Archive for Education
Conflict-resolution teams at Locke High
Police patrol the halls and specialists counsel students on the first school day following Friday’s campus melee.
About half of the students said the brawling was prompted by their peers — bored with school and ready to ignite, said intervention specialist Holly Priebe-Diaz.
Other students, she said, blamed ongoing racial tensions and gang problems. Historically black Watts has changed rapidly to a Latino-majority community, with gangs of both ethnicities claiming overlapping turf in the economically depressed streets. Locke’s student body is about 65% Latino and 35% African American.
“This is a microcosm of something bigger happening in the community,” Priebe-Diaz said.
Breaking the School-to-Prison Pipeline
Across America, countless school children — particularly impoverished children of color — are being pushed out of schools and into juvenile lockups for minor misconduct that in an earlier era would have warranted counseling or a trip to the principal’s office rather than a court appearance.
How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness
It would certainly be a dream of Big Pharma and those who favor an authoritarian society if every would-be Tom Paine — or Crazy Horse, Tecumseh, Emma Goldman or Malcolm X — were diagnosed as a youngster with mental illness and quieted with a lifelong regimen of chill pills. The question is: Has this dream become reality?
Are We Headed Back to the Era of Segregation?
Schools, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest, are looking more and more like they did during segregation.
