"Educating a Class of Unfortunates": Crime Control, Child Protection, and the Development of Compulsory Schooling, 1889–1903

• In Event: Schools as Carceral Sites

Abstract

This paper studies the historical relationship between schools and the carceral state by analyzing truancy and the enforcement of compulsory schooling in Chicago between 1889 and 1903. I outline three dynamics that linked schools with the carceral state during the compulsory school movement: 1) narratives regarding schools as institutions of crime control; 2) punitive enforcement of the school law; and 3) advocacy for the separation and confinement of dependent, incorrigible, and habitually truant children. Throughout the paper, I consider how racial ideology shaped and was shaped by these dynamics. By studying truancy in the nascent years of compulsory schooling, this paper surfaces new insights about the foundational links between urban schooling and the carceral landscape.

Author

• Rebecca Horwitz-Willis, Harvard University
  Presenting Author