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Lockdown High:When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse
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A riveting report on the overblown fear of violence that turns American schools into prisons and students into suspects
School violence has fallen steadily for twenty years. Yet in schools throughout the United States, Annette Fuentes finds metal detectors and drug tests for aspirin, police profiling of students with no records, arbitrary expulsions, armed teachers, increased policing, and all-seeing electronic surveillance.
This climate of fear has permitted the imposition of unprecedented restrictions on young people’s rights, dignity, and educational freedoms. In what many call the school-to-prison pipeline, the policing and practices of the juvenile justice system increasingly infiltrate the schoolhouse. These “zero tolerance” measures push the most vulnerable and academically needy students out of the classroom and into harm’s way.
Fuentes’s moving stories will astonish and anger readers, as she makes the case that the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society with an unhealthy fixation on crime, security and violence.
Reviews
Lockdown High should be required reading for every school board member, administrator or parent worried about school safety.
Examples of zero-tolerance policies taken to absurd levels are attention-grabbing, but the real story, spelled out with clarity and a touch of anger, is a disturbing one that should concern members of school boards, principals, teachers and parents.
A well-argued book ... packed with the anecdotally eye-catching and hard, persuasive data. Fuentes’ detailed and daunting investigation ... is a wakeup call.
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[The] penetration of prison culture into daily life and particularly schools has been brilliantly traced by US writer Annette Fuentes in Lockdown High
Guardian -
[A] chilling report ... extremely well-written.
Library Journal -
Lockdown High is a wake up call for Americans who care about how schools treat children and young people ... This book is a must read for school boards, school administrators and parents.
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Fuentes’ style is smart and accessible, her material both revelatory and relevant—it’s not only parents who will stay up late reading Lockdown High, but anyone interested in where we are headed.
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Lockdown High is a widely accessible overview of the trends in school discipline, surveillance, and policing. As such, Fuentes brings research in the education world to a broad audience and thereby widens the awareness of and potential resistance to the lockdown model.
, Teachers College Record -
A sweeping new book ... describing how the schoolhouse has become a jailhouse and fear prevails.
Chicago Sun-Times -
‘Zero tolerance’ policies were originally written for the war on drugs and later applied to schools. As Annette Fuentes explains, the resulting extraordinary rates of suspension and expulsion are linked nationally to increasing police presence, checkpoints, and surveillance inside schools.
Rethinking Schools -
Visiting schools across the country, investigative journalist Annette Fuentes ... sheds light on trends shaping the future of American education.
Book News -
Illuminating
The Washington Examiner -
Lockdown High, released by Verso (2011), makes highly recommended reading at a time where extreme polices are being evaluated along with moderate approaches in light of the Newtown, CT school shootings. Fuentes provides an important history of the events following Columbine; which led the US government to reach for vanity policies and apply appropriation veneers to school safety grievances.
Yahoo Voices -
Despite a growing body of damning research by civil libertarians of the left and the right, including Annette Fuentes’s excellent book Lockdown High, political opposition to the school-to-prison pipeline has proven feeble or nonexistent.
, The Nation