Counter-Conduct Against the Prison Ethos of Schools

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Early Childhood, K-12 Education, and Postfoundational Thought (Table 4)

Abstract

The connections between United States schools and prisons are widely pervasive and well documented. An ethos is a way of being – a set of values and actions that inform daily conduct. In this paper, I refer to the pervasive prison culture identified by Mariame Kaba as a prison ethos, focusing on how the American teacher is socialized into it. While this ethos dominates much of teachers’ conduct, spaces for resistance, what Michel Foucault refers to as counter-conduct, also abound. By following how elementary school teachers engage in counter-conduct to the prison ethos, I show with concrete examples how this ethos can be disrupted and conduct can be more humanely directed.

Author

• Cara Elizabeth Furman, Hunter College - CUNY