Schools Are Not Made for Children: Critical Educators and the Criminality of Care

• In Event: Impossible Sanctuary, Necessary Refuge: Institutional Limits and the Possibilities of Community in Serving Marginalized Students

Abstract

The failure of U.S. schools to take care of the most vulnerable children is well documented. Research and journalism present an unflinching portrait of the harm that police officers (Crenshaw, 2015; Nolan, 2011), ICE agents (Blitzer, 2013; Camayd-Freixas, 2009), and other systems of punitive control (Dwyer, 2011; Meiners, 2011) inflict disproportionately upon Black, queer, and/or undocumented students. Scholars have argued that such harm is produced through the interaction of structural racism and gendered systems (Davis, 2011; Crenshaw, 1990; Kumashiro, 2002; Winn, 2011). At the same time, districts across the country are drafting policy designed to extend institutional protection to marginalized students. For example, so-called “sanctuary school” resolutions attempt to protect the education rights of undocumented students and families by refusing cooperation with ICE agents (Keierleber, 2017) and “safe schools” legislation claims to improve conditions for queer and trans students (Russell, Horn, Kosciw, & Saewyc, 2010). Taken together, these approaches represent institutional attempts to ensure that Black, queer, and/or undocumented students are protected in school. Yet, can institutional policy produce safety? How do these institutional policies actually impact the lives of young people who are routinely – and legally – denied security in society at large?

Theory from Black studies and queer studies contextualizes this question. Harney and Moten’s (2013) writing on the undercommons argues that, “it cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment” (p. 26). Kelley (2018) builds upon Harney and Moten to suggest fugitive study, a practice of scholarship that occurs behind the university’s back, as a method of reclaiming authority currently held by educational institutions. Queer/trans studies offers a conceptual basis to extend these ideas into the terrain of compulsory K-12 schooling by examining state institutions’ investment in normativity (Bryson & De Castell, 1993; Coloma, 2010; McCready, 2004; Spade, 2015). bell hooks (1994) highlights both the centrality and inherent transgressiveness of love when practicing transformative pedagogy. Keenan (2017) urges educators to engage more deeply with the complex experiences of children as a method for imagining beyond the present organization of power. This body of scholarship challenges the notion that educational institutions themselves can protect children and encourages us to reclaim the power to care for one another.

Given this conceptual and practical context, we argue that, although significant, education policy and curriculum mandates cannot keep Black, queer, and/or undocumented students fully safe at school. Yet, many of us believe fervently that the protection of these young people is essential. For educators caught at this crossroads, we suggest that caring for Black, queer, and/or undocumented students necessitates a criminal relationship to the education state. To take up the concrete, we offer three criminal orientations that may anchor the work of those willing to dedicate themselves to the service of the Black, queer, and/or undocumented young people compelled by law to attend our schools.

Authors

• Harper Benjamin Keenan, University of British Columbia

• Kyle M. Halle-Erby, University of California - Los Angeles