Gary Stager Has Lost His Mind : What’s the Difference Between School and Prison?

 [ed. note, 08.21.07: I mischaracterized Stager in this article as an "indiscriminate technophile." The combination of articles with which I was familiar at the time distorted my image a bit. I believe, at this point, that he indeed discriminates regarding technology; appropriately at times, inappropriately at others [as with the rest of us]. Were I to write this article today, I’d describe him differently.]

What’s the difference between school and prison? Not much, according to Gary Stager, Senior Editor of District Administration magazine. Stager’s an indiscriminate technophile; now he can join the ranks of intellectually-irresponsible education alarmists. In “What’s the Difference Between School and Prison?” he opines:

“Will Richardson’s blog, discussing a recent New York Times article about the New York Police Department converging on schools to search students for cellphones and iPods made me think about the school environments we create for children.

I worry about the climate of our schools and did a bit of research that confirmed my fears.

Let’s consider some recent events and emerging trends…”

I understand his vitriol. It’s one thing to fail to teach millions of students how to read or prepare them adequately for college; it’s more serious when you start messing with their iPods.

Stager’s list of irrelevant anecdotes that are purportedly the writing on the wall – what he masquerades as research – is too long to quote here, so I’ll just sample it.

An exhaustive new report, Criminalizing the Classrom [sic]: The Over-policing of the New York City Schools, and related a NY Times editorial raise serious concerns whose consequences are “significant and consequential damage to the learning environment.”

Score one for Stager. Though seriously flawed [as are most ACLU white papers] and less exhaustive than he thinks, Criminalizing the Classroom [Adobe PDF, 1.3mb] gives attention to some deserving issues in New York City schools. You can download it by right clicking the title and ’saving as’ or clicking to open it in a new window.

Students continue to be marched from one end of the institution to another, often in order of height or with “troublemakers” near the front of the line.

Schools are prisons because small children have to walk in lines, sometimes arranged by an arbitrary characteristic assigned by nature [we always walked in alphabetical order by our first initial of our last name]? This raises an eyebrow.

I have to assume that Stager doesn’t believe that teachers identify troublemakers properly – they must be wrongfully accused if the troublemaker designation warrants scare quotes. If your 6-year old has been unjustly punished for talking in line – and made to walk near the front! – Stager’s got an in with the ACLU. Send him an e-mail and ask for a referral.

The injustices get worse.

We have long accepted the practice of seeking permission to use a toilet in school.

This has to do with exercising responsibility for our youngest students, not the suppression of civil rights. Asking to leave a room to pee doesn’t signal the decline of the American education system, nor does it relate to a prison system. Prison cells have toilets right inside and they are overwhelmingly permission-free.

The Supreme Court of the United States is actually entertaining the notion that a principal may punish a student at any time for what they do outside of school or school events. The issue at stake is if a school principal may do any action that “disrupts its mission.”

Since Stager is comfortable with reductio ad absurdum, I’ll slum it, too. If a student rapes and kills a family of four but does so after the day’s last bell, should we not factor in his extracurricular behavior?

Schools are suspending students for recording incidents of audio or video of unprofessionalism instead of protecting the students as whistleblowers.

There are two worthy sides to these stories – it’s an odd piece of evidence and a remarkable omission from a man whose article is based almost wholly on the abuses of individual rights. Teachers have them too, you know.

A legislator in Texas has proposed a bill to study the value of recess. The testing demands of schooling and the elimination of recess has caused the formation of national group to advocate for the most basic element of childhood welfare, recess.

Recess is important, but the “most basic element of childhood welfare?” Sweet lord, Stager.

Collective punishment (prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949) is a hallmark of NCLB with all teachers and students held “accountable” for the test results of a few.

From Stager’s link to a Wikipedia page, “[t]he Fourth Geneva Convention (or GCIV) relates to the protection of civilians during times of war “in the hands” of an enemy and under any occupation by a foreign power.” Why he’s using GCIV to criticize national education policy is beyond me – it’s entirely irrelevant to the issue and is intellectually irresponsible. It’s also a mind-numbingly stupid way to back up criticism of No Child Left Behind when there are plenty of legitimate ways to make the point.

A Santa Fe elementary school student was duct-taped to his chair by a teaching intern. Here is a similar story from Oregon. Here’s one from California. Even the Aussies are doing it!

There are millions of educators in the United States [the NEA has 3.2 million members alone, and that's just in public schools] and Stager has pointed fingers at three bad ones. Their misdeeds aren’t representative of the state of education in the US any more than Stager’s remarkable screed is necessarily representative of those who write for District Administration.

You can check out the entire list on the original article. He summarizes with this:

These and other trends “ripped from the headlines” lead me to wonder if we should just merge the education and penal systems into one bureaucracy and transform schools into prisons? Why wait? The distinctions are often difficult to discern.

Gary embarrassed himself, Pepperdine, and District Administration. I hope he recognizes that and writes something more sensible, substantive and well-founded next time.

We’ve all got gripes with our education system, but it’s important that we approach the issues accurately and responsibly.