The Carceral Logics of Early Childhood Education: Historical and Historiographical Perspectives on a Criminalizing Master Narrative

• In Event: Counternarratives of Intergenerational Legacies of Violence: Decriminalizing Students of Color in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Objectives
This paper analyzes the historical contours and contemporary implications of the master narratives governing the links between schooling and incarceration—the “carceral logics” of schooling—beginning in early childhood education (ECE). By analyzing these master narratives in historical context, we provide a framework for understanding counter-narratives grounded in the lived experiences of carceral schooling. These counter-narratives can then guide efforts to abolish the carceral logics upon which modern schooling is based, and rebuild ECE centering justice and equity in the place of criminalization and punishment. Specifically, this paper addresses the following questions:

• How has schooling proceeded historically from the carceral logics of early racial capitalism, and how does it continue to promote those logics in ECE today?
• How have the master narratives constructed via the carceral logics of schooling established the framing for counter-narratives by children and teachers of color?

Theoretical Framework
Our theoretical framework synthesizes three approaches. First, Critical Race Theory (CRT), which understands racism as fundamental to schooling (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995). Second, critical historiography, particularly Gramsci and Foucault, which asks foundational questions about ideology, representation, and the control of historical narratives. Third, critical history, particularly racial capitalism (Robinson, 2020), which sees racism as central to capitalism, emphasizing continuity between slavery, sharecropping, wage labor, and prison labor.

Method and Data Sources
We systematically reviewed literature on education and carceral logics, including both mainstream and critical histories of education, searching the major databases in education, law and criminal justice, and general databases using keywords such as “truancy” and “criminalizing,” emphasizing works that address ECE. We then subjected the works to Critical Discourse Analysis (Gee, 1999; Reisigl & Wodak, 2001; Wodak, 2021), on aspects of the narratives that address our research questions.

Results
Preliminary findings support arguments by Margonis (2009), Fallace (2015), Selman (2018), and others that carceral logics have been core to U.S. public education from the beginning, and that they embody a persistent racial capitalism. For example, after the Union capture of New Orleans in 1862, the military governors established public schools for African Americans using curriculum, materials, and teachers provided by Northern philanthropic associations (Tyack & Loew, 1986). These schools, however, required African Americans either remain on the plantations or enlist in one of the “Colored” military regiments (Messner, 1972) because they were considered “totally unfit for self-governance,” and so education would serve both as “a source of enlightenment and social control” (Messner, 1972, p. 28). This pairing of deficit thinking and control with philanthropy underlies the “carceral benevolence” (Selman, 2018) of schooling throughout the history of U.S. education for communities of color, forming the basis for master narratives against which students and teachers of color construct their counter-narratives.
Significance
This study examines the historical construction of U.S. schools as “carceral sites” (Wun, 2018) for communities of color through an analysis of the master narratives of education under White supremacy. It provides a critical look at the history of U.S. education and provides a framework for research on the counter-narratives of students and teachers of color.

Author

• Richard C. Miller, University of Nevada - Las Vegas
  Presenting Author