In the few weeks that we have been in this class I can recall three incidents that have come to my attention involving K-12 students and law enforcement. Ahmed Mohamed was arrested for making a clock, essentially the 14 year old was too intelligent for his own good? After that incident, video of 16 year old Emilio Mayfield \u00a0being slammed to the ground by police officers after being struck in the face\u00a0for jaywalking to catch the bus surfaced. In more recent news we have the student in South Carolina who was flipped\u00a0out of her desk and thrown across the room by Deputy Ben Fields, who was called in after the student was identified as being disruptive to the class.<\/p>\n
I understand that these are all very different circumstances but at the end of the day we have three teenagers having experienced unnecessary trauma of being handcuffed and hauled to a police station with fear and questions of self worth running through their heads. What does it say when you have been conditioned to believe that bad people, criminals, are the ones who get handcuffed and you are the one sitting in the back of a police car after being in a classroom?<\/p>\n
These incidents help visualize our far too intimate relationship between institutions of education and institutions of incarceration:<\/p>\n