a single patient. So what? Today I have listened to people who are not teachers, have never worked in a classroom, and have never taught a single student tell me how to teach."
Perhaps that selection from Mullen seems like a distraction from the topic of this diary. It is not. Those of us who teach understand we cannot continue to cut our spending for education and expect to effectively educate our children, especially those most in need of our attention, those who if they do not get our help are far more likely to wind up as part of our penal system, and not contributing to our economy and our society. In effect we will be treating them as the Soviet Union treated their political prisoners - lock them up and forget about them.
Let me try to explain my understanding.
States are in economic crisis. Bob Herbert's column, Invitation to Disaster, takes us through the scale of the crisis. Immediate disaster was staved off by the stimulus, but that money will be running out.
“The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out that if you add up the state budget gaps that have recently been plugged (in most cases, temporarily and haphazardly) and those that remain to be dealt with, you’ll likely reach a staggering $350 billion for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years.”
The impact of this will be heavily felt in education:
“Without substantial new federal help, state cuts that are now merely drastic will become draconian, and hundreds of thousands of additional jobs will be lost. The suffering is already widespread. Some states have laid off or furloughed employees. Tens of thousands of teachers have been let go as cuts have been made to public schools and critically important preschool programs. California has bludgeoned its public higher education system, one of the finest in the world.”
Of course, as Herbert points out, education is not the only area which will suffer. But let me point this out: states are severely cutting the money they give to local school districts at precisely the same time the tax base of the localities has collapsed as a consequence of the housing disaster. Teachers will lose jobs, class sizes will grow, electives and services will be cut. And even if this is only for two or three years, for younger children that could be crucial as it undermines their gaining the foundation for long-term educational success, and for older children they will not gain the knowledge necessary to be prepared for college. Of course, the college issue might not matter, as state schools see their support cut from financially distressed states, and as increasing number of students need financial aid for themselves because their families are under financial distress. The combination is effectively eating the seed corn of the future - theirs as individuals and ours as an economy, a society, a nation.
How does this relate to my use of the term Gulag? Jackson's column is titled Common sense on prison, education funds, and is occasioned by Gov. Schwarzenegger of California this week proposing a state Constitutional amendment that would prohibit spending more on prisons than on education. The Governor said that in the last 30 years, prison spending increased from 3 percent of the state general fund to 11 percent while higher education spending declined from 10 percent to 7.5 percent.
"Spending 45 percent more on prisons than universities is no way to proceed into the future,’’ he said.
Jackson provides data similar to that I encountered in Darling-Hammond's book:
“Nationwide, the Pew Center on the States says prison spending rose six times more than spending for higher education in adjusted dollars from 1987 to 2007. The national federal and state prison population nearly tripled in that time, from 585,000 to 1.6 million. Including local jails, the United States had 2.3 million people locked up by 2007. This is more than the 1.5 million inmates in more-numerous China and 2 1/2 times more than third-place Russia.”
He has written on this issue several times, and reminds us
“New York State went from spending twice as much on universities in 1988 to spending more on prisons than higher education in 1996. President Clinton’s push for national service was dwarfed by a $23 billion 1993 Senate crime bill that spent twice as much on boot camps than national service and $3 billion for prisons but only $1.2 billion for job training and drug treatment for nonviolent offenders.”
Allow me to return if I may to Darling-Hammond. She notes that the money states spend prison costs are eating into funds they would otherwise spend on early childhood education, an investment that has been found to dramatically increase graduation rates and reduce participation in juvenile and adult crime.
We squander our human capital, first by not educating, and then by paying to incarcerate, many of those locked up lacking the education and skills to contribute to our economy.
“The implications of these social choices for our national well-being are enormous. Dropouts cost the country at least $200 billion a year in lost ages and taxes, costs for social services, and crime. With only three potential workers for every one person on Social Security in 2020 (as compared to 20 workers for every retiree in 1950), having one-thrid on the nonproductive side of the equation will undermine the social compact on which the nation depends.”
We know that one major contributor to our burgeoning prison population is a set of drug laws that are inequitable, and fall disproportionally on the poor and minorities. Jackson explores that, and notes that Massachusetts Attorney General and Democratic gubernatorial candidate called such laws crazy. He concludes his column like this:
“It is refreshing to hear a Democrat like her and a Republican like Schwarzenegger say that our criminal justice priorities are insane, with education always getting the strait-jacket. It is the first step out of the asylum.”
Is the term"gulag" inappropriate? I think not. Perhaps those locked up, often repeatedly, in our penal system are not political prisoners the way those in the Soviet Gulags were. They are certainly at least political footballs. And they are removed from society - often permanently, with the loss of the right of vote, being barred from many occupations. Increasingly we have charged young people as adults, meaning their records do not get expunged. We permanently bar those with drug offenses from many federal benefit. We thereby increase the percentage of our population that we exclude from the full benefits of a society for which in many cases we have failed to prepare them with proper education.
And because prisons are expensive, and too many will still demagogue the issue crime, our expenditures for our penal system continue to escalate at a time when the funds for government as a whole are plummeting, with a consequence that we further cut education, thereby contributing to a future increase in crime - a real Catch 22.
There are other ways. As it happens I am also reading a book by a college friend, Mark Kleiman, on a different approach to the issue of crime. I will when I can also offer a review of When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment.
Perhaps is is Serendipity to encounter the columns by Jackson and Herbert at the same time I am reading the books by Darling-Hammond and Kleiman. Perhaps I might have eventually made the connections among them anyhow, who knows?
What I do know is this: we face some stark choices. We are going to have to decide what really matters to our future. If our answer is punitive, increasing the use of the penal system rather than attempting to avoid having to incarcerate people in the first place, we will find ourselves on a path that is not only financially unaffordable, it should be morally unacceptable.
What is even worse - as our prison population continues to expand, we are cutting the services in those prisons that could educate and rehabilitate first-time offenders.
I think Jackson's term "Gulag politics" is appropriate. I think we need to address this issue. I know we cannot address this issue if states, which in many cases cannot have unbalanced budgets, do not get additional assistance from the Federal government, which can.
We face some critical choices. Our future as a nation may well depend upon our decision.
What do you think we should do?
Peace.
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